Controlling the Command

A deployable joint command and control center steps from Navy labs toward fighting forces in a major test by Southern Command

By OTTO KREISHER, Special Correspondent

Whenever a major contingency operation looms, the designated commander quickly must generate the forces and equipment necessary to carry out the mission and mobilize the transportation assets to get them to the scene.

There are well-established procedures for performing those critical tasks quickly and effectively. But when the forces get into the theater of operations, the task force commander often has to scramble to find the facilities and equipment needed to carry out the command, control and communications functions that are essential for a successful mission.

Commanders usually are forced to put systems together in bits and pieces to support command and control, said Navy Capt. Patrick Roesch. “There was a distinct and identifiable need for a standardized package that they could get to theater in a reasonable period of time.”

A Navy-led, high-priority program, initiated by the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is well on its way to producing that capability. Called the Deployable Joint Command and Control (DJC2) initiative, the program is envisioned to provide a “standardized, integrated, rapidly deployable, modular, scaleable and reconfigurable Joint Command and Control Combat Operations Center system of systems” for four of the nation’s nine combatant commands with responsibilities based on defined geographic areas, such as Southern Command and Central Command.

A program document declares that DJC2 will provide regional and joint task force commanders with an integrated package of systems with which to plan, control, coordinate, execute and assess operations. It is designed to be marshaled quickly, deployed by transport aircraft and set up within hours to provide the necessary tools to command a full range of joint task force operations.

Located at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City, Fla., the DJC2 program office expects to begin shipping its first full system to Southern Command in September, about 18 months after the program was launched, said Roesch, the deputy program manager. The next systems will go to Pacific Command and then to European Command in 2006. Central Command should get a system by fiscal 2007, he said.

Each of the combatant commanders is expected to get four DJC2 packages by the completion of the program.

A complete DJC2 package will contain three configurations of equipment, computers and communications gear to support ever more comprehensive degrees of planning, control and communications from the beginning of deployment to the establishment of a full-scale command post in theater.

The “autonomous en route configuration” is a palletized package that can be loaded aboard a strategic airlift transport, such as a C-17. It would enable the commander or his surrogate and a partial staff to begin to develop situational awareness and start the planning and coordination process while flying to the theater of operations.

It would provide 10 to 20 operator positions with internal communications connections and laptops with standard network services and long-range communications through airborne facilities provided by INMARSAT, the mobile satellite communications company based in Washington, D.C. The en route configuration also would utilize tactical satellites and an Army-developed system called the Secure En Route Communications Package, Improved.

The “Early Entry Configuration” uses part of the organic DJC2 assets — including one or more quick-erect tents or modular structures, Humvee vehicles with communications and network systems installed, and portable power generation and environmental control units. It would support an initial joint task force forward command operations center for 72 to 96 hours, until the full joint task force staff can arrive.

The Early Entry Configuration would be set up within six hours and accommodate 20 to 40 operator stations with ground-based organic communications and network services with access to the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, and SIPRNet and NIPRNet, the military’s classified and open networks.

The “Core Configuration” expands on those capabilities to support a small joint task force staff with 60 operator positions. It will require use of external communications support brought in by the regional or joint task force commander and add Internet services and CENTRIX, the Pentagon’s Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange, to the three networks available in the early entry package.

The Core setup is depicted in program documents as a central domed shelter serving as the main operations center, surrounded by six tents or shelters of various sizes, supported by five Humvees with hardback shelters filled with network or communications equipment, and multiple portable power and environmental control units.

The whole package would be transportable on several C-17s or C-5s or multiple C-130s.

The size and capability could be expanded by adding components of another Core package to provide up to 120 operator positions if needed for larger operations.

The fully fielded system would include the shelters and the necessary furniture, communications equipment, office automation equipment, operator workstations, interior communications, displays — including a video teleconferencing setup — local area network and the interfaces to link with military and commercial worldwide networks.

It would have enough mobile electrical generators to support all that equipment and provide interior lighting and enough environmental control units to provide heating or cooling to allow the command center to work in a wide range of climatic conditions.

“We have the requirement to function from minus 25 to plus 140 degrees,” Roesch said.

Each core configuration is estimated to cost about $12 million, he said. The regional combatant commanders are to provide the staff and support personnel for the operations center.

A “Maritime Variant” that could operate aboard ship is to be developed later and delivered in 2009. The concept of operations is currently being developed, and it has not been determined what ships would accept it and how it would be deployed, Roesch said.

The scaleable system could support missions ranging from a small joint task force for humanitarian assistance to a large warfighting force, such as Operation Iraqi Freedom, the program documents said.

Roesch puts the start of the project at March 5, 2004, when the program passed its “Milestone B” evaluation, “which allowed us to prove out a prototype,” with the Navy as executive agent.

The joint program office in Panama City, Fla., is responsible for much of DJC2’s technology development, engineering, system design prototyping and full-scale production of Increment I.

Joint Forces Command provides requirements oversight on the program, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command supplies the program executive office and N-71, a unit of the Navy’s N70 Warfare Integration office, controls the funding, Roesch said.

Joint Forces Command has received a non-deployable DJC2 system to be used with its Standing Joint Task Force Headquarters project, which seeks to establish elements of a command staff that would be ready to deploy for a contingency in any of the regional command’s areas.

The DJC2 program deployed a system for full operational testing in a warfighter exercise being conducted by Southern Command in August. When that test is completed, it will get the first operational system, probably in September, Roesch said.

The program has moved so quickly because “we’re not developing anything. We’re integrating all the things that we’ve been able to find in the government and industry.”

Panama City has served as the integrator, “to find the technologies, the applications, the generators, the tents … that fit our need and then we bring them together,” he said.

The program office has functioned as the “prime contractor” for the first increment. But Increment II will be put out for competitive bidding, with a request for proposal issued “hopefully in the November time frame,” Roesch said.