Single Integrated Air Picture Holds The Key to Navy's Net Centric Plans

Sea Power, Mar 2004 by Barnard, Richard C

In September 2005, a little-known engineering office in Crystal City, Va., will deliver to the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) in Washington, D.C., a computer model known as Configuration 05. If successful, this new computer model will enable the Navy to take several giant steps forward in its years-long quest to fully implement the theory of network centric warfare.

Configuration 05 is envisioned as the centerpiece of a product called SIAP, or Single Integrated Air Picture. The SIAP will become a networking tool intended to endow "commanders, pilots and even infantrymen" with a single tactical picture of the battlespace, "showing friendly and enemy units on land, sea and in the air," according to a NAVSEA statement.

NAVSEA points to the SIAP as a principal means of networking forces together to create a decisive warfighting advantage. Rear Adm. Charles T. Bush, NAVSEA's chief of Integrated Warfare Systems, said in a written statement that "we must deliver joint capabilities to our warfighters," and that SIAP is a key element with which to achieve that goal.

Configuration 05 is a rendition of an element of SIAP, the Pentagon's Integrated Architecture Behavior Model, a computer program designed to measure the adequacy and fidelity of information used to form a shared understanding of the tactical situation, according to an August 2003 report on SIAP attributes. The information developed from various military sensors would have to conform to common standards in order to create the SIAP. This standardization would enable the shooter in an F/A-18E/F tactical aircraft to use information from an Army air defense missile battery, for example. Or Aegis ships would be able to target their missiles using information obtained by an Air Force Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) plane.

To achieve the SIAP would require that all sensors utilize a standard reference frame for conveying information about the location of targets. Air Force Col. Harry Dutchyshyn, the Pentagon's deputy SIAP systems engineer, said, "I call it a software jig," that defense contractors can use as they design their computer programs. "So when everybody comes up on the net, they're all in the same reference frame."

If successful, Configuration 05 and successor versions of the Integrated Architecture Behavior Model will be integrated into the Navy's major weapons systems including Aegis ships, cruisers and destroyers; the E-2C Hawkeye command and control aircraft; and the F/A-18 family of tactical aircraft. The weapons of other services also will employ SIAP capabilities.

SIAP is being developed by the Joint SIAP System Engineering Organization (JSSEO), Arlington, Va., a sub-office of the Assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. JSSEO's work is supervised by a board of directors composed of senior officers from the Joint Forces Command, the nation's nine Unified Combatant Commands and each of the military services. Bush's Integrated Warfare Systems department in NAVSEA is one of JSSEO's initial customers.

Brig. Gen. John Maluda, JSSEO director, said in a Sea Power interview that the goal of creating a single integrated picture of the battlespace "is a big order," but SIAP will be one of "the Family of Interoperable Operational Pictures" (FIOP) being developed by other military services in a comprehensive effort supervised by the Joint Forces Command.

Robin Quinlan, the Pentagon's assistant director for joint force integration, said during an April 2003 conference in Washington that SIAP is "leading the way" in achieving battle management as part of the FIOP initiative. Other operational pictures under development include the Single Integrated Space Picture, being developed by the Air Force Space Command, and the Army's Single Integrated Ground Picture.

The SIAP replaces the Navy's Block 2 upgrade of its Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), which was a Navyonly program to provide the fleet with capabilities similar to those promised by the multiservice SIAP. The Navy delayed the Block 2 upgrade in August, at about the time the Navy and JSSEO signed a memorandum of agreement to combine efforts to create battle management capabilities. The Block 2 upgrade was canceled in January, in part because of duplication between the two programs. Bush noted that SIAP is a joint program, a factor in his decision to cancel the CEC Block 2 upgrade, which would have cost approximately $1 billion.

Development costs of the SIAP will amount to only $160 million over five years. However, the individual services will spend an estimated $600 million integrating the SIAP technology with current and future weapons, such as the Aegis combat system and the DD(X) future destroyer, according to Dutchyshyn.

Much is at stake as JSSEO and NAVSEA develop SIAP and integrate it with naval weapons. The essence of network centric warfare is to translate "information superiority into combat power by effectively linking friendly forces within the battlespace," according to a summary of the network centric theory issued by the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation directed by retired Vice Adm. Arthur K. Cebrowski. he is known as the father of network centric warfare for his work on the concept while president of the Naval War College.