A new network will foster the rapid sharing of intelligence by all U.S. military services

By GLENN W. GOODMAN JR., Special Correspondent

The U.S. military services have pursued horizontal integration of their joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) sensor platforms in recent years to improve their ability to do time-critical targeting as an essential first step toward achieving network-centric operations. The services now are poised to make a revolutionary breakthrough in that ISR integration with the introduction of an Internet-like, global intelligence-sharing network called the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS).

The web-based DCGS network will function as a single enterprise system for rapidly receiving, processing, exploiting and disseminating a wide range of multiservice and national space-based ISR sensor data to provide joint warfighters with timely and relevant intelligence. Akin to a classified version of “AOL plus Google,” the DCGS web portal will give users — across the services and defense intelligence agencies — access to virtually all of the available intelligence on a target or area of interest.

The Air Force DCGS program has led the way in making the network interoperable among the services and will complete its first operational system installation this summer at an Air Force site on the West Coast. The Navy began developing its DCGS-N system in early 2004 and has made substantial progress. In fact, the Navy is scheduled to conduct operational testing of DCGS-N in June 2007 on the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman and then plans to field the system rapidly throughout the fleet.

The DCGS network will make a huge difference as the services increasingly rely on joint operations and the sharing of intelligence collected by all. Up to now, the military’s ISR “platforms”— predominantly aircraft — have been “stovepipe” systems that operate independently and send the sensor data they collect back through their own specialized ground processing stations and reporting channels. But that will no longer suffice.

The flow and correlation of different types of ISR sensor data still entail a great deal of manual effort and occur too slowly for the faster tempo of current U.S. military operations. DCGS will bring web-based technologies and significant automation of data sharing and dissemination.

Newly acquired ISR imagery or data from diverse collection platforms will be posted on the network immediately, tagged in a standard format and cataloged to facilitate user searches. Using a “Publish and Subscribe” feature, users also will be able to preregister to receive certain types of newly posted intelligence data automatically without having to search for it.

Each service is developing its own version of DCGS, but all will share an interoperable core called the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), which will foster data sharing and collaboration across the distinctive DCGS elements of the various services. DIB software is a set of common interface standards and network tools and services.

An open programming architecture, or blueprint, the DIB is the infrastructure on top of which the services are integrating their legacy intelligence exploitation systems and other service-unique applications. A team led by Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems of Garland, Texas, capitalizing on commercial information technologies, developed the DIB under the Air Force DCGS Block 10.2 contract awarded in 2003.

The Navy version, or DCGS-N, has involved merging two legacy programs and integrating their capabilities into the DIB — Naval Air Systems Command’s Joint Service Imagery Processing System-Navy (JSIPS-N) and Naval Sea Systems Command’s Tactical Exploitation System-Navy (TES-N), also called the Joint Fires Network. In addition, other ISR imagery and signals intelligence exploitation tools, some of which are associated with the Global Command and Control System-Maritime on Navy ships, will migrate to DCGS-N.

Developed by BAE National Security Solutions of San Diego, JSIPS-N has been in service aboard the Navy’s aircraft carriers, large-deck amphibious ships and command ships as well as at shore sites. The principal JSIPS-N element being integrated into DCGS-N is the Precision Targeting Workstation, which takes electro-optical, infrared or synthetic-aperture radar imagery of a target area and turns it into precision targets for aircraft strikes.

TES-N, developed by Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems of Baltimore, is evolving into DCGS-N’s “Multi-intelligence (Multi-INT) Segment.” The software, common to the Army’s DCGS-A, can receive, process and correlate diverse types of ISR sensor data, including imagery from the Navy F/A-18 fighter with the digital Shared Reconnaissance Pod, the Air Force U-2 and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle, and national satellites as well as signals intelligence data, according to Ken Wilson, vice president for C4ISRT Networked Systems at Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems in Baltimore. The latest version of the Navy-Army Multi-INT common software, which he said integrates the DIB, was set for fielding in February.

Lorraine Wilson, the direct reporting program manager for DCGS-N for the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, told Seapower the Navy plans a multitiered approach for fielding its DCGS-N capabilities, due largely to communications bandwidth constraints, limited shipboard space and a desire to reduce shipboard manpower.

Tier 1 sites will have the largest concentration of DCGS-N workstations and personnel and serve as reach-back nodes for naval forces operating overseas. They will be located at major shore sites, such as the headquarters of 7th Fleet in Japan, 2nd Fleet in Norfolk or 5th Fleet in Bahrain, as well as on the Navy’s command ships. Tier 2 systems, the dominant fielding of DCGS-N, will be a subset of Tier 1 capabilities and be installed on the Navy’s aircraft carriers and large-deck amphibious ships. Stripped-down Tier 3 nodes will be located on individual warships, such as the planned DDX destroyer.

“The biggest distinguishing feature between a Tier 1 and a Tier 2 site,” Wilson said, “is the number of workstations and the ability to receive direct downlinks of national and theater ISR data. The carriers can’t directly downlink national and theater data; they get it through reach-back to the continental U.S., which works fine today. The Tier 1 sites will be able to directly downlink the data.”

The carriers each are slated to receive 12 DCGS-N Tier 2 multimission workstations, Wilson said — nine at the “Secret” level and three at the higher “Sensitive Compartmented Information” level. The amphibious ships will receive roughly the same number. The Tier 3 ships likely will have no workstations or onboard intelligence analysts and receive only processed intelligence products from the higher tiers, she said.

Jon Dorn, director of business development with BAE Systems National Security Solutions, described a naval scenario in which intelligence data would be shared across the DCGS enterprise. An unflagged cargo vessel leaving North Korea and suspected of carrying ballistic missiles or terrorists could be tracked continuously over an extended period using a combination of imagery from national satellites, P-3Cs and Air Force Global Hawks, all working in collaboration.

“In the case of the P-3C, it could shoot its imagery directly to a Tier 2 node on a carrier, which would incorporate it into a virtual reference folder on the vessel of interest that would be automatically populated across the DCGS enterprise. That is something the services cannot do today,” he said.

Karen Odell, chief technologist for DoD ISR Systems with Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems and Solutions in Denver, told Seapower, “the DCGS-N program is in the process of building out its Multi-INT Segment, taking full advantage of the DIB capability, but using Navy-specific applications to create workflows and the precision targeting capability.”

Determining workflows, which requires mapping out the steps required to perform each intelligence or strike analyst’s job, is a key effort. Workflows are the business rules that will determine what DCGS-N data and tasks flow to particular Navy analysts and will automate many routine processes that they do manually today. Collaborative workflows among the different services’ DCGS sites also will be developed, Wilson said.

The baseline DCGS-N software is being integrated at the Naval Air Warfare Center, China Lake, Calif., and will begin a test-fix-test series beginning this month to run through the end of 2006, she said. This time next year, DCGS-N will be installed on Harry S. Truman for afloat testing prior to the system’s independent operational evaluation by the Navy’s Operational Test and Evaluation Force in June 2007. If the evaluation is successful, the Navy plans to field DCGS-N at a brisk pace at shore sites and on its carriers and amphibious ships, Wilson said.

Her program office is serving as the DCGS-N system integrator. She said it has benefited from having BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman (with subcontractor Lockheed Martin) work on different pieces of the program and from the collaboration between the companies and with other Navy stakeholders.

“The real magic,” Wilson concluded, “isn’t necessarily that we can do this web-based DCGS enterprise, because the commercial world has been doing similar things for a long time. The real magic for the military services is that they all are using the same interoperable backbone and standard ways of cataloging data and doing data discovery, because it’s all about sharing each other’s data.”