Internet for C3I at Exercise Tandem Thrust 97

ADFA Computer Science School Seminar

10 April, 11:10am, Computer Science Room 152

Repeated 14 April 3pm APW4-3-34 for the Defence Material Division,
15 April 2pm for the Air Power Studies Centre
& 21 November for the Australian College of Defence and Strategic Studies

Tom Worthington next to Australian made vehicle at Rockhampton Airport

by Tom Worthington

Manager IM Architectures, Department of Defence

Created: 6 April 1997 - As at 28 February 1999

Abstract

Exercise Tandem Thrust 97 was a U.S. Pacific Command sponsored exercise in Central Queensland in March, to test the capability of Australian and U.S. command and control procedures. Mr Worthington will talk about systems inspected aboard USS Blue Ridge, Flagship of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and the command ship for the exercise. Internet e-mail and web servers were used extensively for military communications.

Presentation

The content of this talk will be developed here. Suggestions and comments welcome: tomw@tomw.net.au

Exercise Tandem Thrust 97

Exercise Tandem Thrust 97 was a U.S. Pacific Command sponsored exercise, held around the Shoalwater Bay Training Area in central Queensland. The Exercise was to demonstrate the closeness of the military-to-military relationship between the U.S. and Australian Defence Forces and test the capability of Australian and United States command and control procedures.

USS Blue Ridge

The 620-foot 18,500 ton, 1550 crew USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19) is a purpose built Command and Control ship. The primary function is as the flagship of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. The secondary function as a command ship for Amphibious Task Force and Landing Force Commanders during fleet operations and as a flagship for the Commander Joint Task Force (CJTF), as in Tandem Thrust 97.

The Joint Maritime Command Information System (JMCIS) consists of computers distributed throughout the ship with data from world-wide sources integrated into a tactical picture of air, surface and subsurface contacts.

Internet for C3I

For Exercise Tandem Thrust 97 unclassified and classified a TCP/IP networks were created over a WAN which covered the exercise area, including ships at sea. This used satellite links as well as radio, land lines and LANs. US and Australian networks were joined using routers. Encryption was used to protect and separate classified and unclassified traffic.

Lotus Notes and Internet e-mail were used, in addition to military messaging. MS-Power Point was used for briefings aboard Blue Ridge. The web was used for routine administrative information as well as some C3I information.

Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) hardware and software is used extensively on Blue Ridge. MS-Office is used for WP, e-mail and preparing briefings in Power Point. Netscape Navigator Gold is used for web browsing and preparing web pages. Commercial video conferencing equipment and video projectors are used. Equipment is tied down using webbing straps, rack mounting and in some cases adhesive tape.

Captain Julie Keesling at a Windows 3.1 workstation(JPEG or KDC)
Talk in the Joint Operations Center (JPEG or KDC)
Rack mounted workstations (JPEG or KDC)
Rack mounted workstation close-up (JPEG or KDC)
Joint Operations Control Center (JOCC) in use (JPEG or 845 kbyte JPEG)

Internet technology worked well in practice for this military exercise and was enthusiastically accepted by ADF personnel. It is used by U.S. Forces in our region. This suggests that consideration should be given to adopting Internet techniques for the ADF. There are three aspects of the Internet which might be looked at:

Technology: Internet standards could be used directly for Defence purposes on commercial off the shelf hardware and software. In particular Internet e-mail as the Defence standard for messaging (in place of X.400) and the Web as the standard interface for C3I. This would allow for low cost briefcase sized equipment providing data, video and voice facilities.
Standards development: Internet developers have taken an incremental, pragmatic and engineering approach to standards. Interoperation between two working implementations must be demonstrated before a standard is adopted. Simple standards are proposed, which can then be built on. This approach might avoid the problems with OSI and GOSIP, which produced complex, difficult to implement standards.
On-line Working: The practical experience of decision making on-line could be applied to the military environment. This would include the use of newsgroups and mailing lists for discussion and using web pages to provide background information. The paradigm of sending out the information which it was thought each military decision maker would need could be changed to providing a pool of information they could share, search and discuss. The concept of a "headquarters" as a group of people at one physical location at one time, could change to an on-line resource linking people.

One example where Internet technology, standards and experience in on-line working can be applied is in delivering just important information to the military decision maker.

Two problems the military decision maker has are: selecting the most useful information from the volume available and getting that information down limited communications links.

Some technologies which could be quickly applied are:

Progressive image display: Interlaced GIF, progressive JPEG and a new format PNG allow a low resolution preview of images as they are downloaded by web browsers. This would allow resolution of images to be selected , depending on available battlefield bandwidth available.
PICS: This was designed for "Suitable for Children" labels on web pages, but could be used for "Secret" and "Confirmed by Intelligence" labels.
Meta-data tags: These were designed for cataloguing web pages ( including Government ones), but could be used for categorising and allowing automatic searching of millions of items of military information. On Tuesday 8 April 1997, Australia's Distributed Systems Technology Centre took the world lead in the field by announcing a meta-data search engine.