A Network-enabled Future

Air Safety Week, Oct 1, 2007

A new international industry/government consortium believes that more needs to be done to develop and field network centric operations that cut across weapon programs, advanced aviation projects and homeland security needs.

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC), which was formed in August 2004, now totals 98 members. They share the common goal of advancing the global use of network-centric operations to enable interoperability, speed information delivery and promote reliability in both the defense and civil sectors.

The 98 member organizations with 1,500 individuals reside in 19 countries, including Australia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden and Israel. Companies participating in Consortium activities include BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Thales and Finmeccanica. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also support the organization.

According to Lt. Gen. Carl O'Berry, USAF Retired, NCOIC founding chairman, NCOIC has delivered seven development tools and several studies/analyses that will help systems designers in their transformation to network-centric operations.

The FAA has requested NCOIC's assistance in implementing its Next Generation Air Transportation (NextGen) program, which will transform the U.S. aviation system and how air traffic is controlled. NextGen focuses on leveraging the latest technologies, such as satellite-based navigation, surveillance and network-centric systems, according to acting Federal Aviation Administrator Bobby Sturgell.

Nowhere is the need for network-centric operations more critical than emergency response to natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, and man-made disasters, like the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. In both cases, first responders were hampered by radios that were unable to talk to each other.

"The missing link in today's disaster recovery efforts is a working network. And the key to emergency response is accurate information that enables first responders to know what happened, who's responded, and what is still required," the group believes.

O'Berry said "state and municipal first responders, police forces and emergency response teams have radios that don't talk to one another. That's almost criminal in an age when it's so costly to create a major disaster relief structure and not be able to communicate with each other."

He said radio interoperability is an "investment issue" that DHS will have to deal with. "There are lots of radios in the field with different protocols and waveforms, but certainly there are technologies available that can help, such as software definable radios being developed for the military. We know they work," O'Berry said. "The technology is there (but) an investment will be required to replace literally millions of radios," he added.

NCOIC is working on the problem. The Mobile Emergency Communications Interoperability (MECI) project is identifying standards that solve emergency communications disconnects during complex humanitarian disasters. The group has published initial findings and recommendations and a dozen organizations have contributed hardware and software to demonstrate a MECI capability.

[Copyright 2006 Access Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved.]