Opinion: C4 interop with NGOs key to future Navy ops

The Navy’s new maritime strategy places improving integration and interoperability as priority one; not only among its fellow DOD services, but also international organizations. While conducting major combat with incredibly capable and expensive war ships is still the Navy’s core mission, it has an equally important role that features wider teaming arrangements with allies and coalition partners.

Current budget constraints combined with the global nature of the War on Terror demand more comprehensive teaming. Furthermore, these teams must be capable of exploiting the full capability of the individual participants. Therefore, the key to operational success will be the ability for our Navy to function within a comprehensive and effective command and control network that supports the operations of an international force in all spectrums of the war-fighting environment.

What it could look like - Gulf of Guinea

Here’s a believable, if at the present time fictitious, scenario:

The Gulf of Guinea is a vast swath of water the size of the Gulf of Mexico that lies along the West coast of Africa. The region houses many natural resources because of its fish, minerals, diamonds, timber and oil reserves. In fact, it is an area of growing strategic importance to the United States, as 15 percent of our imported oil comes currently from there with a projection for that to reach 25 percent by 2015. The region is also plagued by an epidemic of piracy, poaching, illicit drug trading and kidnapping. The loss of oil revenues due to such activities is a staggering $1.3 billion annually, and fish poaching costs the area more than $400 million per year.

In response, a U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is on station off of the coast of Lagos, Nigeria as part of an international team of ships and resources from a wide range of nations, including Nigeria, Ghana, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Great Britain, France, Germany and Canada. This task force also possesses customs, commerce, treasury and law enforcement assets. The ships themselves are divided into areas of concentration arranged along the Gulf of Guinea’s coast with the dual missions of escorting high value ships through the region and patrolling for pirates, smugglers and narco terrorists. The Coalition Joint Task Force (CJTF) Commander is a Nigerian Rear Admiral and the CJTF is head quartered at the Regional Maritime Awareness/Identification Center in Lagos.

The team’s critical capability is its shared communication system called ERMISS, or the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) Resource Management and Information Sharing System. The platform is a collection of commercial, off-the-shelf tools that have been integrated to allow document transfers, data exchange, data to visual placement, messaging via email/chat and language translation (mostly in English, French, and Portuguese). ERMISS also contains a modified version of U.S. military planning processes and templates. The system runs over the Internet with protected entry into the environment through robust authentication procedures, and alleviates the concern of providing fledging governments in third-world countries access to secure Defense Internet protocol networks. Moreover, operating in an environment centered on the interests of partners will bring about a greater sharing of information that would also benefit U.S. national security interests and expand our Maritime Domain Awareness.

Using the ERMISS environment, the CJTF staff led the team in the development of their campaign plan, with the LCS and selected officers participating prior to deployment and while underway en route to the operations area. The ship patrols an assigned sector and uses a common portal to enter ERMISS and there they can coordinate with other ships and land-based assets through translatable chat, email, documents and other tools that support situational awareness, rapid decision making and other aspects of the daily battle rhythm of the group. The LCS’ crew uses standardized reporting procedures and authorized members gather, analyze and share data in virtual “meetings.” Of particular value is the ability for all authorized users to enter data relevant to the mission on the data-to-visual capable map. Team members enter data to include finger prints and photos of persons on interdicted vessels, observations of traffic, locations of legitimate fishing fleets, and such. Information from queried vessels is compared to international registry data bases. The locations of ships via Automatic Information Shipping (AIS) transponders is shown as well as other reported contacts, buoys, shorelines, ports, common sailing routes, 12, 24, and 200 nautical mile jurisdiction marks, oil platforms and the like. Entries on the map are a mouse-click away from revealing relevant, supporting data. For instance, clicking the icon for the 12-mile limit lists the rules of engagement within that jurisdiction area for each country in the group relative to the designated mission set.

For the first time in history, coordinated and synergistic activities are taking place in the Gulf of Guinea. The interdiction of criminals and protection of shipping is having a great benefit throughout the area, and the team is also building a comprehensive and deep confidence in the entire international legal system as it applies in the region. One of the most profound and positive offshoots from the task force’s activity has been the discovery of how their ability to actually enforce the laws--often for the first time—has uncovered the holes in the region’s international legal fabric.

A more inclusive approach

While ERMISS is a fictional system today, the concept is vital for the U.S. to support the Chief of Naval Operations’ 1,000-ship Navy concept of combining international resources in a cohesive strategy to address the hard hitting command and control requirements necessary to conduct GWOT activities. Current thinking about the use of non-classified domains needs to evolve beyond the creation of collaborative environments that do not support command and control. International teams such as the one mentioned here must have inclusive – but protected – operating environments in which all authorized members can collect, contribute, share and analyze information; plan as a group with that information; and operate with that information. Ships like the LCS platform with their C4I potential, small but focused crews, selective modular mission sets and characteristics designed for littoral warfare are ideal for the scenario mentioned above. They can carry the “art” of Command and Control into the littorals of the world and can be the vessels by which we knit operational prowess into heretofore disconnected groupings of ships.