Navy leads effort to field joint air-defense network.

A cruise-missile defense network that would connect Navy ships at sea, Air Force early-warning aircraft, Marine Corps radar systems and Army anti-missile batteries, is technologically an achievable goal.

In reality, however, a joint network as such is unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future, because each service employs different sensor-netting techniques, and their hardware and software are incompatible.

Among the most promising technologies that merge sensor data is the Navy's radar-networking system known as the cooperative engagement capability. Engineers at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, Md., developed the original CEC in the mid-1980s.

The technology was tested successfully at sea in the mid- and late 1990s. The Navy is installing CEC suites--consisting of jam-proof antennas, radio transmitters and data processors--on several warships and command-and-control aircraft.

The technology impressed the Defense Departments top acquisition official, Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, who is an advocate of network-centric warfare. But rather than allow the Navy to continue to spend millions of dollars on the current version of CEC for its own ships and aircraft, Aldridge asked the service to design an upgraded CEC, called Block II, that would be compatible and interoperable with the other services.

The Navy is working to comply with Aldridge's directive, even though his office did nor give the Navy precise guidance on how to make CEC joint. Further, it appears that the other services remain uninterested in CEC as a combat data-link, and continue to evaluate other technologies.

The Defense Department would like, ultimately, to have a so-called "joint composite tracking network" that would provide real-time sensor measurement data to all the firing units in the theater. The JCTN potentially would enable units to engage a target with their own weapons, even if that target's track did not come from their organic sensors.

The CEC picture, said Navy officials, would cover a much larger geographical area than that of any single sensor.

A solicitation seeking proposals for CEC Block II from potential contractors is scheduled for next spring. This will be an unusual project, officials said, because the Navy does not necessarily know the exact requirements of the other services. Its plan is to design a CEC upgrade that will have an "open architecture," so the non-Navy weapon systems can be integrated mote easily.

The Navy officer in charge of surface-warfare network systems and integration, Capt. Brad Hicks, said that the CEC technology could be adapted for other services, but that it's not clear yet what the other services really want.

Before he was named to his current position at Navy headquarters, Hicks was the commander of a naval battle group and gained first-hand experience with the CEC technology.

The next spiral, or Block II, will be based on "joint characteristics and attributes" that the Defense Department believes CEC should have, Hicks explained. Those attributes were compiled by the Pentagon agency that sets joint missile-defense requirements. Known as JTAMDO (Joint Theater and Air Missile Defense Office), the agency worked with the Navy to come up with requirements for a joint CEC system.

But Hicks cautioned that this document does not necessarily reflect the specific needs of each service, because the services did not provide any detailed requirements. "It wasn't a consensus document," said Hicks. "This is a joint product built by JTAMDO."

The JTAMDO document includes "things that CEC could do, related to joint characteristics and attributes, that we should or may consider for the next spiral," said Hicks. "There is an understanding that came our of the discussion with OSD lithe office of the secretary of defense] that we won't incorporate everything in this document."

In his opinion, said Hicks, "CEC is the foundation for joint sensor netting." To build a single air picture for a joint force, "we believe that you have to have sensor netting."

The CEC Block II "will make it easier for the other services to decide whether they want to participate," he said. "It could greatly enhance the joint picture."

Next spring, Aldridge will review the Navy's plan. "We hope that he will look at it and provide some guidance on where he wants us to go," said Hicks.

CEC is the only sensor-netting technology in operation today that supports a "fire-control quality picture," said Hicks. "CEC would naturally be a foundation to build on."

The Navy spent about $2 billion in the development of CEC, in addition to nearly $200 million on live operational rests. Each CEC unit costs about $6 million.

So far, the Navy has ordered 67 CEC systems for both ships and aircraft. The service's stated requirement is for about 200. It is not dear whether that requirement will change as a result of the Block II upgrade.

Even though the Navy does not know specifically what the other services need or want, said Hicks, "we think it makes sense to leverage on the Navy's investment, to help out joint requirements."

The next spiral of CEC, he said, "will reflect, as much as we can, the joint characteristics and attributes that we can afford to put into it, based on cost and schedule and technical risk, [even though] we have nor received, from the Army or Air Force, any requirements."

The plan is to have a competition for CEC Block II in 2004, said Hicks. To meet that deadline, the Navy's program office already has begun to work on the solicitation to contractors. Hicks acknowledged that it will be difficult to design a joint system, given the amount of information available today. "There is a desire by the secretary that CEC be considered a joint candidate, but there has been no direction given on how to do so."

In other words, if the Army and the Air Force one day decide they want to connect with CEC, the Navy will try to make the system "as compatible as possible," said Hicks.

So far, he said, "We have taken the joint characteristics and attributes--which consider things that they would like--and we will fold in as many of those as we can, to make it more joint."

It would not be realistic, however, to expect multi-service participation in CEC any time soon, noted Jerry Spiegel, an air-defense program manager at Computer Sciences Corp.

"Each service has its own ideas and plans to accomplish similar requirements," he said. "A major thrust in the overall CEC program is to secure multi-service or joint acceptance within the Army and Air Force." That is not easy to achieve, Spiegel said, "because these other services do not want to relinquish ownership."

Joint Experiments

The notion that the CEC could become a joint network is not new. Several multi-service experiments were completed in recent years.

Among them was a demonstration of the Marine Corps AN/TPS-59 mobile land-based radar integrated with a CEC network. That test took place in May 1998, during Fleet Battle Experiment Charlie. Operators relayed CEC data acquired from the Navy's Aegis Spy-1 radar from a P-3 surveillance aircraft to the TPS-59 radar ashore.

In March 1999, the Navy and the Army executed a two-way, real-time track data exchange between an Aegis Spy-1 radar and an Army Patriot radar. Later that year, CEC data were exchanged between the Aegis radar and the Army's theater high-altitude area defense system.

The Navy also completed a demonstration with the Air Force, where CEC was tested on the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft.

"We would love to see the Army expand their interest in CEC," said Hicks. "We would love to see CEC in AWACS." A Navy-Air Force "working group," he said, has been meeting at the Pentagon, to try to "find common ground."

The Air Force is not yet sold on CEC, in large part because service officials still are debating whether it's the right technical answer and whether they could accomplish similar tasks with a competing, lower cost technology, called the Tactical Component Network.

The TCN also is being reviewed by the Navy's 7th Fleet, as a possible substitute for CEC. The 7th Fleet and the Office of Naval Research collectively are spending $71 million to set up TCN prototypes at sea and evaluate the capability.

It is expected that the CEC Block II competition will pit the Raytheon Co., which is the current CEC prime contractor, against the TCN developer, Solipsys Corp., teamed possibly with Lockheed Martin Corp. (National Defense, September 2002)

TCN advocates claim that this technology is cheaper and has a more adaptable operating system than CEC.

Vice Adm. Timothy LaFleur, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's naval surface forces, said that "ICN and CEC are very comparable." But he added that, "CEC is pretty complex," while TCN is "simpler in terms of the language, simpler in terms of the operating systems."

During a roundtable with reporters, LaFleur explained that he is nor necessarily opposed to CEC, but he believes that an open architecture is most desirable. "We have to figure out where is the knee of the curve, where does it make sense to stop all the investment with CEC and move to TCN or whatever other system is out there ... because open architecture [is what] we need for Aegis."

Hicks said he lacked in-depth knowledge of the TCN technology, so he could not comment specifically on whether TCN could match the capabilities of CEC.

But he stressed that TCN is "certainly a candidate for the competition fur the next block."

Further, he added, it may not be necessary for the Navy to choose one system or the other. It is possible to conceive CEC and TCN as working together in a "multi-level network," said Hicks.

Unlike TCN, he said, "CEC supports a very high-fidelity update rate." That means that the CEC picture is updated once every 1 or 2 seconds. Other data links used by the military services have update rates of 8 or more seconds. The high-update rate is desirable for firing engagements, but may nor be needed for other missions, such as figuring out the location of friendly forces.

"TCN could be a sublevel to the network, to meet less stringent requirements," said Hicks. "Not everybody needs that precision quality track to the level we need it."

The TCN may be sufficient, he said, "If I just want situational awareness, not fire-control quality [track data]. ... If I have a weapon system that doesn't need a higher update rate, then maybe I can have a multi-layer level network that can support that lower-end user requirement."

The multi-level network concept will be studied thoroughly before the next CEC competition, he said.

Service Interoperability

It would be unrealistic, according to Hicks, to expect that, even if CEC were upgraded with an open architecture, it would automatically make the services interoperable.

The "infamous interoperability problem," said Hicks, results from a lack of common standards in systems engineering. Each service built its weapon systems and sensors to different performance specs.

When Hicks was the battle group air-defense commander on the USS Cape St. George, if he wanted to send a picture of the no-fly zone over Iraq, he would forward the CEC picture to the joint operations center in Saudi Arabia, via the Navy's E-2C Hawkeye early-warning aircraft. The E-2 has both CEC and Link 16 (the data link used in the AWACS and most Air Force fighters).

When the CEC high-fidelity picture is sent via Link 16, there is a discrepancy in the update rate. "I'm taking a picture with a very high update rate and forwarding it over a system that has a slower update rate," he explained.

The interoperability problem, therefore, is a "lack of systems engineering."

When multiple ships and aircraft are fighting together, "they may pick up different tracks, based on the range of the radar," Hicks said. "Correlating overlapping radar can be done, you just need to adjust the update rate." But the E-2C or AWACS may see a track that is not within a ship's radar horizon, for example. "If I want that track in, I have to correlate it into my picture. That is the challenge. That is the interoperability challenge." Not everyone sees the same things.

If the Defense Department wants true interoperability, he said, the key is to establish common hardware and software parameters for combat systems.

"If I were king for a day, I would make the algorithms and the track management functions common for everybody," said Hicks. The link management functions also need to be the same.

"Now, everything is controlled by whoever builds the systems," he added. The AWACS, the Patriot, the Aegis combat system, the F-15 fighter, each has different software for tracking and combat identification functions.

"If you made some of the core stuff common, that may be a way out of this conundrum that we are in," said Hicks.

Several contractors claim to have the "perfect black box" that correlates seemingly incompatible data. But most systems offered today promise more than they can deliver, he said. "Some slices of them are pretty good. But none of them solves world hunger."

A single air picture for all the services could be achieved, but it will be costly, said Hicks. "There are software engineers out there who believe we can do this ... That is why we are going to build an open architecture combat system."

Air Force Gen. Gregory S. Martin, head of European Command air forces, recently alluded to the current interoperability challenge, as a result of disparate data links.

Sometimes, he said, "We may push our fighter data link at a faster rate than another service. The people in those aircraft with the data link will have greater access to information than others. That's a function of service priority and funding availability."

The data-link discrepancies between one service and another, however, are not an "insurmountable" problem, by any means, said Martin. "It requires adjustments to tactics."