Info-warfare: small steps taken in long quest for net-centric military.

The vision has been out there for a long time: a network-centric world where information among military programs or branches can be accessed by commanders or decision makers in a timely manner.

Every year, chief information officers, intelligence personnel, generals and academics make their way to net-centric conferences in four-star hotels. They come armed with PowerPoint presentations explaining to audiences--mostly made up of contractors--where they need to be and what needs to be done to get there.

But is anyone doing anything, and when will they be expected to "arrive?"

While those who attend such conferences say they fully embrace the idea of a net-centric world, there are many in the military who are resistant to change. Those who come armed with the PowerPoint slides maintain that the roadblocks preventing interoperable communications are mostly cultural, rather than technical. However, steady progress is being made, specialists at a conference sponsored by Worldwide Business Research claimed.

There needs to be an investment in the "material network" and the "social network," said John A. Garstka, assistant director of concepts and operations at the Defense Department's office of force transformation. Both are essentials, he said. "You can over invest in one and under invest in the other, and you just don't get the outcome that you were hoping for."

Chief information officers, when investing in a new program, don't always have a firm grip on the "people component," he added.

"The human element is the great unknown here," Garstka said. Bureaucratic knife fights--between those who want to maintain control of the information and those who think they should have access to it may be the result if cultural issues are not addressed, he said.

"You have to be able to do technology innovation, but you've got to be able to do process innovation, organization innovation and people innovation," Garstka said. Forcing change can be disruptive if these non-technological factors are not taken into account, he added.

Ron Harris, Marine Corps technology architecture analyst, said the service is taking steps to wrest control of data from those who think they have the right to its exclusive use.

"We're going to take authoritative data away from those who think they own it," Harris said.

The Marine Corps may operate the platforms from which it is collected, but "ultimately, [the Defense Department] owns the data," he said.

One solution to the problem has been the initiative from the Office of Secretary of Defense in create "communities of interest," where different programs from various organizations, both military and civilian, join together to create a more seamless flow information. A lead service is identified, and its job is in meld the programs and evolve the net-centric vision.

One of the first communities organized was "time-sensitive targeting," an Air Force-led group that hopes to reduce the time it takes to put a bomb on a moving target. The need to quickly deliver a lethal blow to a terrorist, who may be moving from safe house to safe house, was demonstrated in the death of al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq in June. While details of the operation have been kept classified, the presumption is that the operation took a coordinated effort between intelligence agencies, special operations forces, various surveillance platforms, along with the participation of the Air Force, which dispatched an F-16 to deliver two 500-pound bombs. In the past, such missions would have taken several hours, if not days, to coordinate.

About 55 communities of interest have been identified so far, according to John Shipp III, director of technical architecture for the Army's chief information officer. He expects that number to be prioritized and culled down.

In theory, "there are no service only" communities of interest, Shipp said. "But in reality, there are."

As yet, there has not been one organization within the Army or the Defense Department in charge of creating a more net-centric world. To remedy that, the service is establishing an "Army net-centric data center of excellence," and the office of the secretary of defense will follow with its own center "in the near future," he added.

Another way to sell the net-centric vision is with case studies that show real-world results, Garstka said.

In Western Iraq, during the opening weeks of the current conflict, technical and organizational innovations among the Air Force, allied forces and special operations units allowed them to carry out a successful mission to track down theater ballistic missiles.

When doing close-air support, the Air Force has a mostly uniform communication system. Not so with the ground forces, who employ a dizzying array of radio links and databases. Special operations forces, for example, put a great deal of effort into avoiding detection, and they rely on their own secure radio links. How does a pilot communicate with them?

One organizational innovation was putting an Air Force officer in charge of the operation, Garstka said.

When an enemy target was spotted, the data seamlessly went out over the network to F-16 and A-10 pilots as well as ground forces. Blue and red force tracking was improved, resulting in no cases of fratricide and no time wasted determining who was who on the battlefield, he said.

Operations in November and December 2004 more than a year later in Fallujah refined these tactics as unmanned aerial vehicles and jet fighters doing intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance assisted ground forces.

Fighting an insurgency means gathering intelligence, Garstka noted. "You don't want to just destroy the bad guys, you want to get intel on them." When soldiers attack a building, insurgents "squirt out" the backdoors.

"Depending on what decision is made by the ground forces, you're either going to round these guys up, or you're going to take them out," Garstka said.

The so-called "squirter ops" used to round up insurgents relies on close coordination between the aerial platforms and the boots on the ground, especially when a decision is made to eliminate rather than capture the enemy since there is a possibility of fratricide.

Case studies such as these are important to breaking down cultural resistance to the net-centric vision, and keeping the funding flowing, Garstka said.

A lot of money is being spent in the belief that stronger networks will make a significant difference on the battlefield, Garstka said. "People are asking harder questions about what you are actually getting for those investments."