Network-Centric Naval Forces - Overview: A Transition Strategy for Enhancing Operational Capabilities (2000)

7. To the above recommendations that pertain to all applications of the NCII, including at the tactical level, the committee adds two particular recommendations concerning tactical communications:

   1. With few, if any, exceptions, new communications networks for tactical operations should conform strictly to the NCII goal architecture and should use appropriate gateways, firewalls, and encryption devices to ensure high quality of service.

   2. Terminals of the JTIDS and common data link families should be modified to use NCII standard protocols.

8. The committee also makes several particular recommendations in the information assurance area:

   1. Responsibility for information assurance should be assigned at a high enough level within the Navy Department and with sufficient emphasis to ensure that adequate attention is paid to all aspects of this problem in the design and operation of the NCII.

   2. A defense-in-depth strategy should be adopted, based on the premise that security vulnerabilities may always remain in any system components.

   3. Advances in security technology should be tracked and aggressively applied in the NCII, including its wireless, SATCOM, and land-based communication components.

   4. Procedural and physical security measures should be developed to further reduce the risk where the available technology is not adequate.

   5. Naval force information assurance efforts should include preparation and training for operations with impaired NCII functionality, including provisions for redundancy in appropriate places and fallback modes of operation.

   6. Research to address future critical NCII information assurance needs should be included as an explicit part of the R&D program that is the subject of recommendation 4 above.

Four decision support processes are key to implementing the concept of network-centric naval forces for more effective operations:

1. Requirements generation: clearly stating operators' mission needs;

2. Mission analyses (assessments) and resource allocation: aligning program and budget resources to meet mission needs;

3. System engineering, acquisition management, and program execution: integrating, acquiring, and deploying for interoperability; and

4. Personnel management: acquiring personnel and managing careers to meet network-centric needs.

The entire decision-making process for definition, acquisition, and integration of forces to achieve network-centric operations is extremely complex and involves all parts of the Navy Department, as illustrated in Figure 1.8.

The committee reviewed the decision-support processes shown in Figure 1.8 and concluded that better integration was needed among them to attain significantly improved networked capabilities. Modifications to business practices in each of requirements generation; mission analysis and resource allocation; system acquisition and program execution; and personnel management, training, and education—as well as the integrated oversight of the entire complex—are needed to achieve the full benefits of network-centric operations.

The committee found that the information network and cross-platform interoperability are not as well represented in the fleet requirements generation process as are the platforms and weapons themselves. In addition, it found that the current requirements generation process is not sufficiently responsive to the demands imposed by the pace of information technology development to keep deploying naval forces at the leading edge of commercial practices. The committee also found that there is no one organization within the Navy operational community that has the credibility and authority to prepare requirements for the seams among subsystems and components supporting network-centric opera

FIGURE 1.8 Major decision-making support processes in the Department of the Navy.

tions. In addition, joint efforts to improve interoperability need expansion. Thus, there is a need to augment the processes by which network-centric operations are internalized to become an integral part of the naval force system.

In the areas of mission analysis and resource allocation, the committee found that the naval forces, taken together, lack good measures of effectiveness (MOEs) and measures of performance (MOPs) for evaluating NCO systems as a whole and the contributions of their subsystems to the larger mission goals. And while the Navy, which has the ultimate responsibility for most naval force system acquisition, has recently taken some steps to enhance the system engineering process within the SYSCOMs (i.e., the NAVSEA 05 organization) and within the ASN (RDA) (i.e., the appointment of the Chief Engineer), there is insufficient system engineering discipline to ensure integration and interoperability of cross-platform and cross-SYSCOM subsystems of any overall NCO system. Possibly most important, in light of the demands of network-centric operations on force evolution and performance integrated across the naval forces and into the joint arena, is the need for more comprehensive review and oversight of the acquisition and program execution of the entire NCO complex of systems within the programming, budgeting, and implementation processes than the current business practices provide. Such review and oversight must include prioritization among the various subsystems.

Finally, some members of the committee believe that, due to the legacy of earlier maritime strategies, the Navy places insufficient emphasis on the power projection mission in the N8 organization and in the program executive office (PEO) structure. The N8 organization reflects submarine warfare, surface warfare, and air warfare, with power projection a part of each office but not the focus of any. Meanwhile, air dominance is well served by the focus of the office of surface warfare, and strategic deterrence by the office of submarine warfare. It appears that power projection lacks a true advocate in N8. The same may be true of sea dominance, although this issue was not examined in as much detail by the committee. In the PEO structure air dominance is the focus of the Program Executive Office for Theater Surface Combatants. At least five PEOs strongly relevant to power projection are primarily product oriented, the products being platforms and weapons in many cases. Therefore, management of end-to-end system designs and acquisitions as such is considered to be problematic. The same may be true for such system designs in other areas, although both the N8 and the PEO structures have been successfully adapted to the need in areas such as ASW and CEC and in the growing theater missile defense (TMD) effort. The ASN (RDA) has recently announced the redesignation of the Program Executive Office for DD-21 as PEO (Surface Strike), assigning it responsibility for NAVSEA Program Manager, PMS 429's Naval Surface Fire Support including the Advanced Land Attack Missile program, as well as the DD-21. This represents a major step in the direction of concentrating attention on power projection systems as a whole, in parallel with the concerns the committee expressed in this

area. The committee's recommendations also pertain to making targeting an integral part of the strike system, to strike warfare from the air, and to the relationship between and coordination of naval surface warfare and air strike warfare. The committee commends the entire power projection area to further scrutiny of the kind that led to this most recent PEO reorganization, in both the PEO and the N8 contexts.

Within the context of this study, other members of the committee addressed and argued against making recommendations on these two issues; they favored what they regarded as more pragmatic recommendations to improve implementation of network-centric operations. Among other things they believe that recommendations on the two issues above will deflect Navy attention from recommendations made in more important network-centric challenge areas—i.e., the recommendations focused on (1) improving integration within and across all decision support processes and (2) developing improved output measures and mission/ system component trade-off analyses and assessments. Given these divergent views and the uncertainty they reflect about the true management situation applicable to overall network-centric operations system planning and acquisition, the committee concluded that recommendations to the Navy Department and the CNO would be in order, to review the N8 and the PEO structures and adjust them if necessary and as appropriate to accommodate end-to-end system designs for NCO subsystems, including especially those relevant to the power projection mission. These recommendations are included with the others that follow.

The committee believes that successful network-centric operations will require greater degrees of cooperation, trade-offs, and interaction than currently exist among the stakeholders responsible for the functions involved in NCO integration. It concluded that to best achieve this integration, the Department of the Navy should build on its existing organizations with some changes in emphasis, rather than attempt to totally restructure the department or create a new or additional “stovepipe” for all network-centric responsibilities. The difficulty with even attempting to create a new entity to be responsible for all, or a major portion of, network-centric operations is that such operations span almost the entire range of Navy and Marine Corps activities. Therefore the committee took a pragmatic approach respecting current laws and attempting to minimize organizational disruption.

In arriving at its recommendations, the committee recognized, of course, that internal and external considerations not known to the committee may lead the Navy Department to take other approaches to addressing the committee's findings. The recommended changes represent the committee's best judgments about the best means for the Navy Department to come to grips with the enormous

FIGURE 1.9 Functions for effective integration of network-centric operations shown in relation to major recommendations made in this report. CHENG, Chief Engineer of the Navy; DRM, design reference mission; IWAR, integrated warfare architecture; MOE, measure of effectiveness; MOP, measure of performance; NAVSEA, Naval Sea Systems Command; NWDC, Navy Warfare Development Command; SYSCOM, systems command; TYPE CDR, type commander, flag officer responsible for all ships of a certain type in the fleet.

complexities that will attend the evolution of the naval forces into the network-centric operations mode.

Figure 1.9 shows the processes specific to the Department of the Navy that are necessary for effective network-centric operations integration. The committee's major recommendations are indicated below the functions that would be most affected by the specific recommendations.

The major organizational and business process changes and recommendations are summarized in the following paragraphs. They are presented and discussed in full in Chapter 7.

1. The creation of one new position is recommended: a functional type commander,¹¹ the Commander for Operations Information and Space Command. This new functional type commander should report to only the three fleet commanders, in the same manner as the current platform type commanders report to individual fleet commanders. In addition to assigned operational responsibilities, including management of the fleet portions of the NCII and space assets, this new type commander should be the single point of information support to all the fleets, and should represent the fleet commanders network-centric information operations needs and priorities in the program objective memorandum (POM) and budget processes. He or she would be involved in and support the fleet experimentation program and the recommended spiral development process for network-centric operations. The new type commander would also assume some of the functions now assigned to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (DCNO), Space, Information Warfare, Command, and Control (N6) (see Chapter 7).

   In arriving at this recommendation, the committee considered various alternate approaches to carrying out the functions summarized above (and described in more detail in Chapter 7). The committee weighed the likely problems and benefits that would attend the creation of the new position. One alternative was leaving the organizational situation as it is now, with a lower-ranking officer functioning with each fleet to deal with its information network matters. This arrangement would not provide adequately for the broad and fundamental nature of the change needed to fully implement network-centric operations in the fleets. The committee also considered a recommendation for creating multiple flag positions for each fleet, but this approach did not appear to resolve the problems of achieving consistency of equipment, planning, and operational techniques in the operational forces throughout the Navy. Only a single individual could achieve that.

   After considering the pros and cons of various alternatives, the committee concluded that the time is propitious for making information operations a war-fighting mission with a fleet role comparable to that of current type commanders and that the need to achieve assured consistency and interoperability warrants having the functions be the responsibility of a single individual with a high enough rank.

2. A requirements board should be established to deal with operations information and to integrate various competing requirements as presented by the fleets for rapid improvement of complex at-sea operations. The proposed requirements board should be chaired by the VCNO and should have the N6 as the executive director (until the Operations Information and Space Command is established and is assigned that function). The membership of the requirements board should consist of the deputy fleet commanders; the president of the Naval War College;

the DCNO, Plans, Policy, and Operations (N3/5); and the DCNO, Resources, Warfare Requirements, and Assessments (N8). These members should have four broad functions: (a) develop policy and implement strategy for conducting operations based on the NCII, (b) advise the CNO on the strategy and doctrine, personnel, education, training, technology, and resource requirements for moving the Navy from platform-centric to network-centric warfare, (c) establish the linkage to the Navy of the future from this new level of warfare operations, and (d) prioritize emerging network-centric operations requirements based on fleet commanders' recommendations and the results of fleet experimentation.

3. Wherever NCO system needs involving both Navy and Marine Corps forces in joint operations intersect, the Navy and Marine Corps should arrange to coordinate their formulation of requirements.

4. A new board of directors consisting of individuals with the authority to make funding, scheduling, and program adjustments in relevant areas should be established for review, oversight, and prioritization of the acquisition, integrated installation, and program execution portions of network-centric operations. The Undersecretary of the Navy should be the chairman and the VCNO and the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps (ACMC) should be members of the proposed board of directors. Other members should be the ASN (RDA) (who should serve as the executive director); the Navy SYSCOMs; the Marine Corps Systems Commander; the DCNO, Plans, Policy, and Operations (N3/5); the DCNO, Resources, Warfare Requirements, and Assessments (N8); the Assistant Chief of Staff (ACOS), Plans, Policy, and Operations; and the ACOS, Programs and Resources of the Marine Corps staff. Requirements sponsors (N2, N4, N6, N85, N86, N87, and N88) should be advisory members to be consulted concerning operational impacts of potential program adjustments. The board's mission should be to provide a focus for network-centric operations and to ensure appropriate integration and interoperability for all acquisition and program execution (including installations in battle groups), for all cross-platform systems, including new subsystems, major subsystem components, and upgrades to existing subsystems and major subsystem components, of the overall system complex for network-centric operations.

5. The Department of the Navy should establish a three-star deputy to the ASN (RDA) for Navy NCO integration to carry out the acquisition and program execution directions of the proposed board of directors. The deputy should be a designated Navy SYSCOM commander and be double-hatted into this role. He or she should oversee all aspects of Navy system interoperability and integration and execution of NCO programs, including the NCII in Navy areas of responsibility. This also includes oversight of the activities of the Navy Chief Engineer and the NAVSEA 05 battle force interoperability engineering function and working with the Commander, Marine Corps System Command, to ensure effective, coordinated program execution in areas where the subsystems of both Services must operate together as part of an overall NCO system.

6. The Department of the Navy should define responsibilities, empower corresponding organizations, and provide adequate resources to (a) establish a comprehensive view of the capabilities and programs necessary to implement the NCII, and (b) see that these capabilities are realized. The assignments of responsibility for the NCII should be consistent with responsibilities for positions established in law and the other naval force organizational changes that are recommended herein. The assigned responsibilities should include interaction with other Services, the joint community, and defense agencies:

   • —Resource allocation and requirements sponsor: OPNAV N6;

   • —Operational NCII architecture: Commander, Operations Information and Space Command, with the support of OPNAV N6;

   • —Policy and standards: Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer;

   • —System and technical architectures (including enforcement): Navy Department Chief Engineer;¹²

   • —Acquisition and procurement: program management as designated by the ASN (RDA), and coordination of network-centric operations integration by the designated SYSCOM commander with functions described in 5, above; and

   • —Operational management of the NCII: Commander, Operations Information and Space Command.

7. Mission analysis and component trade-off evaluations should be strengthened by (a) providing staff and resources for the IWAR development process to enable continuous assessments from requirements generation through programming, budgeting, and execution; (b) developing output-oriented MOEs and MOPs for network-centric operations; and (c) developing a comprehensive set of design reference missions across all mission areas. Resource planning should be adjusted to support the spiral development process, including out-year funding to ensure that it is sustained.

8. The Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps should review how system trade-offs and resource allocation balances are addressed in the Navy/Marine Corps staffs for all naval force missions, and particularly for the power projection mission, with a view toward orienting the process to the overall network-centric operations system concept.

9. Under the Deputy ASN (RDA) for Navy network-centric operations integration, the role of the Navy Chief Engineer should be strengthened to institutionalize the system engineering discipline for integration and interoperability of cross-platform and cross-SYSCOM subsystems and components of the overall network-centric operations system. The Navy Chief Engineer should oversee a system design and engineering cadre drawn from the three Navy SYSCOMs (and the Marine Corps SYSCOM when necessary, appropriate, and agreed to by the

Services) for this purpose. The SYSCOMs should be provided with resources and staff to support this activity.

10. The ASN (RDA) should seek the best means to address the design and engineering of NCO systems, to eliminate as much as possible any distortion of the overall network-centric operations approach through undue emphasis on any single naval force mission or any one platform. In particular, the Navy Department PEO structure should be reviewed and provision made, as is found appropriate and necessary, for management of the acquisition and oversight of mission-oriented, networked major subsystems of the overall NCO systems. In doing this, special attention should be given to end-to-end (surveillance and targeting through effectiveness assessment) fleet-based land-attack (strike and fire support) subsystems for Navy, joint, and coalition missions.

11. The organization of the Navy's N8 office should be reviewed and adjusted as appropriate and necessary to increase emphasis on all aspects of the power projection mission, including strike and countermine warfare, amphibious and airborne assault, fire support, and logistics support of Marine forces from the sea.

12. The Navy and Marine Corps should recommend that J8 in the Joint Staff set up a joint organization for land attack, modeled on the Joint Theater Air and Missile Defense Organization (JTAMDO). Until such an office is set up, the Navy and Marine Corps should participate more actively in the “attack operations” pillar in JTAMDO that is looking at targeting of time-critical targets, such as mobile missile launchers.

Figure 1.10, reproduced from Chapter 7, summarizes the major organizational and business practice recommendations under the three major decision support processes affected most directly by the individual recommendations (including some additional recommendations at a greater level of detail that are included in Chapter 7). As noted on the bottom of Figure 1.10, NCO education and training are needed for all naval personnel.

Achieving gains potentially offered by modern technology for enabling force-wide network-centric operations is not likely with current DOD and Department of the Navy personnel management practices. Since information technology work in the military has been changing dramatically, it is not known exactly what skills will be needed for future efforts. It can be projected from the principles involved, however, that competent personnel will be required to address information and knowledge management (extraction, presentation, and application), technical design (architectures, network design) and sustainment (maintenance of connectivity), and applications (for functional users). All future Department of the Navy personnel will need some level of information technology knowledge.

FIGURE 1.10 Key recommendations for managing network-centric operations. BF, battle force; DEP, distributed engineering plant; DRM, design reference mission; FMF, fleet Marine force; ISR, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; IWAR, integrated warfare architecture; MOE, measure of effectiveness; MOP, measure of performance; PE, program element; POM, program objective memorandum.

Current job skill codes do not provide the detail needed to fully define and manage the emerging workforce structure and skills pertinent to network-centric operations. While some progress is evident (e.g., SPAWAR initiated an analysis of the technical job codes used to identify information technology skills in the military), no systematic effort is under way to examine the job skills required for work involving use of information technology to convert data into knowledge. Within the Department of the Navy, career paths have been established for the newly named Information Technology Specialist rating. However, there are no established related career paths for civilian employees.

The national information technology worker shortage could become a serious problem for the naval forces. Workforce planning to meet information tech-

nology needs must begin now to take advantage of the important opportunity over the next 5 years to realign the workforce as large numbers of current employees retire. In addition, there is a need to analyze the content of the desired information technology work for both the military billet and civilian position structures.

Network-centric operations must be made pervasive in the education of Navy and Marine Corps officers, starting with the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Naval War College, and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Whereas in the past the basic education of naval officers, after leadership, has been focused on platforms—ships, aircraft, submarines —and then on weapons, combat units, and, finally, command, control, and related matters, that education will have to begin by conveying an understanding of the network-centric operations paradigm within which all the other naval force elements are embedded. Beyond that, network-centric operations will have to pervade all the training and education of naval force personnel and Department of the Navy civilian staff.

The following recommendations pertain specifically to personnel management:

1. The Department of the Navy and the naval forces should institute network-centric operations education and training at all levels across the Navy and the Marine Corps.

2. The Department of the Navy should develop a process for (a) identifying the qualifications for billets critical to network-centric operations (including both domain and infrastructure experts) and (b) identifying training and education needs for those billets. Military and civilian personnel should train together when the information technology learning requirements and facilities are shore-based.

3. The naval forces should develop career paths for both military and civilian personnel to retain and reward those with information technology expertise.

4. The Department of the Navy should analyze and describe the composition and qualities of the current and projected information technology workforce so that more informed decisions can be made about how to distribute specific elements of the work to active-duty or reserve military personnel, civilian employees, and contractor personnel.

5. The Department of the Navy should update information technology job codes to match the work that network-centric operations will require. This update should extend to both military billets and civil service positions.