Cultural shift   d By Gen. Tom Hobbins C4ISR Journal August 1, 2007 We’ve solved the challenge of gathering information, but managing it efficiently is proving to be a monumental task. Gen. Tom Hobbins, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe, believes the solution lies in a shift from net-centric to knowledge-centric warfare. Today’s operator is drowning in information, yet starved for knowledge. I witnessed this paradox as Air Force deputy chief of staff for war-fighting integration, and made it the heart of my message at the 6th annual Battlespace Information 2007 Conference in Brussels, Belgium, where representatives from industry and the armed forces of 30 predominantly NATO nations gathered to discuss and evaluate international C4ISR capabilities and network-centric warfare. There is no question that collaborative warfare has emerged in the 21st century as an operational imperative for the U.S. and its allies. As far as gathering data and information, in one sense, we’ve become almost too successful. However, to enhance our collaborative capabilities, we must move from a network-centric to a knowledge-centric approach to warfare to better interpret and use information in a meaningful manner. Harnessing the power of net-centricity requires a shift in focus from machines to information. I like to call this new focus knowledge-centric warfare. This is an evolutionary step beyond our current focus of enabling network-centric warfare among sensors and platforms across the battle space. We must shift our focus to what we do with the information and how we properly manage its discovery, transmission, fusion, storage and targeted use. One only needs to look as far as some of the indications and warnings leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, to understand why we need to become knowledge-centric. Many of the warnings, standing alone, were perhaps insignificant or overlooked. Taken as a whole, however, the picture is much different. In my view, we didn’t network our government agencies to share information internally, externally or internationally. The battle space had changed, but we didn’t recognize it or change our tactics. A case for knowledge- centricity is all about the need to share, fuse and present relevant information to yield decision superiority. Today’s battle space is markedly different from that of the Cold War era. In a Cold War mentality, we focused largely on containing conventional nation-state threats. This included major conventional combat operations that involved finding and engaging massive troop and tank movements. In this construct, we amassed forces in a “set-piece maneuver and mass” model. We operated using “forward line of own troops,” “forward edge of the battle area” and “fire support coordination line” demarcations. We anticipated an aggressive enemy advancing with superior numbers. We had a “kill box,” a geographic area of enemy movements where we targeted our fires and used C4ISR to monitor major troop movements and air defense systems. Our decision cycle was comparatively long, and our need for precision was comparatively low. Our ground troops were not in close proximity to the enemy, we operated from a stand-off position in an “active defense” posture and our targets were larger, slower and more predictable. We now face a capable enemy with a global presence. Moving from major conventional threats to multiple irregular, asymmetric threats demands a transformation in how we conduct operations. The time available to make decisions has decreased considerably. Our increased speed of maneuver, coupled with close proximity to an evasive and unpredictable enemy, requires us to act quickly. Our demarcation lines and kill boxes have essentially disappeared as we engage in urban warfare with terrorists and insurgents close-by. The nature of our enemy has increased our need for precision, as operations are often conducted in comparatively confined areas such as city streets or buildings. Precision allows us to minimize collateral damage when striking targets in close proximity to civilian areas. Increasing speed and precision demands unprecedented knowledge and understanding of our battle space, and that means collecting and making sense out of vast amounts of data. We collect much more data than we used to. We have Global Hawks flying 22-hour reconnaissance and surveillance missions and dozens of Predators collecting imagery and sending it around the world. We’re shifting our focus to information, knowledge and timely, actionable intelligence. Leveraging the power of information will increase our ability to communicate and enhance mission effectiveness. Time, precision and data have drastically different requirements in this new environment and our requirements for situational awareness and knowledge have increased severalfold. This transformation began 10 years ago, during Operation Allied Force. I remember working the prosecution of a Serbian MiG-29 found on a deserted road. It took 23 minutes to complete the “kill chain.” The “find” phase had been completed for us, yet it still took us nearly half an hour to complete the remaining five phases (fix, track, target, engage and assess). We wanted to know if what we found was real or a decoy. We had to determine what the MiG’s coordinates really were, and we had to transmit the complete strike data set to an awaiting platform loitering in the area. The chaotic and rapidly changing environment required the process to be accurate, precise and quick. We needed the entire process to be executed in a matter of minutes, or the target might vanish. Today’s asymmetrical environment demands that the process be completed in a matter of seconds. CURRENT FOCUS ON NCW With this changing environment in mind, we have redoubled our efforts toward network-centricity with respect to moving information to the tip of the spear. The problem we face now is that this is being done by different stakeholders in different domains, from service levels to coalition levels. Currently, we are working space, air, land and sea with no real networked linkage between domains. In essence, we are creating disparate network-centric environments driven by a desire to interconnect sensors and platforms, but our emphasis needs to shift to the challenges in our current C4ISR environment: interconnecting these diverse domains. An operator supporting Regional Command South in Afghanistan illustrates today’s C4ISR situation quite well. He accesses vital information through multiple networks, systems and applications. Some of these systems include the NATO Secret and NATO Unclassified networks, the mIRC (chat function over Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System, or Centrixs), and the ISAF Coalition network, including the many applications of each, none of which are interoperable. Add VHF/UHF radios, satellite communication channels, telephones and coordination with other operators in the command post, and you begin to realize the difficulty facing our war fighter. The convergence of communications channels in the command post is impressive, yet all of this adds up to an interoperability and integration nightmare. Sharing a similar story at the same Battlespace Information conference, Maj. Gen. Koen Gijsbers of the Netherlands, who is the assistant chief of staff C4I for Allied Command Transformation, NATO, described a NATO commander in Afghanistan who had seven computers on his desk. Clearly, the only element that is interoperable in either of these scenarios is the operator. We have focused on getting more information to the operator quickly, but we haven’t done enough to target the information or fuse the systems. This burden must be shifted to the systems supporting him. We need operators to make time-sensitive, life-and-death decisions; they should not be distracted by having to manually fuse data or search through hundreds of “hits” from information stored in an ad hoc environment. From a NATO perspective, we also have to wrestle with funding and standards issues. Presently, we have 31 NATO Air Surveillance and Control System (ASACS) units. Thirteen are NATO funded and maintained and use a common platform that is interoperable with other units. The remainder of ASACS units employ nationally funded systems that are not interoperable with the NATO funded units other than basic Link-1 connectivity. This means that within some of our Combined Air & Space Operations Centers (CAOCs), the interface between our systems is done by an operator taking a floppy disk out of one computer, walking across the room (or in some cases the building) and plugging into another system. Another major standardization issue deals with the lack of an identity management capability that will mitigate the constraints imposed on information sharing by national security caveats. There is currently no standard interchange of role-based identity information at a joint or coalition level to facilitate information sharing. While systems such as Centrixs allow access to shared information, there is no single identity standard that allows a user access to all information needed to perform a given task in a coalition environment. Without role-based security, identity sharing standards and building a change in mind-set from “need to know” to “need to share” knowledge-centricity will be hard to obtain. In addition to funding and standards issues, we face another important hurdle in our quest for battle space awareness: information overload. We are creating what I like to call “digital landfills.” We have done a great job connecting airframes, sensors and operators. Unfortunately, we are feeding them too much information they either do not need or did not ask for correctly. We reach a point very rapidly where the amount of information and number of displays overwhelm the decision maker, who ends up having to wade through volumes of data to find the information he needs to make the best decision. Consider, for example, the number of PowerPoint slides we store on the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) storage area network. About 130,000 PowerPoint presentations are on our shared drives. If we have an average of 22 slides per presentation, USAFE stores 2.9 million PowerPoint slides. That’s a stack of slides 894 feet high, or just about 150 feet short of the Eiffel Tower. We need tools and systems that fuse, store and mediate the data for us so we can discover it later at minimal cost and not pay huge sums of money for storage. Not all of the news is bad. The network-centric investments we have made since Operation Desert Storm have made great strides at reducing the kill chain of find, fix, track, target, engage and assess (F2T2EA). An F2T2EA cycle that took 76 minutes during Desert Storm in 1991 took 24 minutes during Operation Allied Force in 1999, and now takes eight minutes during Operation Iraqi Freedom. We have cut the kill chain timeline by two-thirds every eight years since Desert Storm in moving from manpower-centric warfare to network-centric warfare. It is important to note, however, that while we reduced the time it takes to prosecute a target, we have increased the bandwidth requirements and the volume of information that must be worked through. We will quickly overwhelm our operators if this trend continues without proper data fusion and expert systems to push targeted decision-quality information to the decision maker at the right time. I believe we have reached the point where we must transition our focus from network-centricity to knowledge-centricity. Network-centricity involves interlinking airframes, systems and sensors within and between domains. It is about sharing information through network-enabled platforms and sensors, but it is only the first step in this journey. Knowledge-centricity focuses on people and information first and hardware second. It requires a level of operational rigor focusing on how to present the information and developing a seamless way for the operator to make it discoverable, regardless of format or location. The U.S. Air Force recently added the cyberspace domain to the list of domains in which we prosecute warfare. This virtual information ecosystem is where we apply the knowledge-based operational concepts that yield knowledge-centricity in the kinetic world. A knowledge-centric system yields battle space awareness because we use the system to synchronize and present information based on the user’s historical preferences, his current operational role and the current situation. We need to elevate the role of the system from simply presenting raw data to that of decision-quality knowledge and understanding of the battle space. We want to increase the role and level of sophistication of the network-centric tools we employ to allow operators to focus on predictive vs. reactive roles in warfare. While the level of the operator’s involvement with systems should diminish, the impacts of the decisions he makes because of the more sophisticated systems become even greater and more relevant. I would like to highlight a few of the critical technologies that are helping us get there: • Ground Mobile Gateway (GMG). In a nutshell, GMG takes all the different tactical data links into one system and spits them out to the right people by tapping into the Link 16 capabilities aboard the F-16, F-15E and F/A-18, as well as the situational awareness data link on the A-10. This friendly aircraft information, combined with the blue force tracker information and GPS coordinates from the ground troops and joint terminal attack controllers, provides a live common operating picture of the battlefield. • Remote Operations Video Enhanced Receiver (ROVER). ROVER allows ground forces to receive real-time video from aircraft targeting pods so they can see exactly what the targeting pod on the aircraft is seeing. It dramatically streamlines the discussion between the tactical air control party and the pilot about what target to strike. • Communications Air-Borne Layer Expansion (CABLE) and Rapid Attack Information Dissemination Execution Relay (RAIDER). CABLE is a joint airborne gateway that helps bridge the air, ground and space networks designed to be carried on manned and unmanned aircraft. It makes dissimilar data and voice radios interoperable by translating diverse radio signals transmitted on different frequencies and extends the range of line-of-sight radios and tactical data links by relaying information to ground and airborne users as well as distant AOCs and command centers via satellite. RAIDERs serve as ground nodes for CABLE. A single RAIDER can service 500 users while a single CABLE can service 50 RAIDERS. In the very near future, we may only need one CABLE on orbit to cover an area the size of Iraq. • Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS). This NATO system, currently under development, represents the first integrated manned-unmanned aircraft system. Its synthetic aperture radar will be able to detect moving ground targets. The AGS is expected to have an initial orbit capability in 2012, with an initial operating capability in 2013. • Tactical Targeting Networking Technology (TTNT). This high-performance airborne networking waveform establishes wide-band, line-of-sight links that provide a self-configuring, encrypted Internet among aircraft. The network can pass 2 megabits per second up to 100 nautical miles away. During an experiment with TTNT at China Lake, Calif., we received F-18 and F-15E sensor information on a desktop at the Pentagon. We were also able to directly talk to F-15E and E-2 crews using voice over IP. This is a big first step in building tactical airborne networking capability for the Joint Force Commander’s Time Critical Targeting and Non-Traditional ISR. • Net-Centric Collaborative Targeting (NCCT). NCCT allows computers on orbiting ISR aircraft many miles apart to work collectively to pinpoint the location of time-critical ground targets. The computers cross-cue each other’s sensors to look at a detected target of interest and exchange their respective target location and identification information digitally, greatly reducing location errors. Looking to the future, I anticipate a knowledge-centric CAOC that is fully integrated, flexible and efficient. The CAOC of the future will empower the joint forces air component commander with appropriately tailored decision aids that reduce today’s manually driven processes by synthesizing the information from the technologies mentioned above to provide him with the knowledge to make effective decisions. To get there, we must break down the barriers to information sharing and promote a “need to share” as opposed to a “need to know” mind-set. We must use targeted acquisition strategies that ensure interoperability with coalition partners. Link-16 is a good first step, but we must continue supporting programs such as the Multi-Sensor Aerospace/Ground Joint ISR Interoperability Coalition, a nine-nation coalition project that will provide commanders at all levels with near real-time access to multi-source, collateral-level intelligence via plug-and-play joint and coalition net-centric environments. Working toward standards and interchanges will only help to strengthen our coalition into a formidable knowledge-centric force. We must press on toward knowledge-centricity. There is no looking back if we want to feed our war fighters the knowledge they require in today’s compressed battle space (in both time and space) so that we can always stay at least one step ahead of our adversaries’ decision cycle. Maybe then we can find, fix, track, target, engage and assess that MiG-29 in a matter of seconds. Gen. Tom Hobbins , commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe; commander of Air Component Command, Ramstein Air Base, Germany; and director of the Joint Air Power Competency Center at Ramstein. (Archives)