Means of Control

The Navy and Army are developing common ways to manage control of unmanned vehicles and systems of many types.

By AMY KLAMPER, Seapower Correspondent

The Navy is exploring a new common command and control architecture for unmanned systems to improve battlefield management while potentially saving millions of dollars in development, production and manpower costs associated with unmanned vehicles that are increasingly being used by all U.S. services.

A Navy-Army project, the Joint Unmanned Systems Common Control concept (JUSC2), is aimed at developing a command and control architecture — a plan for its design and structure — applicable to all Navy unmanned systems. It subsequently would be available to all services. Typically, the command and control box in each unmanned vehicle accounts for one-third of its cost, according to the Defense Science Board.

A common architecture also would improve the surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities of each service and foster joint tactical operations by broadening the array of resources available to each commander. Control of Navy unmanned vehicles easily could be handed off to Army commanders, for example.

Another purpose of JUSC2 is to foster “the concurrent management of large numbers of unmanned systems of all types in a scaleable and expandable manner,” according to the Pentagon’s Joint Robotics Program office. Experts say that would be a huge achievement. The JUSC2 currently is a joint advanced concept technology demonstration project.

James E. Thomsen, executive director of the service’s Program Executive Office for Littoral and Mine Warfare at Naval Sea Systems Command, said the Navy recognizes the need for common control standards as the service’s reliance on unmanned vehicles has grown.

“We don’t want to end up with unique control systems for every [unmanned system] we develop — we’d like to have one control or management capability that could manage those across our equities in the Navy,” Thomsen said. “And, as it turns out, that’s going to be a similar problem in the joint world as well.”

Helmut Portmann, the project’s technical director at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City, Fla., said the net effect of JUSC2 will be to reduce manpower needs for the Navy, and the other services, through control standards that allow battlefield commanders to do more with less when it comes to utilizing unmanned systems.

Portmann said the JUSC2 technology demonstration is currently focused on two separate control systems for unmanned vehicles — the Army’s One System Ground Control Station and the Navy’s Tactical Control System for unmanned systems. Through JUSC2, the systems will achieve the common NATO and Defense Department standards for unmanned control systems, making them virtually interchangeable.

Once this occurs, “it shouldn’t make any difference which one you use,” Portmann said. And once they both adhere to the common standards, “it will have big implications for affordability. If we can figure out a way to get vendors to build unmanned systems without the control box, we will save money,” he said.

Portmann acknowledged that it remains unclear how much stands to be saved, adding that, “sometimes to save money you have to spend.” Still, “ultimately there will be savings,” given that the future of armed combat is increasingly geared toward unmanned vehicles.

Portmann said the JUSC2 technology demonstration hit the ground running in April 2004, and so far the Navy has invested $3.5 million in the project. The Navy expects to spend $16.5 million on JUSC2 by 2008, with an additional $10.5 million coming from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and its Joint Robotics Program.

Using the Navy’s High Speed Vessel 2 catamaran as a test bed, Portmann said the path forward will involve one JUSC2 technology demonstration in 2006, emphasizing a strong joint element in which Army unmanned aerial vehicles, including the Shadow 200, will demonstrate control handoff between the Army and Navy.

The second and final JUSC2 demonstration, slated for early 2007, will be all Navy, with an emphasis on transitioning the technology to the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), Portmann said. “It will be a dress rehearsal for LCS Flight 0,” he said. “We’re going to bring out the complete system to see how it works.”

He said JUSC2 aims to “federate” legacy control systems for unmanned vehicles in an effort to “interface them, deconflict their plans, dynamically re-task them, operate them as a coherent unit and minimize the amount of humans that have to be involved.”

The project is applying two joint interoperability standards for unmanned systems, Portmann said. One, the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems, was developed in the Pentagon’s Joint Robotics Program several years ago to provide a common control plan for unmanned ground, surface and underwater vehicles. The second, known as a NATO Standardization Agreement, takes the same approach to unmanned aerial vehicles.

Thomsen, whose office will be responsible for transitioning the JUSC2 technology to LCS, said the idea is not only to interface different unmanned vehicles through a common control system, but to be able to task them for multiple missions through a single point.

“We also want to direct and assign a different part of the mission and re-appropriate unmanned assets in the mission, rather than bringing them all back to the ship and redirecting them,” Thomsen said. “This is intended to manage, and at times control, a number of systems at once.”

Thomsen said the Navy saw the need for common management of unmanned systems as LCS began to take shape. “Now the Army, with its Future Combat System (FCS), has a similar challenge that we have in LCS in terms of managing and controlling,” he said.

JUSC2 will have “direct application to programs like FCS. If this [technology demonstration] is successful, this technology will be available for them to use as well,” Thomsen added. The Army’s FCS is an array of networked systems including fighting vehicles and unmanned aircraft.

For now, Portman said, one of the key features of the JUSC2 is to apply the common control standards to unmanned vehicles now in development. “We’re too small to affect acquisition programs now, but we can affect those programs currently in development,” he said. And once the technology is matured, “we might be able to give [program managers] the option to go back and modify their programs, but that would probably be on a case-by-case basis.”

Thomsen said industry support for the program will be critical to its success. In April, his office met with the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International to discuss the technology.

“We’re just going to be teeing up with some ideas,” he said. “We don’t want to do that without industry participation, so we need to vet that and gain their support.”