Net-centric thinking is not limited to the USA
Across Europe, customers and suppliers are getting to grips with network-enabled operations through demonstration and experimentation.
A pioneer of networked defence through the datalinks connecting its Saab JAS39 Gripens with other fighters, surveillance aircraft and ground systems, Sweden has embarked on a multi-year research project to develop a new generation of networking technology able to reach across its armed forces and beyond its borders.
Funded by the Defence Materiel Administration, and involving Swedish companies Ericsson and Saab plus US firms Boeing and IBM, the NetDefense initiative is designing the rules for future network-based defence. The initial focus is on building expertise within Ericsson and Saab through a joint venture. Longer term plans to expand links with US companies hang on the success of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, in which Boeing and Saab are founding partners. Two demonstrations a year will be conducted. Under current plans, funds for the NetDefense programme will expire in late 2006, with a possible extension awaiting a directive from the supreme commander of Sweden's armed forces.
Several Swedish firms are conducting studies into how network-centric capabilities can be introduced in the near term, with systems such as the Gripen and tactical unmanned air vehicles. Saab is working towards supporting Sweden's rapid-reaction battlegroup concept with Finland and Norway, to come into effect with land forces in 2008 with an aviation component expected to follow.
Simulations are being used to understand the capabilities that could be provided by emerging network-enabled systems. One area of research is into how to get UAV images to any kind of web browser, whether in the back seat of a Gripen or directly to a targeting pod, says Anders Carp, business development director, Saab Aerosystems. Saab and seven other Swedish firms will also demonstrate a "dial-a-sensor" concept in which civil services including police and fire authorities will be able to view UAV images of a crisis scene via mobile telephones and secure browsers.
In the UK, development of network-enabled capability is focused on a partnership between industry and the Ministry of Defence called the Network Integration Test and Evaluation Works (NITEworks), which involves more than 40 companies. The three-year, £50 million ($93 million) programme was established in June 2003 as a team led by BAE Systems. Today 10 UK defence contractors are partners and another 31 firms are associates.
NITEworks is "the primary vehicle for coalition synthetic experimentation aimed at improved UK/US/NATO interoperability", says the MoD. Six projects were launched during the first year. Three have been completed and three more added. One looked at improving UK kill-chain performance as part of a US-led coalition in the 2006-8 timeframe. Others are looking at effects-based operations, logistics command and control, and synchronisation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) in a US-led coalition.
NITEworks is one of the programmes supported by EADS's System Design Centre (SDC), which brings together the company's concept development and experimentation assets to design net-centric system architectures. Others include France's BOA, Germany's National Integration Testbed and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation experimentation campaign – for which EADS is teamed with SAIC.
Serving EADS's defence businesses in France, Germany, Spain and the UK, the SDC is supported by a simulation and experimentation network called NetCOS, which provides the virtual environment in which to design and demonstrate network-enabled concepts. EADS's air defence testbed is one of the first applications of the NetCOS hub, which links models, simulations, operators and actual systems.
Thales is leading a consortium with Giat and Sagem, as well as EADS and MBDA, that is developing a demonstrator for the French army's BOA future fighting system, which will network soldiers, vehicles, sensors, UAVs and helicopters. The team is to deliver a BOA simulator, known as SIM EC3, early this year to baseline potential architectures.
CRAIG HOYLE / LONDON
Source: Flight International
