C3I: NEC or nothing for NZ

1 November 2007

By Nick Lee-Frampton

The New Zealand defence force is wrestling with the same challenges as everybody else in embracing Network Enabled Capability (or NCW); and is keeping an eye on its allies’ progress to ensure it remains interoperable.

There are two primary dimensions to the New Zealand Defence Force’s Network Enabled Capability concept, says Capt Andy Watts, director of the NZDF NEC program.

First, the establishment of a coherent framework for exploiting Information Age technology, and secondly, creating networks to obtain a decisive advantage over an adversary in the field and equally in the allocation of resources to the delivery of defence policy objectives.

He says the NZDF regards NEC as an “indivisible superset of capabilities applied to both “operational” and “corporate business” domains.”

Resources must be allocated according to central, aligned priorities, regardless of whether a given requirement supports operational or corporate business needs, he says.

“Our NEC goals are derived from the NZDF’s Strategic Plan, so themes like being a valued partner come through very strongly. That means exploiting … and sharing … information with the same effectiveness as our coalition and multi-agency partners.”

It goes beyond technical interoperability, says Captain Watts: “Technical capability is … extremely important … and we need to invest in it, but it is also about doctrine and concepts and also very much about training as we fight.

“NEC is not just about communication links, computers and applications, it is about sensing, about building the basis for intelligent, agile decision making. Over the past decade in particular we have made some very significant advances in networking capability.

“However, we identified a need for better alignment … to allow us to fully exploit capabilities like DEFSATCOM and the Joint Command and Control System that is under development.

“For example, we have acquired corporate applications … which dramatically improve our ability to manage our logistical and human resources [yet] our ability to shift information around the elements of the network, particularly those elements that are deployed, has not fully kept pace with that.

“So [our] NEC concept emphasises alignment, ensuring that different strands of development do not follow uneven trajectories. [Moreover] we have to keep our organisational structures flexible, agile and adaptable to support our [new] capabilities.

“As far as enabling innovation is concerned, the challenge is to allow well informed, committed people [in all three services] to use their initiative to develop capability with a minimum of constraint by providing them with a common standards framework, thus developing capabilities that are interoperable and that contribute to the common vision.

“We have seen wholesale commitment from the single services to that common NEC framework.”

Strategy outlined
A significant step was the recent publication of a 24 page NEC Strategy document. It says NEC is about the coordinated exploitation of sensors, networks, equipment and people to create networks that will generate decisive advantage.

“Our NEC Road Map comprises four lines of activity, analogous to the lines of operation in a military campaign plan,” says Capt Watts.

“The Defence Information Infrastructure comprises capabilities (actual and aspirational) that enable us to shift information around and between the entities within a network — and to defend that network.

“The second line of activity is the Defence Information Domain including both the operational and the corporate information domains.”

Capt Watts says the two domains differ markedly in relation to quality of service and “… at this stage they need to be managed separately.”

The third line of activity is the sensing — “all the things that we do to collect, sift, analyze and present information to support a Commander’s decision making process.

“The fourth line is the ‘effector’, all those capabilities which physically generate effects … to deliver defence policy outcomes. As we move towards an effects based approach to developing capability, the effector line will gradually cease to be defined in terms of platforms.

“Our NEC road map [is] comparable to the ADF’s [except] that we have elected to base ours on the four lines of activity identified above, our major projects are subordinate to those lines of activity. However, the NZDF’s NEC capability goals are drawn from the ADF’s NCW Road Map.

“We took that decision for two reasons: One, they are well expressed, and well aligned with the NZDF needs. Two, given the emphasis our Government places on defence complementarity with Australia, we saw merit in having the same capability goals.

“[Our] NEC strategy document also establishes a governance structure; we have created communities of interest, based on lines of activity in the road map, it being a very important principle of any IT strategy [to] bring stake holders together. You give people a chance for their views to be heard and their goals or activities are further synthesised at an intermediate level by the NEC board, membership of which is at the one star level.”

High level support
A two star sub-committee of the executive leadership team executes the NEC Road Map as a whole.

“My job was created because we had some major NEC capability projects where we needed to concentrate program management resources, including JCCS and DEFSATCOM.

“In working those projects it became evident that the NZDF needed a framework, a road map and a governance structure. This recognition led to the production of the 24-page NEC Strategy document, a combined NZDF Development Branch and CIS Branch effort.’

“The NZDF is looking at the capabilities that it needs beyond the span of the current Long Term Defence Plan (LTDP). We believe the effector line of activity needs to move away from the current platform centric focus on aeroplanes, ships and vehicles, to a systems or effects based focus in which [the platforms] are components of an information enabled network capable of generating synthesised effects. People are and will remain the most important elements of those networks.

“Over time, as the NEC framework becomes more embedded, command and control will become more stakeholder driven and less the responsibility of individuals.”