The rise of the industry-based battle labs
Developing an effective NCW-enabled defence force will require lots of analysis and experimentation - Defence and DSTO have some resources in this area and now industry's coming to the party as well.
Whether the security challenges facing Australia are more to do with the potential for traditional conflict in our region or whether terrorism sans frontieres, poses the greater, but quite different threat, this country has no choice but to raise its level of preparedness with an eye on both fronts.
Response to these diverse challenges, which have included out-of-region deployments in peacekeeping roles or coalition operations, requires a multi-dimension force with high levels of flexibility, interoperability, mobility and rapid reaction as its core capabilities. Much has been written about the Hardened and Networked Army (HNA), the Future Force or Force 2020, often in language barely comprehensible to the man in the street, but what is clear is that we can neither afford, nor justify, a sort of super-ADF, poised for the fray on a variety of fronts.
But what we do have, besides the high quality of our trained forces and their leaders, is the ability to leverage the Defence capabilities we need by exploiting advances in technology. This is being achieved through Defence and Industry working together to speed up the development, proving and evaluation of architectures and technologies and thus the timely fielding of integrated systems and architectures such as through Defence's Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation (RPDE) Program.
With an eye to its own capability needs the Army, through the Army Experimental Framework (AEF) and supported by DSTO, has been a leader in ADF experimentation, attracting the interest of other service arms as well as coalition partners. The AEF embraces a broad range of activities including seminars, computer simulations and live field experiments.
But with increasing demands on Army personnel to meet operational tasks, neither the Army, DSTO, nor the wider Defence Organisation now have the necessary time or resources to devote to the degree of experimentation essential for successful transformation from concept to reality. Further, the rapid development of Network Centric Warfare (NCW) concepts and systems compounds this situation. The increasing complexity of these systems necessitates a new approach to development since Defence no longer has the in-house capacity to fully prototype these, train people to use them and then evaluate them.
Industry has responded to this shortfall by establishing integration centres and 'battle laboratories', in many cases as often embryonic in-house capabilities but now increasingly as commercial contributions to national industrial capability. An important example is Boeing Australia's Systems Analysis Laboratory (SAL) in Brisbane, one of many that Boeing has established around the world.
According to Boeing the SAL is the region's most advanced constructive simulation facility. A skilled team of software engineers and military operations analysts provide high level decision support to defence customers through constructive simulation and military operations analysis. The SAL, which has been used extensively by the ADF and industry, has capabilities and tools that enable comparison of the relative impact of platforms, systems or weapons under realistic operational conditions, to assist in materiel acquisition decisions.
The impact of new technologies can be studied as a prelude to initiating and prioritising future procurement projects, and force structures can be assessed at tactical and operational levels. The SAL can also assist in the development of tactics and doctrine as well as help in assessing how new capabilities and technologies impact on force effectiveness and the way a military force fights.
But according to ADI's Army Account Manager, Mike Lovell, many of the other commercial systems that are available are still embryonic and focus on either capability development activities or course of action analysis in support of operational planning. Few, he claims, appear to offer a full spectrum of services.
'Thales Australia is establishing an integration centre at Garden Island similar to others it has established in a number of countries and with which it can be linked. A major component of the centre is the Battlespace Transformation Centre (BTC), a network-enabled synthetic environment providing a system of systems approach to experimentation. Thales' Australia Transformation and Innovation Centre (ATIC) will also include other tools to support Defence besides Thales' and ADI's own modelling activities,' Lovell says.
At its most basic level, the BTC enables users to take a concept and a range of capabilities, plan and execute an activity, and then analyse the results. Thales claims that the BTC provides excellent metrics that permit more detailed analysis than most other battlelabs. Thus the BTC is capable of modelling:
* single operational (land, sea or air) environments
* the joint environment
* a whole-of-government approach, or
* a coalition environment.
According to Lovell it offers the flexibility of modelling various levels of networking from the platform level, to the battlespace operating system level, to a fully networked system of systems. 'The latter is fundamental to the ADF achieving its vision of becoming a seamless joint force by 2020,' he says.
The ATIC BTC, when fully developed, should provide Defence and industry with a first rate tool for enhancing both capability development and for supporting operational commanders deployed in the field.
Hitherto the Australian Army has taken a 'concept-led' approach to its capability development with the concepts the product of experimentation, both in simulated and real activities, to test and develop concepts, platform capability requirements and force structure options. Lovell says the BTC offers an opportunity to bring greater fidelity to this process.
'For example, Thales can configure the BTC to model the performance of individual soldiers, sections, sub-units, units, formations, or joint and interagency task forces. These 'players' can be equipped with different weapons and have varying levels of connectivity, examples being personal role radios, combat net radios, and broadband communications.
'The BTC analysis tools provide selectable metrics to enable cost-benefit analysis of different capabilities as well as enabling comparison of different ways of employing forces. These capabilities are ideal for modelling soldier combat systems being sought under Land 125.'
At a system of systems level, he says the BTC can model and analyse complete battlespace operating systems such as the systems of systems being sought under Land 17 Artillery Replacement Project.
'In this case, the BTC can look at the flow of information across the entire system as well as that between individual nodes within a networked artillery system. It can also test connectivity with external systems within a joint task force.
'The BTC can model combined arms teams and joint forces so that force grouping options can be compared against various threats. This would not only assist in selecting the optimum unit and formation command and organisational structures for LTGEN Peter Leahy's Hardened and Networked Army (HNA) but would also contribute to operational planning,' he says.
Assisting operational commanders in the field
Given its broad application, when fully developed the BTC will be deployable to operational commanders in the field, enabling them to use it for developing courses of action. Conceivably this would allow commanders to make faster and presumably better decisions and to adapt their tactics and force structures to meet new threats. The ultimate goal, Lovell says, is to introduce dedicated BTC cells within major deployable headquarters.
'With access to the real-time situational awareness capabilities available to the commander it will allow commanders and their staffs to 'experiment' as the operation progresses, enabling them to pose questions and test courses of action using up-to-date battlespace information.'
Due to its flexible display modes, the BTC should also be a useful tool for helping deployed commanders to decide how to best display important information to support their decision-making and that of their subordinates. In a fully networked environment, the BTC would be a powerful collaborative planning tool that should assist subordinates to 'self-synchronise' their activities through a shared understand of their operational environment and their commander's intent - making mission command a reality.
In a fully networked environment the BTC would enable deployed commanders to reach back to Australian-based or other TIC facilities rather than being burdened with deploying a mobile BTC system. This would not only reduce the commander's operational footprint but also enable him access to full national and global analysis capabilities, should he require it.
A useful resource for the RPDE program
The establishment of another integration centre is a laudable initiative, especially one with the separate tools/capabilities offered by Thales and ADI. The concept fits neatly with the aims of the Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation (RPDE) Program, the collaborative venture between Defence and industry and its goal of enhancing ADF warfighting capacity through accelerated capability change in the NCW environment.
The RPDE Program is an adaptation of the UK MOD's NITEworks (Network Integration Test and Experimentation Works), an experimental environment that allows the UK Ministry of Defence to assess the benefits of Network Enabled Capability (NEC) and the options for its effective and timely delivery.
Like RPDE, NITEworks is a partnership between Defence (MOD) and defence industry rather than the traditional and more formal customer/supplier relationship. This arrangement allows NITEworks to draw on the widest possible range of specialist skills, information and facilities in addressing problems set by the Ministry of Defence.
With its employees in the first senior positions of both NITEworks and the RPDE program (which it likes to refer to as NITEworks Australia), BAE Systems used NITEworks best practice in the establishment of the RPDE initiative as a leader in NCW thinking in Australia.
When he opened the new RPDE facilities at the Brindabella Business Park, Defence Minister Robert Hill said that the RPDE program provides local specialist companies with an opportunity to contribute their innovation and ideas along with multinational firms.
'RPDE is proving to be an effective example of partnering between industry and the Australian Department of Defence with 48 participant companies, from global trans-nationals to small regional Australian companies involved.
'The collaborative environment benefits RPDE members and associates as they gain a greater understanding of the needs of the ADF in a Network Centric Warfare (NCW) setting. Defence benefits through rapid access to expertise across key industries to resolve NCW issues and make better capability decisions, resulting in quantitative improvements in the ADF's warfighting ability,' Hill said.
RPDE will address all aspects of capability including doctrine, training, support and organisational aspects as well as technology and systems. Current RPDE projects are evaluating and demonstrating technology and processes changes that can improve the ADF's ability to conduct rapid environmental assessments, and improving the use of the existing communications capability.
Senator Hill said that the RPDE program had started to deliver enhanced Defence and industry cooperation, which in turn created the means for rapidly exploiting industrial innovation to achieve the 'knowledge edge' for the ADF.
But the RPDE organisation, which now boasts 48 participating companies, is not about replicating the competence of its partners, rather, it will leverage the facilities, knowledge and experience resident within Defence and industry to achieve its mission.
As a full member of the RPDE organisation ADI can now provide the resources of the ATIC for RPDE tasking as Thales has been providing to the UK MOD's NITEworks experimental environment, says the company's Mike Lovell.
By Tom Muir, Canberra