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Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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6

Command and Control

OVERVIEW

Although its basic requirements for command and control (C2) systems resemble those of other land forces such as the Army, the Marine Corps has several specific needs, driven by its unique missions, that are unlikely to be addressed by other Services. The Operational Maneuver From the Sea (OMFTS) doctrine, for example, places demands on a C2 system that are very different from those imposed by doctrines for larger, land-based forces. Indeed, success in OMFTS depends on meeting unique technical requirements for achieving overall information superiority, not just its C2 components, a larger regime considered in this chapter.

In OMFTS, a relatively small force of Marines will launch an assault from ship to shore, will decide on target landing locations while in transit across the water, and may penetrate deep inland with quite small, highly mobile groups. Such a force’s relative deficit in numbers and firepower is, according to the OMFTS concept, more than compensated for by knowledge of the battlespace, by agility, and by excellent and timely command and control that can, for example, bring down sea-based fire on enemy targets upon command from the Marines.

Thus, OMFTS places a premium on timely situational awareness and assured communications, even in the face of jamming. Furthermore it requires that such services will be provided without any of the traditional impediments associated with command, control, communications, computing, and intelligence (C4I) systems such as heavy, slow-to-set-up microwave antenna masts, large satellite ground terminals, and so on. This demand for excellent C4I services without the attendant bulk of traditional systems is not entirely Marine Corps-specific; the Special Forces have this requirement, and the Army, too, is trying to become lighter and faster. However, the Marines Corps carries this concept much farther than the Army and as a result has specific requirements for these systems.

From a technical viewpoint, OMFTS poses the following Marine Corps-specific challenges:

  • Marines must be wedded to naval C4I systems, more or less closely, until the moment that they launch for the shore.

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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  • At that moment, Marine craft (e.g., the advanced amphibious assault vehicle (AAAV)) must transition to their own, organic wireless communications for their maneuver to land. Their wireless networks must enable the Marines to remain in close contact with naval, theater, and even national systems that can supply the requisite knowledge to commanders.

  • During their drive across the sea toward land, commanders in transit (e.g., in AAAVs) must receive accurate, detailed, up-to-the minute intelligence on enemy dispositions and the current locations of the Marines. They must also be able to give commands to their dispersed forces with high probability of success.

  • Those Marines that penetrate deep inland must rely on some kind of overhead relay, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or satellites, in order to maintain communication with Marines ashore and the naval forces afloat, to call for fire, and to continue to receive timely intelligence and situational awareness that permits the informed maneuver called for in Chapter 2’s overview (pages 14-15).

  • While maneuvering inland, these Marines may need to enhance their information superiority by conducting deception and information operations or by having others conduct such operations on their behalf.

  • Finally, once other land forces such as the Army appear on the scene, the Marine units may need to plug their C4I systems into the Army’s in preference to relying on the purely naval systems. This will allow them to become an integrated part of the Army’s situational awareness picture.

Each of these challenges is unlikely to be adequately addressed by another Service but must be successfully resolved for OMFTS to work as envisioned. Each is therefore a natural priority for Marine Corps R&D in C4I.

In the judgment of the committee, the Marines have done a good job of experimenting with prototype C4I systems in OMFTS-type exercises. The Extending the Littoral Battlespace (ELB) advanced concept technology demonstration (ACTD) is an excellent case in point. Here the Marines have made a prototype of the C4I network needed for OMFTS and have employed it in their exercises. The ELB prototype, although by no means an operational system, allows a glimpse of the future world in which new, radio-based networks will provide data communications for dismounted Marines, very agile command centers, and long-haul communications for forces deep inland via airborne relays back to ships afloat.

As discussed in Chapter 8, the committee applauds this experimentation despite the severe limitations of the prototype. The Marine Corps is also urged to take this approach one step further. The committee recommends that ONR Code 353’s main focus in C4I should be closely tailored to those Marine Corps-specific requirements imposed by both OMFTS and Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) scenarios. This general philosophy has guided the committee both in its critiques of the existing Code 353 programs and in suggestions for new directions.

PROGRAMS REVIEWED

Command and Control Components for a Harsh Environment

This program aims to help the Marine Corps procure commercial off-the-shelf computer equipment that will better withstand the harsh environment in which Marines’ C2 equipment must operate. It intends to proceed along a number of fronts: collect basic environmental information about a number of Marine Corps programs, identify current and emerging families of technologies that might be used in C2 equipment for such programs, perform modeling and analysis to derive environmental guidelines and/or

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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requirements for the component technologies of such equipment, and work with manufacturers to persuade them to adjust their equipment so that it better meets the needs of the Marine Corps.

Findings

The basic premise of this program is unsound, and the specific tasks it intends to accomplish are dubious. The basic premise appears to be that the Marines can perform a survey of “families of commercial technology,” maintain the information so that it is reasonably current, and use the results of this survey plus some program-based analysis to convince manufacturers of commercial equipment to adjust their products so that they better meet Marine Corps requirements for ruggedness, operability temperature ranges, and so forth. The committee had a very difficult time in learning exactly what work was proposed. The one concrete example given was that the program might research hard drives to discover the lowest temperature at which a drive could operate and then, by modeling, determine whether this bound could be improved (i.e., lowered further) by using a different kind of lubricating oil. The program’s staff then hoped to approach hard-drive manufacturers with this information and convince them to change the oils used in their disk drives so that the disks would be better suited for use by the Marines.

One weakness in this approach is that commercial vendors are exceedingly unlikely to redesign their products so that they better suit the Marines. The Marines buy an extremely small quantity of equipment as judged by commercial standards, and the design efforts of commercial firms will aim to best meet their own marketing and cost-point goals. Ruggedization to very low temperatures, to salty air, and so forth is unlikely to rate highly on this list. Another weakness is the programs’s lack of acknowledgment that specific types of equipment are introduced and replaced very rapidly within the commercial sector; it seems highly unlikely that the program could adequately track the ever-changing offerings in commercial technology. For instance, a given hard-drive manufacturer’s 10-GB offering may use quite different components from month to month; thus experimental drop-tests of the equipment, for example, would be likely to give different results depending on the exact shipment. Finally, and most important, such detailed testing by the Marines is totally beside the point in today’s performance-based acquisition environment. It is the contractor’s responsibility to deliver equipment that meets a given program’s requirements or to respond (as in the case of cost-as-an-independent-variable procurements) with suggestions for trade-offs between requirements and price. Thus in the committee’s view, this program is entirely unnecessary and unlikely to be of any use.

Recommendations

The committee recommends that this activity be terminated immediately. It further recommends that no related effort be started in its place; this type of work is simply not needed.

Joint Tactical Radio System Mobile Network Radios

This program aims to ensure that the Marine Corps is fully involved in the development of the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) and, in particular, its wideband ad hoc networking technology. JTRS will provide joint interoperability in two ways: by providing firmware to allow interoperation with radios that use legacy waveforms and by providing a new wideband network protocol for use by all the Services. The Marine Corps rightly views the wideband network as an essential enabling system for many of the new styles of expeditionary warfare being embraced. At present, the Marines are experi-

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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menting with prototype versions of such networks in the ELB ACTD by using existing VRC-99 and WaveLan data radios. These existing radios and the ELB prototype network are expected to be replaced by the JTRS wideband network as it becomes available. Thus it is essential that Marine Corps needs be represented as the JTRS network is procured.

Under this program, the SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego, is chairing the JTRS radio-frequency (RF) networking integrated product team (IPT). The IPT is a rather large, joint, government team; at this point it includes tri-Service and joint Service, Department of Defense (DOD), and laboratory membership. 1 The essential goals of this IPT are twofold: to create a modeling and simulation environment in which Service concepts and scenarios can be tested with proposed networking approaches, and to develop a functional description document and a request for proposal for the JTRS wideband network waveform. The simulations are planned to begin almost immediately, with the RFP to be issued in December 2000.

Findings

The committee applauds the briefing that it received on this subject, as well as the underlying concept of the JTRS mobile network and its constituent software radios. As highlighted in the ELB experiments, the Marine Corps has a fundamental need for robust data networking to provide an infrastructure for most or all of its network-centric operational concepts. If all goes well, the JTRS mobile network will satisfy this need. However, the committee believes that the program is facing significant challenges and offers both observations and recommendations vis-à-vis these challenges.

Requirements Creep and Cost Growth. The overall JTRS program may already be experiencing requirements creep and cost growth that, if unchecked, can lead to a well-known vicious circle: equipment costs grow steadily, thus reducing deployment of equipment, which makes it even more costly on a per-unit basis, and so forth into a programmatic death spiral. The JTRS is currently required to support 43 waveforms, only one of which is a new, wideband, data waveform suitable for mobile networks. The others are all legacy waveforms, generally for voice modes of older military radios. Thus JTRS already suffers from requirements creep. This is probably not the end, however. As the various Services begin to draw up their requirements for mobile networking, there will likely be a tendency to mandate the sum of all requirements as the minimal requirements for the new wideband waveform. The committee notes the obvious fact that a larger list of requirements will generally result in a more costly system, not to mention schedule slippage, and that this trend should be avoided if possible.

Divergence from Commercial Practice. The JTRS has no obvious analogs in the commercial world, which may indicate that the military approach to resolving mismatched radios may differ strikingly from that in the commercial world. As a simple example, there is no widely available commercial radio that

1  

At present this includes the Air Force Communications Agency (AFCA); Electronic System Command (ESC); Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL); Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), Army; Communications Electronics Command (CECOM), Army; Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM); Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC); Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR); Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR); Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Space, Information Warfare, and Command and Control), (N6); SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego (SSC-SD), Extended Littoral Battlefield (ELB) Program Office; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); Director for Command, Control, Communications, and Computers Systems Directorate (J6); Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC); Naval Research Laboratory (NRL); Office of Naval Research (ONR); U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM); and the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Joint Program Office.

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
×

accepts a number of software modules (implementing waveforms) from different vendors. One cannot buy a cell phone and insert the Motorola software image for time division multiple access to replace the original Qualcomm image for code division multiple access, or indeed insert Sony software to turn it into an FM radio. Although the JTRS manufacturers consortium is often portrayed as the leading edge of the commercial industry forum for software radios, some of the committee members are skeptical on this point and believe that a faster, cheaper, and more reliable means of ensuring inter-Service radio compatibility is simply to replace older radios with newer radios that implement a common waveform. Of course this process will have to be repeated every few years, just as in the commercial world, as the newer radios in turn become obsolete.

Maturity of the Networking Technology. Because mobile networking technology is not yet fully mature, great care should be taken in this area. In addition, other important areas—relating to leadership, decision making, and cognitive overload—are currently being neglected. The Army and the Marine Corps now have significant experience with mobile networks in the tactical internet, near-term digital radio, and ELB efforts. This experience has generally shown that the technology holds great promise but still has a number of technical problems that need resolution. Thus additional technical shakedown exercises will be needed before such networks are as reliable as they must be. Indeed, the current technology is sufficiently immature that more R&D likely is needed, although it could probably proceed in parallel with the procurement and shakedown of the initial mobile networks.

Overall Network Architecture (access points linked by a backbone). The overall architecture of the ELB network—not to be confused with its individual “box” components and their ensemble performance—has many good points and could be considered for adoption in the overall mobile networking architecture for JTRS. This architecture employs a backbone or long-haul network that provides widearea connectivity across the battlespace, together with a number of access points that tie individual users and their hand-held devices into the overall network. In the ELB network, the backbone was formed by VRC-99 radios and the access networks by standards-compliant (IEEE 802.11) radios. The committee makes no special recommendation regarding those radios but observes that the decomposition of the overall battlespace network into these two subnetworks could lead to a better design than one in which a uniform set of radios is interconnected as a mesh.

Recommendations

The committee recommends that Marine Corps representatives to the JTRS RF networking IPT should make every effort to minimize the number of requirements imposed on the JTRS radio and its wideband waveform, so as to hold down the unit cost of these devices.

The committee further recommends that the ONR should fund an active R&D effort in ad hoc wireless networking in support of the Marine Corps need for sea-based, terrestrial, and UAV-based network nodes. This effort should include building a significant number of such nodes and performing detailed technical experimentation with real networks. The committee further notes that the ultra-wideband (UWB) radios discussed below might be a good platform for these initial efforts but that this networking research should be taken on in addition to current UWB radio programs.

JTRS Antenna (Helmet, Vest)

The Combat Wear Integrated program is intended to develop advanced RF antenna designs that can be incorporated into helmets and/or vests for individual Marines. A particular goal is to devise antennas

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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that are suitable for the man-portable variant of the JTRS. This is a technical challenge because of the projected frequency range for such radios (2 MHz to above 2 GHz). This program is being undertaken by SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego (SSC SD), in partnership with a Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) research team. NPS is performing much of the fundamental theoretical work, simulations, literature searches, and the like; SSC SD is advising, building prototypes, and performing tests. Radiation hazards will be analyzed by a theoretical homogenous model of the human body, validated by power measurements on a mannequin model of a human body.

Findings

The committee offers no particular comment on the technical feasibility or desirability of this program but is concerned about the potential RF/body interaction for such systems. In particular, public perception of potential physiological issues could be more important than any technical facts. There is already noticeable concern about potential health issues associated with the use of cell phones, and this concern could grow in coming years (whether or not it has medical justification). Thus, body-worn antennas could become a public relations problem; in the worst case, of course, they might actually pose a serious health issue for Marines who wear them. The committee is not convinced that the program’s proposed experiments to measure RF emissions into the body have sufficient physiological realism to produce medically accurate results, but even if they did, it is an ongoing research task to determine how such results correlate with actual health effects on human users.

Recommendations

The ONR should continue funding this research but should also look for alternatives to body-worn antennas (e.g., antennas mounted on rifles).

Mobile Direction Finding for Tactical Signals Intelligence

This program contemplates a brief investigation into methods of automatic signal identification and antenna spatial referencing and the transition of selected methods into the team portable collection system early in FY01. This effort will be followed by a 3-year program for the development of a prototype PC-based system for mobile direction finding.

Findings

Reported past work involving calibration tests on the vehicle antenna combination of a proposed system seemed to fall more in the realm of system engineering/technical assistance than S&T. The committee was unable to discern whether the proposed future work was part of an acquisition program, an advanced technology demonstration, or exploratory. Reimplementing existing algorithms for a PC does not constitute S&T, nor does solving the system engineering problems of cooperative operation, but there are thorny S&T problems in automatic signal recognition and direction-finding arrays.

Some committee members think that there is ongoing work in automatic signal identification supported by the Defense Program 3 and the Combined Cryptologic Program and that the general problem is not platform-specific and not a good candidate for Service Program 6 R&D. Direction finding, however, is very platform-dependent because of the interaction of the platform, the antenna, and the environment.

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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Some on the committee are skeptical about the requirement for mobile direction finding by land vehicles. Because of the difficulties human operators face while traversing rough terrain, performance will be highly dependent on automatic signal recognition. A moving vehicle cannot erect a high antenna with line-of-sight to the target transmitter and therefore is condemned to operate at longer wavelengths whose near field encompasses the vehicle. Calibration to account for vehicle reradiation effects is very wavelength sensitive and may not always yield a unique actual direction of arrival for a given apparent direction of arrival.

Recommendations

The committee recommends that ONR should consult the National Security Agency, the Naval Security Group, and, particularly, the Naval Information Warfare Activity to determine the state of the art in automatic signal identification technology suitable for incorporation into lightweight ground equipment.

Marine Corps S&T investment should focus on direction-finding arrays suitable for vehicle mounting. The Army also has an interest in this problem. Demonstration of a suitable array/vehicle combination and revalidation of the requirement for direction finding on the move should be prerequisites for system prototyping, and the legitimacy of conducting such prototyping with S&T funding should be examined.

PC-based Time Difference of Arrival

This program seeks to define a generalized, PC-based time difference of arrival (TDOA) precision geolocation system utilizing multiple platforms interconnected by the single-channel ground and airborne radio system (SINCGARS) or similar limited-bandwidth organic communications. According to the program milestone chart, processing and location techniques will have been selected by mid-FY00, when the 1-year development of a processing package will begin. Demonstrations, brassboard construction, and transition to the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase are planned for subsequent years.

Findings

Cooperative TDOA among units interconnected by channels of limited bandwidth poses two challenges: ensuring that all units are measuring the same signal and extracting and precisely time-measuring some aspect or statistic of the signal. For signals of adequate duration, units can be commanded to characterize whatever signal is found at a commanded frequency; dealing with shorter signals depends either on the ability of autonomous units to share the same search strategies measuring the same signal simultaneously, or the provision of large amounts of accurately time-stamped, predetection spectrum.

To the best of the committee’s knowledge, past attempts at developing systems to geolocate accurately a wide variety of communications signals under the constraint of limited interconnection bandwidth and short baselines have failed. Many signals do not have easily recognizable features and do not lend themselves readily to the precise time measurements required for accurate geolocation with short baselines. Therefore, if improvements in the performance of digital signal processing now enable this performance, demonstration of this fact is a worthy S&T goal, although one that is not specific to the Marine Corps. Information on the algorithm selected for implementation and the results of analyses or simulations demonstrating the performance of the selected algorithm against typical communications

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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signals would have been helpful. Absent these demonstrations, the committee is concerned that the contractor may be implementating a scheme of limited applicability.

It should also be noted that TDOA systems are not immune to the antenna/vehicle interactions that plague direction finding. In both cases, reradiation from the vehicle perturbs the measurement.

Recommendations

The committee recommends that ONR review the evidence that led to the selection of the algorithm being implemented, and if it is dissatisfied with this evidence, either terminate the program or redirect it into a more scientific exploration of the ability of various processing algorithms to accurately time-stamp various communications signals, an exploration that can be conducted without prototyping real-time hardware.

Wideband Tactical Communications

This dual-use S&T program will produce 12 UWB prototype radios for experimentation by the Marines Corps. Total program funding is $2.88 million, of which $1.22 million is paid by industry. The program combines two distinct technologies—UWB radios and ad hoc networking—to produce a self-organizing RF network that promises to be low probability of intercept (LPI), low probability of detect (LPD), and antijam (AJ). The radio will consist of UWB components integrated into a conventional Racal multiband inter/intra team radio (MBITR) platform. Ad hoc networking software will be added. Hardware delivery is planned for June 2001.

Findings

The committee commends this program. The basic approach is technically sound and can be expected to provide useful functionality to the Marines. However, the committee did not discern any planned path by which this new technology could be injected into Marine Corps operations for experimentation. In addition, the mobile networking scheme adopted for this new network will likely fall into the R&D prototype category and hence should not be confused with a production network that will operate reliably.

Ultra-wideband radios are a “hot” area at the moment and, perhaps as a result, their benefits are sometimes overstated. They are widely claimed to be LPI, LPD, AJ, and immune to multipath problems. There is an element of truth to all these claims, but UWB radios are by no means a panacea. Here, the committee notes that this technology looks promising for a number of Marine Corps applications, perhaps most notably MOUT. The proper choice of an operational frequency band for wall-penetration, taken together with UWB resistance to multipath problems that characterize urban environments, could yield a very useful hand-held radio for the Marines. Perhaps the most intriguing benefit is nontechnical, namely that UWB radios can probably be added as overlays across spectrum that is already fully in use with different radio technologies. This would allow the Marines to employ new types of voice/data networks while still maintaining legacy radios for some time.

Despite the potential for the UWB networks being prototyped in this program to have direct applicability in MOUT scenarios, the committee did not see any signs that ONR or the Marines had determined exactly how they would use these radios once the network was in hand. The committee suggests,

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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therefore, that ONR and the Marines work out a plan by which the network can be used in a series of MOUT and/or Ship-to-Objective Maneuver (STOM) experiments in the next few years. Perhaps the most immediately useful role would be as a relatively high-speed data radio in the Small Unit Logistics (SUL) ACTD, which is badly crippled by the need to send relatively large amounts of data over very slow tactical voice radios (SINCGARS). The SUL experiment might work much better if it employed these new UWB radios instead of SINCGARS.

There will be a trade-off between data rate and penetration of building walls. Tests in the MOUT applications should examine this issue. The committee understands that the Federal Communications Commission recently made a ruling with respect to UWB radios, and it is important to determine if that ruling applies to the DOD and, if so, what if any limitations would be imposed. The performance of UWB radios advertised by various companies should be analyzed—if it has not already been—to determine if a sample quantity of these radios should be included in some of the tests.

Some members of the committee expressed the opinion that the mobile ad hoc networking (MANET) protocols being ported into the UWB radio are not technically mature but are instead more at the R&D experimental stage. In the committee’s opinion, they will probably work well enough for experiments with small numbers of network nodes (e.g., 10) and so should prove useful in limited Marine Corps experiments with this technology. They should not, however, be confused with mature technology, and care should be taken lest the ELB experience (see Chapter 8 ) be repeated. The network will not necessarily work as assumed, and experiments should not take its proper functioning for granted.

Recommendations

The committee recommends that ONR and the Marine Corps work together to map out the set of Marine Corps experiments that should employ the prototype UWB radios (network) created by this program. It further recommends that the SUL ACTD would be a good candidate.

Summary of Recommendations for Command and Control

A summary of recommendations for command and control is given in Table 6.1 .

TABLE 6.1 Summary of Recommendations for Command and Control

Project

Recommendation

Harsh Environments

Terminate.

JTRS Mobile Network

Minimize JTRS requirements accretion.

Explore ad hoc networking technology.

JTRS Antenna

Continue funding, but seek alternatives to body mounting.

Mobile Direction Finder

Coordinate with the National Security Agency and others.

Focus on vehicle-mounted antenna performance.

Reexamine funding category.

PC-based TDOA

Review feasibility; terminate or redirect to exploration of various processing algorithms.

Wideband Tactical Communications

Map out experiments.

Consider for incorporation in SUL ACTD.

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NEW PROGRAMS

Unique Marine Corps concepts of operation, such as Operational Maneuver From the Sea, motivate a number of promising new command, control, communications, computing, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) research areas for ONR Code 353. In many of these areas, a modest amount of R&D can have a tangible and highly useful payback in the very near future.

The committee recommends that the following basic approach be adopted for identifying new C4ISR research areas for ONR Code 353:

  • Start with planned Marine Corps concepts of operations such as OMFTS and MOUT.

  • Given these concepts, solve Marine Corps-specific problems in C4ISR.

Although this prescription may sound like a platitude, it leads directly to several S&T areas that are highly Marine Corps-specific, technically challenging, and not too expensive. The following examples suggest promising new starts for Code 353.

Connectivity to Joint and National Sensors

A small force deployed far into a country would benefit greatly from the situational awareness that can be provided by the joint surveillance and target attack radar system, Guardrail, or other joint and national systems. In a network-centric world it would not be necessary for these forces to carry the actual receive terminals for such sensor systems. Instead, the Marines would link into the overall network and obtain information useful for their situation. The committee believes that Marine Corps access to the information provided by such nonorganic sensor systems would be of great benefit and urges Code 353 to tackle this problem.

Mobile Networking for Marine-Specific Problems

Although many organizations are currently funding research in mobile ad hoc networking, Marine Corps use of such networks is sufficiently unique that specific research in this area is advisable. Most research in ad hoc networks is focused on the Army problem—i.e., very large numbers of vehicles in a relatively dense mass, organized hierarchically into subcommands that occupy abutting geographic areas—which requires technical solutions for accommodating a density of network nodes rather than addressing other needs such as stealth, long battery life, and so forth. A number of Marine Corps operational concepts pose technical challenges that may be Marine Corps-specific, such as deep forward observers, a long line of ocean-going AAAVs following a mine-cleared lane, small tactical UAVs for both sensor emplacement and communications relays, and so forth.

Network Security Issues for MOUT and OFMTS

Marine Corps concepts of small teams that are deeply emplaced into cities or nonfriendly territory lead directly to problems in network security. In particular, enemy capture of one or more Marine Corps network nodes (e.g., manpack terminals) amounts to having an enemy inside the Marine Corps network. Such insiders can launch very damaging information attacks before they are detected and excised from the network. Of course, all the Services are subject to enemy capture and insider attacks, but the Marine Corps faces these challenges to an unusual and probably critical degree. Hence an active program for

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
×

identifying these risks and helping to mitigate them would be extremely desirable. The Marines could probably gain much leverage by coordinating with programs in the other Services and in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that are tackling similar problems.

Networking the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle

The AAAV is a very important vehicle for the Marines because it directly supports Marine Corps attacks from sea onto land. The committee has repeatedly heard the broader, and more revolutionary, view from the Marine Corps that AAAVs can be used in very new styles of sea-based attack if (and only if) the commanders and forces in these vehicles can be fully networked while they are maneuvering from ship to shore. Such networking would give the commanders sufficient situational awareness to make informed decisions on the landing points and would allow them to communicate these commands to their forces. The committee notes that it is by no means evident that the AAAVs, as procured, will have the communications capability to allow such networking. There are a number of technical challenges involved in providing wideband networking capability to vehicles that ride low in the water, that pitch about, and so forth. The Special Forces are familiar with these problems. In addition, there are technical challenges in the logical transition from being attached to the Navy’s shipboard networks at the start of an operation, to transitioning to the “en route” network as the AAAVs maneuver to shore, and finally to linking up with Army and other networks as other Services come ashore after the Marines. The committee encourages Code 353 to become involved with the AAAV program and support it via C4ISR programs that will specifically enable networked operation of AAAVs.

Considering Deception and Other Information Operations

Because informed maneuver involves maneuvering where there is no large concentration of adversary forces, and because perfect situational awareness cannot remove these forces from the vicinity of the objective, deception about the location and intent of Marine Corps forces seems to be an essential component of OMFTS and STOM. Although the committee recognizes the possibility that technologies for deception and other forms of information operations are being pursued elsewhere, it recommends that Code 353 assess whether others are paying adequate attention to technology that addresses Marine Corps needs. At a minimum, Code 353 should pay attention to the signatures of maneuvering Marine Corps forces and to technologies for producing decoys that reproduce these signatures.

Summary of Recommendations for New Investments in Command and Control

A summary of recommendations for new investments in command and control is given in Box 6.1 .

Box 6.1 Summary of Recommendations for New Investments in Command and Control

  • Connectivity to joint and national sensors

  • Mobile networking for Marine-specific problems

  • Network security issues for MOUT and OMFTS

  • Networking the AAAV

  • Deception and other information operations

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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CONCLUDING REMARKS

Timely and assured C4I has become critically important for the Marine Corps, but it is not clear to the committee that ONR Code 353’s programs properly reflect this fact. The committee believes that the Marine Corps can, to a large extent, leverage the C4I systems being designed and built by other Services. This is, of course, far preferable to designing such systems for the sole use of the Marine Corps. However, its unique mission and operational concepts will lead to certain gaps where the Marines Corps must take the lead. Examples include providing assured, coherent C4I services to Marines in transit across the sea-land boundary in AAAVs and to Marines who have penetrated deeply into enemy territory. ONR Code 353 can be very effective in helping design economical and effective means to bridge these gaps.

The existing C2 programs are rather diverse. Indeed some of them may be serving no useful purpose. The coming year, therefore, may well be a good time for ONR Code 353 to take a systematic look at its programs and prune away those programs that are not closely focused on core needs for the Marines. It should devote all of its time and energy to filling in those key components of C4I technology and other aspects of information superiority that will not otherwise be funded and that will, if provided, directly enable the Marines’ operational vision.

Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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Page 49
Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
×
Page 50
Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
×
Page 51
Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
×
Page 52
Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
×
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Suggested Citation:"6 Command and Control." National Research Council. 2000. 2000 Assessment of the Office of Naval Research's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9900.
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This review of the Science and Technology (S&T) program of the Office of Naval Research's (ONR's) Expeditionary Warfare Operations Technology Division, Code 353, comes at a time of considerable change in the Marine Corps and in ONR, which are currently in the midst of significant transitions. The Marine Corps is making plans to equip and train for engaging in a new style of warfare known as Operational Maneuver From the Sea (OMFTS) and for performing a wide variety of missions in urban settings, ranging from humanitarian assistance to combat and mixes of these suggested by the term three-block war. During 1999, ONR assumed management of that portion of the Marine Corps S&T program that had not been assigned several years earlier to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL).

In 2002, control of most of ONR's advanced development funding (6.3), and of much of its exploratory development funding (6.2), will move from ONR's line divisions, of which Code 353 is one of many, to 12 new program offices, each dedicated to demonstrating technologies for future naval capabilities (FNCs). Given these changes, it is not surprising that some of the projects inherited recently by ONR, and assessed by the Committee for the Review of ONR's Marine Corps Science and Technology Program under the auspices of the Naval Studies Board of the National Research Council, differed from the customary ONR project and were more akin to preacquisition or acquisition support than to S&T. It is also not surprising that Code 353 could not articulate its plans for future investments clearly and concisely, given the current uncertainty about the content of and funding level for FNCs.

The Marine Corps S&T program supports the five imperatives for technology advancement that the Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) has identified as prerequisites for the transition to OMFTS: maneuver, firepower, logistics, training and education, and command and control. The committee supports investment in these areas and, in the report's discussions and recommendations, follows the five imperatives.

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