By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
Tracking ballistic missiles from warships in the sea, handing off targets from stealth fighters jets to ground interceptors and destroying multiple incoming cruise missiles with an extensive multi-domain network of sensors … are just a few things the Army’s fast-evolving Integrated Battle Command System is now configured to accomplish. The system is further expanding, due to a partnership between the Army and IBCS-maker Northrop Grumman, who have been working to leverage innovations and break the system through from air-ground connectivity to air-ground-sea interoperability.
The Army and Northrop Grumman are taking new steps to expand targeting, threat tracking and missile defense technology to more fully incorporate maritime warfare platforms into a joint, integrated, multi-domain system, a move seeking to help the service’s IBCS and the extended “BattleOne” command and control network efforts to breakthrough into a much greater multi-domain operational capacity.
IBCS, a now fully functional Army weapons and technology developmental effort, has been developing more many years as a multi-node, interwoven web of otherwides disparate sensor systems, radars and threat detection systems streamlined into an integrated, multi-domain warfare picture for commanders and decision makers. IBCS is capable of linking otherwise disaggregated or “stovepiped” defense sensors nodes and interceptors such as a Sentinel Radar, Patriot Missile and a software defined Active Electronically Scanned Array radar called AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR.
The idea is to massively widen the envelope for air and missile defense across a series of “networked” systems and platforms otherwise separated by distance and technical standards. With IBCS, a Sentinel radar can, for instance, detect an air threat from hundreds of miles away from a Patriot interceptor weapon yet still transmit time-sensitive threat data to the Patriot to enable target tracking and an “intercept” wherein the Patriot destroys the threat.
Shooting Down Two Cruise Missiles
Northrop Grumman has recently succeeded in integrating Naval platforms into the IBCS network system, connecting Aegis radar and warship threat-tracking technologies to air and ground nodes. The effort could be described as accelerated, as integrating Aegis into IBCS requires interoperable technical infrastructure, interfaces and “gateway” systems able to pool, analyze and transmit data from otherwise incompatible transport layers. For instance, perhaps one element of threat data arrives through an RF signal, another through satellite transmission while yet a third operates with some kind of datalink or wireless network. Years ago, the IBCS system was successful in connecting an F-35 to IBCS, adding an aerial sensor and targeting layer to the command and control missile defense network. Now, Northrop experts explain that Navy and Marine Corps “nodes” are also capable of integrating.
“The integration of additional sensors from multiple services continues to show the power inherent in the IBCS architecture and design to incorporate and integrate joint sensors across multiple domains,” Rebecca Torzone, vice president and general manager, combat systems and mission readiness, Northrop Grumman, said in a written statement. “By enabling joint operation and utilizing multiple sensors operating in various bands, IBCS was able to operate through the electronic attack environment so soldiers can identify, track and ultimately intercept the threat.”
Breakthroughs and expansions with IBCS were recently verified through a cutting edge test wherein Northrop and the Army tracked and destroyed two surrogate cruise missiles. The test was a live-fire exercise in which two Air Force F-35s connected with a Marine Corps G/ATOR radar and the US Navy’s advanced networking system called Cooperative Engagement Capability….all using the IBCS Integrated Fire Control Network, a Northrop Grumman essay explains.
“Two surrogate cruise missiles were launched in the test, one performing the electronic attack mission to disrupt radar performance, and the other flying a threat profile targeting friendly assets. Soldiers of the 3-6 Air and Missile Defense Test Detachment used IBCS to track the surrogate cruise missile targets, identify the threatening missile, and launch a Patriot Advanced Capability Three (PAC-3) interceptor,” a Northrop Grumman essay explains.
Much of the expanded Command and Control with BattleOne relies upon the implementation of new “interfaces,” “software upgrades” and technological adjustments to ensure otherwise separate systems can effectively share data in a secure and high-speed fashion.
The AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR), is a Marine Corps system which Northrop upgraded by migrating from analog to digital surveillance technology and expanding targeting range and aperture. Northrop Grumman weapons developers have told Warrior that the legacy or basic G/ATOR radar was enhanced with new sensing elements so it has a “denser pattern.” Integrating G/ATOR draws upon a multi-year Northrop Grumman effort to expand capabilities for the G/ATOR system and perform multiple software upgrades to tie into an integrated fire control kill chain.
Multi-Year Trajectory – Army Support for JADC2
The system has proven successful over the course of its multi-year trajectory, and IBCS has for years been intended to operate as a joint, multi-domain system and function as the Army’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint All Domain Command and Control effort (JADC2).
JADC2 is a Pentagon program aimed at implementing the interfaces, gateways and common technical standards sufficient to enable sensors, weapons and technologies from the respective services operating in separate domains – to connect in real time to one another in a secure fashion using otherwise incompatible transport layer communication technologies. Just within the last year, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks has formally launched a JADC2 implementation plan aimed at breaking the program through to new operational levels.
The concept with JADC2 is clear, as it is intended to enable a “joint” operational war environment to operate at the speed of relevance, regardless of service, domain or communications technology. JADC2 is designed to decrease or massive truncate latency and “sensor-to-shooter” time so that joint commanders can rapidly see a joint warzone picture wherein, for example, an F-35 might detect and aerial threat and instantly cue a network of ground radars in place to launch the optimal countermeasure such as an interceptor or EW system intended to “jam” an incoming missile.
The Joint All Domain Command and Control Implementation Plan, calls for each of these respective service efforts to integrate and complement one another.
“Department development and implementation processes must be unified to deliver more effective cross-domain capability options,” the plan states.
Pentagon Networking Breakthrough?
For decades, the US military services have been experimenting with technologies designed to “network” the joint force in real time across multiple domains, using satellites, software programmable radios, datalinks and wireless computer interfaces. While there has been varying degrees of success over a period of many years, the Pentagon and the military services are now arguably at a breakthrough point in this long process with the Joint All
Domain Command and Control program.
The initiative calls upon all of the military services to develop and integrate service-wide and multi-service networking and technical interfaces to enable the secure, yet seamless sharing of information across multiple combat nodes in real time. The idea, for instance, is to allow a Navy surface warship to share target specifics and intelligence information with Air Force fighter jets, unmanned systems and ground combat nodes through a common set of interoperable standards, all while maintaining critical security and information assurance.
The Army’s contribution is through a series of breakthrough experiments called Project Convergence which uses AI-enabled computer algorithms to match sensors to shooters and massively reduce the time needed to find, verify and destroy an enemy target. The Navy effort, called Project Overmatch, is similar in concept and has been evolving for years through programs such as its Ghost Fleet effort in which groups of unmanned systems operate in close coordination with one another with growing levels of autonomy.
In an interesting discussion with Warrior, Undersecretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo explained how IBCS is a critical part of the Army’s contribution to DoD’s joint JADC2 effort.
“You’ve heard a lot of talk across the department about JADC2. The Deputy Secretary of Defense is eager to make sure that we’re pushing forward in the right way. It’s a combination of a couple of different areas. First, it’s making sure that each service understands their contribution to JADC2 capability as part of a joint force, and the Army is eager to support that,” Gabe Camarillo, Under Secretary of the Army, told Warrior in an interview earlier this year.
Much of the speed of data processing, information organization and analysis is increasingly enabled by AI, yet connectivity needs to happen through common technical standards, sets of IP protocol and interfaces able to securely move data from one format to another across multiple domains. Much of this can be accomplished through “gateways,” systems which can in effect “translate” data from one format into another. Target data arriving through RF, for instance, can be converted into a format such that it could be transmitted through a different datalink, GPS or wireless computing technology. This kind of connectivity is critical to getting time-sensitive information to what Camarillo referred to as the “tactical edge.”
Camarillo’s comments to Warrior earlier this year appear to anticipate recent developments with IBCS and BattleOne which further expand and strengthen the threat detection network.
“We are working to share command and control data at the right echelon with our joint partners and our coalition partners, whether it’s making sure that we provide the transport requirements that are needed all the way down to the tactical edge to ensure that the network is there to move the data around,” Camarillo said months ago. “We want to ensure that we can demonstrate the interoperability of our weapon systems through multiple key nodes and at the correct right level to make sure that we do the right handoff with our joint partners and allies.”
The goal of the effort is something which could be described as a paradox, as it is both complex and extremely simple at the same time. It is about “speed,” enabled by information dominance, networking, high-speed data processing, common standards, AI-enabled computing and high-speed targeting to attack. The Implementation Plan identifies the three guiding C2 (Command and Control) functions of ‘sense,’ ‘make sense,’ and ‘act.’”
Warrior interview on Army Networking
Building upon this, the text of the Implementation Plan outlines five Lines of Effort fundamental to bringing JADC2 to a fully operational level. According to the document they are “Establish the JADC2 Data Enterprise, Establish the JADC2 Human Enterprise, Establish the JADC2 Technical Enterprise, integrate Nuclear C2 and Communications with JADC2 and Modernize Mission Partner Information Sharing.”
Each of these LOEs, as they are called, is supported with implementation guidance in the document, which calls for the continued establishment and modernization of new interfaces and common technical IP protocol standards, radio waveform integration and stronger satellite connectivity with air, sea and ground platforms and “nodes.”
Adding the Navy to IBCS & BattleOne
The Navy’s Project Overmatch and CEC not only seek to connect with the other services but is also enabling its own service wide multi-domain connectivity with its submarines, surface ships and fixed wing aircrafts.
Therefore, the Navy itself need to connect air-sea-undersea domains itself, while then also extending connectivity to Army units on the ground and Air Force units above.
The Navy’s contribution to JADC2 has for years been making rapid progress with what’s called Project Overmatch, an AI-enabled system of multi-domain, multi-platform integration aligning surface, undersea and air assets to operate in close coordination with one another. This means information sharing between overhead drones, ship-launched fighter jets, surface ships, a fast-growing fleet of autonomous and semi-autonomous unmanned platforms and even submarines to a certain extent. Drones in the air and 5th-Generation aircraft could find threats from beyond the horizon, minefields could be found and neutralized ahead of incoming surface attacks and unmanned systems could survey enemy coastline to test defenses … all simultaneously in real time. Navy has been making progress with this for many years now, in part through a project called Ghost Fleet or Operation Overlord which began years ago with the Office of Naval Research.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization and Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
