Future development of BCSS uncertain
The Australian Army's battlefield Command Support System (BCSS) has been a success, and prime contractor Saab has kept refining and enhancing it; but interoperability issues may re-shape the BCSS program in the future.
The Battlefield Command Support System (BCSS) has been in service with the Australian Army since 1999 on an ever-increasing scale with incremental capability rollouts. But there is some uncertainty about its future direction including whether it should (or could) be made interoperable with the overarching US Army Battle Command System (ABCS).
As most readers will be well aware, BCSS is a digital command support system developed by Saab Systems in Adelaide, under DSTO guidance, for the Australian Army. BCSS enhances combat power by providing an efficient and effective means of managing and distributing information on the battlefield. It provides commanders with critical information such as location and combat readiness of own forces, enemy strengths and intentions, environmental conditions, mobility, terrain and intervisibility.
BCSS is a fully deployable system that provides near real time situational awareness and messaging across a wide range of communications bearers including Combat Net Radio, Local Area Networks, Wide Area Networks, satellite and point-to-point serial links.
According to its developers BCSS has been engineered from its foundation to accommodate the very restricted bandwidths available in today's combat net radio systems, whilst at the same time being able to take full advantage of the higher bandwidths available in LANs and WANs. Its major functions include:
? Battlemap Situational Awareness including GPS based positioning
? Terrain Analysis functions in 2D and 3D
? Military Communications, with structured message formats
? Engineering Support functions, including going analysis and route planning
? Operational Planning tools
? Logistic Support and Capability Status tools, and
? Intelligence databases and tools for analysis, recording and reporting.
BCSS provides a flexible information flow with integrated functionality throughout all stages of an operation. Near real time situational awareness overlays combined with operational status updates give commanders a high level of battlefield information. The system is inherently capable of growth to include additional functionality, a greater number of hardware platforms and to operate at lower formation levels.
BCSS is hosted on the Saab Information Framework which in turn is hosted on the industry standard Microsoft Windows operating system, providing security, a high degree of user familiarity and the ability to host an array of supporting software.
In operational use with the 1st and 3rd Brigades, located in Darwin and Townsville respectively, BCSS has also been in service on peacekeeping operations in East Timor since 2000. Release 7 of BCSS is deployed from Divisional Headquarters to Company Level Headquarters and a derivative system is being trialled for Platoon use. The system is being evaluated by the New Zealand Defence Force as part of the future NZ Joint Command and Control System, and is also under consideration by South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the UAE.
The latest software development, Release 8, passed system acceptance testing last month. This release provides Army with further enhancements to the BCSS including a much improved battlemap, which provides greater situational awareness of own and enemy forces along with reduced time to capture and disseminate information.
The redeveloped battlemap has been a joint effort between Saab and ESRI and enables the battlefield commander to not only know more but to know it earlier, and thus providing for improved decision making. According to Saab, critical to delivering this new capability were efforts to improve data transmission across the combat net radio (CNR). The BCSS uses Saab's locally developed technology to deliver data to a broad range of recipients across the low bandwidth CNR system. The BCSS collects and manages information from units across the theatre for use in the deployed headquarters and can then use the CNR to provide key information to unit commanders. In February 2007, Release 8 of BCSS is expected to go on deployment to Afghanistan with the Army's engineering detachment.
ADM understands that at this stage no decision has yet been made in regard to Version 9 of the software and there is some uncertainty as to whether there will be a v.9 and, if there is, whether its development will be awarded to Saab as a contract change proposal, as in the past, or whether it will go to public tender. That Defence has sought FMS pricing and availability for Force XXI Battle Command Brigade & Below (FBCB2) is significant where the further development of BCSS is concerned.
Interoperability of ABCS and BCSS
In their very interesting review of US Army and Marine Command and Control Systems1 --that provides considerable insights into the development US Army Battle Command System (ABCS) and one of its core components, FBCB2-Brendan Kirby and Paul Gaertner of DSTO's Land Operations Division, saw that close observation and understanding of current advances in the US ABCS and its associated tools and systems was essential in order to provide feedback and direction in the development of BCSS.
Because BCSS was an evolutionary acquisition, there was an obligation to maintain an awareness of developments in both C2 software and hardware around the world, and of implementations that may result in upgraded operational capabilities and performance. Consequently, they saw there was value to be gained in learning from the experiences of other countries.
"New applications continually need to be sought out and assessed. Another immediate benefit to Australia is that the greater knowledge of other command support systems will lead to more insight into issues of interoperability. This could then lead to the possibility of achieving interoperability with FBCB2, or even linking BCSS and FBCB2 for direct communication. This would make progress towards interoperability between the US ABCS and the Australian BCSS," they said.
In their paper, the authors included a brief overview of the Australian BCSS in the context of relating it to the US systems to enable further testing and evaluation of both current concepts and the direction of the evolving development. They concluded that an important lesson for the Australian Army was to maintain a constant awareness of the developments that Australia's major allies were undertaking in providing digital support for their military forces.
"With this awareness, programs and ideas can be adapted so that the evolution of BCSS and other systems are kept in touch with the latest software, middleware, connection technologies and architectural structures. Only then can the command systems that the Australian military employ be optimised.
"Currently, neither the Australian Army nor DSTO have devised a clear evaluation plan for the BCSS. In the US, lessons learned from the initial iterations of the FBCB2 System Evaluation Plan (SEP) have provided invaluable information for the development of FBCB2, and its implementation into the First Digitised Division. It is hoped that a system evaluation plan could also be implemented to monitor, direct and evaluate the development of Australia's command support system."
However that report was published in late 2004 and Saab now make the point that to some extent interoperability with US forces has been achieved. In the first ever demonstration of Variable Message Format (VMF) interoperability between Australian and US operational systems, Saab Systems and Northrop Grumman showed how the two countries' forces could exchange operational information in a coalition environment. The partners managed to integrate capability into the Australian Army's BCSS so that users could send and receive VMF and Message Text Format (MTF) messages using US and Australian standards.
The system interaction enabled the exchange of critical situational awareness such as unit locations and target positions, and also allowed orders to be sent from headquarters and for individual units to pass reports back up the line. Australian BCSS users were able to interact with US counterparts using the existing BCSS system with its familiar interfaces. As well as demonstrating a synchronised operating
1 Brendan J. Kirby and Paul S. Gaertner, A Review of US Army and Marine Command and Control Systems, Land Operations Division, DSTO-TN-0596, November 2004.
By Tom Muir, Canberra