The Web, The Wall, & Pure ICE

Transforming the Navy for a Knowledge-Centric Environment

By SCOTT C. TRUVER

Dr. Scott C. Truver is vice president, national security studies, of the Anteon Corporation.

"One of the greatest challenges we face," said Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn, deputy chief of naval operations for resources and assessments, "is to ensure that we sustain knowledge superiority over any adversary as a means of ensuring access to world regions in which our interests and friends may be at risk." In the process, he noted, that same knowledge superiority will help transform the Navy "to meet a broad spectrum of increasingly lethal 21st-century threats."

An important element of the transformation, McGinn continued, "is to guarantee that the data and information needed for effective and timely decision-making at all levels of command will be available when needed and in a way that does not overwhelm our commanders­­especially as we move forward in implementing innovative concepts of network-centric operations. It goes well beyond individual platforms to address the most fundamental ways that we gather, fuse, analyze, and display information to ensure mission success.

"In that task," he emphasized, "we are taking a 'human-centric' approach that focuses on the way people react, particularly in stressful, time-constrained situations."

Two Navy initiatives are taking on the challenge of ensuring that the right amount of information­­as opposed to mere data­­is on hand and in a form that can be used to best purposes:

* The Integrated Command Environment (ICE)--pursued at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWC DD) under the joint sponsorship of the DD 21 Program Office and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Manning Affordability Program--developed a series of radically different options to influence command decision-making environments in future warships, including the Zumwalt-class land-attack destroyer (DD 21).

* Nearer-term improvements and rapid transition to the fleet are the focus of the Command 21 "Knowledge-Wall" and "Knowledge-Web" command-and-control concepts being evaluated at the Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center, San Diego (SSC-SD), also under ONR sponsorship. These were demonstrated at the Naval War College during the 2000 and 2001 Global War Game and installed on the command ship USS Coronado (AGF 11) during McGinn's tour as commander, U.S. Third Fleet.

Human-Centered Design

"I have seen the future," said then-Navy Inspector General Vice Adm. Lee F. Gunn following a demonstration of the ICE mockup at NSWC Dahlgren. He had just witnessed a futuristic ICE scenario that demonstrated how a crew--aided by cutting-edge design processes, technologies, and advanced decision tools--would defeat numerous multiwarfare threats while at the same time launching devastating precision strikes against enemy forces ashore, responding to damage from enemy fire, rendering assistance to a shipmate who had suffered a heart attack, and planning for the "just-in-time" delivery of critical spare parts. Gunn's immediate question: "When will we get this into the fleet?"

"The genesis of ICE," according Dr. Janis Cannon-Bowers, a psychologist at the Naval Air Warfare Command's Training Systems Division (NAWC-TSD) in Orlando, Fla., "is the TADMUS [Tactical Decision-Making Under Stress] study conducted in the wake of the Vincennes [CG-49] tragedy." While in the midst of a surface engagement on 3 July 1988, the Aegis guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing all 290 passengers and crew. The ship's combat information center had identified the target as probably an Iranian F-14 Tomcat. Later analysis showed how a time-compressed series of decisions in a high-stress environment led to the unfortunate launch of two Standard missiles and the destruction of the airliner.

TADMUS concluded, among other things, that "we have to take the human into account in the initial design and engineering of our combat and training systems," Cannon-Bowers noted, "particularly as advancements in information technology and processing have continued to increase dramatically."

The Two Essentials: Accuracy and Speed

With the shift of the Navy's post-Cold War strategic focus to the littoral warfare environment, a highly cluttered battlespace in which friendly, adversary, and "gray" forces as well as civilian/commercial traffic co-mingle, with reaction times measured in mere seconds, the need to accurately as well as quickly identify possible "hostiles"­­under, on, and over the sea­­has become an even more critical driver of the Navy's knowledge-superiority initiatives. ONR's TADMUS Project, for example, has focused on theories of cognition and decision-making models, with SSC-SD addressing real-time decision-support systems and NAWC-TSD developing team-training models and systems to improve tactical decision-making and help reduce shipboard manning.

With this research already underway in 1999, then-Capt. Thomas Bush, DD 21 program manager, directed Patricia Hamburger, a Dahlgren researcher who participated in the Vincennes investigation and has extensive command-and-control experience, to form a team of warfighters, systems engineers, and human-factors experts to address the combat-environment needs for the DD 21. "With a crew objective of only 95 for DD 21," said J. Robert Bost, director of optimal manning in the Program Executive Office, Surface Strike, "we had to address radically different ways to fight and operate a complex multimission warship. To even get close to the 95-person crew [mandated for the ship] and to do it right, we have to focus first on the human."

"At the outset," Hamburger said, "we completed a high-level, top-down functional analysis, focusing on mission and performance requirements, functions, tasks, information, information flow, and communications requirements in a rigorous, systems-engineering approach." Great care was taken to consider: (a) unique warfighter requirements, including the roles of watchstanders; (b) the optimal methods to convey situational awareness and ensure knowledge superiority; and (c) "both interpersonal and human-computer communication capabilities."

"Perhaps the most innovative element of the ICE design process," Bost said, "has been its emphasis on HSI­­Human Systems Integration­­which embraces manpower, personnel, training, system safety, quality of life, and human engineering. And, for the first time in the Navy's history, a KPP [Key Performance Parameter] for the ship's crew was included in the DD 21 ORD [Operational Requirements Document]." The Navy wants the ship to be designed to support the objectives of the crew, and not vice-versa. "A solid commitment to HSI has the potential to affect virtually every aspect of Navy manpower and personnel planning," Bost said, "and is the focus of a first-ever Navy/industry-sponsored Human Systems Integration Symposium." (The symposium will be held in November; Dr. Robin B. Pirie, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy, McGinn, and Gunn will address the topic "Knowledge Warfare: Making the Human Part of the System.")

Real and Redundant

"Our ICE Vision is markedly different from today's CIC [combat information center] in its purpose, implementation, and manning levels," Hamburger said. "An ICE is equipped to perform any command, control, or decision-making function, including the capability to shoot weapons, drive the ship, check the status of a replacement part, update personnel records, prepare an after-action report and briefing, coordinate damage-control efforts, and more."

Indeed, the ICE mockup at Dahlgren (and a similar "Command Center of the Future" at SSC-SD) looks like something out of Star Trek and Star Wars, but somehow more "real." If a version of the ICE concept becomes reality in the DD 21 design, ICE will be a within-the-ship network-centric warfare capability in which multiple watchstander "nodes" throughout the ship ensure operational redundancy. "Using distributed computer systems and communications networks, ICE will have access to all relevant shipboard data obtained from a broad spectrum of on-board and off-board sensors and information systems," Hamburger said. Given the reality of such data-gathering systems as the Expeditionary Warfare Sensor Grid championed by the Navy Warfare Development Command, which envisions the wartime use of tens of thousands of individual sensors­­spread vertically as well as horizontally from the seafloor to outer space­­to collect and fuse the data needed to serve the information and knowledge-superiority requirements of tomorrow's fleet, the challenge is daunting.

The "Knowledge" Vision

"The Naval Science and Technology vision," said Capt. David M. Schubert, assistant chief of naval research, "seeks to inspire and guide innovation to provide technology-based options for future Navy and Marine Corps capabilities." To do that, he said, short-term needs have been focused into 12 FNCs (Future Naval Capabilities) that address the highest priorities for the Navy POM (Program Objective Memorandum) "and respond to urgent needs identified by the operating forces."

Two of the FNCs "play" in the development of command-decision tools:

* Capable Manpower: Human-centered hardware and systems, developed out of a thorough understanding of human capabilities, limitations, and needs enable Sailors and Marines to carry out tasks successfully in an information-rich, distributed battlespace.

* Knowledge Superiority and Assurance: Advanced decision-support and information-dissemination systems to help warfighters reach the right solutions in dynamic tactical situations, increasing the speed of command, permitting self-synchronization in a changing environment through availability of an accurate common picture, and allowing dynamic, distributed planning, battle management, and execution at all levels of command.

In the area of decision support, three "spikes" or areas of emphasis are being pursued: Common Picture, 21st Century Command Capability, and Multi-Echelon Planning and Execution.

One of ONR's initiatives is the "Command 21" project at SPAWAR's San Diego Systems Center. Command 21 uses off-the-shelf commercial and government technologies and systems to bring "Knowledge-Centric Operations" to decision-making, and to help facilitate the rapid dissemination of information. "Our vision is to go beyond network-centric operations," said Jay L. Martin, head of SSC-SD's Simulation and Human System Technology Division, "through the transformation of information into knowledge and [by] moving to knowledge-centric operations." The technologies and concepts embraced are based on SSC-SD's "knowledge engineering" studies of Navy, Marine Corps, U.S. Strategic Command, and other high-level command centers. Although these studies focused primarily on the commanders of joint task forces, the technologies and concepts used can be adapted to any level of command.

Review and Reiteration

One of the first steps in the development of the Knowledge Web was a cognitive task analysis that determined the specific tools and features required in a military command environment. According to SSC documentation, the analysis "revealed a consistent general requirement for tools to support improved situational awareness/assessment, dynamic synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, as well as adaptive, real-time resource and action management and support."

The iterative design process included, among other things, the identification of core information needs; the development and imposition of basic design requirements; the development of storyboard concepts by human-computer interface designers (the concepts were reviewed and refined by subject matter experts and fleet representatives); and rapid prototyping and testing for tool refinement.

Since then, SSC-SD has, at McGinn's request, accelerated the development of "Knowledge-Web" ("K-Web") and "Knowledge-Wall" ("K-Wall") concepts. The K-Wall is a large-screen display that allows several summary pages to be displayed simultaneously in conjunction with operational- and tactical-level information, or any other information that might be needed. "These were first used in the Global 2000 War Game, and the lessons learned from that experience, as well as how we implemented the Knowledge Wall in Coronado and subsequently in [the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier] Carl Vinson, figured in on how SSC-SD implemented the concept in Global 2001," McGinn said.

The K-Web focuses on ensuring that "value-added information"­­what others call simply "knowledge"­­created by a command's staff can be "captured" and distributed in real time in an operationally relevant manner for key functional areas of the command. "You can visualize a window sliding over the most current knowledge being provided from the sea of information available in a network-centric warfare environment," said SSC-SD's Jay Martin; by doing this, he said, the speed and effectiveness of the command can be dramatically improved.

IT-21 and Sun Tzu

The central elements of the K-Web are intuitive, summary Web pages that are created using template-based authoring tools, also developed by the Command 21 project. The template tools allow Web pages to be published rapidly at Knowledge-Desks (K-Desks) without requiring staff personnel--ranging from the joint task force commander to individual action officers--to learn web publishing tools and languages.

K-Desks are configured with a two-by-three matrix of commercial-off-the-shelf liquid-crystal-display panels in a single virtual display. "Importantly," McGinn said, "we can 'reach back' to strategic databases in the United States­­anywhere in the world­­to complement operational- and tactical-level information, and make sure we 'know our enemies and know ourselves,' as Sun Tzu admonished in The Art of War."

SSC-SD implemented the K-Web and K-Wall at Global 2001--it comprised three 50-inch "SmartBoards" run by a single IT-21 (Information Technology for the 21st Century) workstation and several K-Desks. The K-Desks gave small groups of decision-makers the workspace needed to support production of the "value-added information" and to monitor status information on the K-Web.

These new tools, along with video and audio/teleconferencing, were the foundation for information exchange at the Global 2001 War Game, filling a compelling need at a time when participants were "distributed and netted"­­with command/information nodes in the Pentagon, at the U.S. Space Command, and on two fleet flagships, Coronado (off the West Coast) and the command ship USS Mount Whitney in the Eastern Atlantic. The Knowledge Walls and SmartBoards were supplemented by an experimental software package, "Battlespace NT," developed by Autometric, that allowed the display of information about friendly and adversary forces as well as imagery from satellites and other sensors. Game participants were able to rotate the visualization scenes to see how an adversary might perceive the same tactical situation.

"Hot washup" assessments of this War Game achievement were mixed, with some participants admitting the screens "looked good," but also saying that the likelihood of information overload was still very real. "But," as one observer explained, "identifying the shortfalls during a game is a whole lot [better] ... than when it's for real and lives, platforms, and missions are on the line."

Two Ways Ahead?

"There is still great potential for us to overwhelm our commanders and their staffs with today's­­not to mention tomorrow's­­information technology," McGinn warned. "It is a very complex undertaking that requires the attention of the Navy leadership, as well as the commitment of our warfighters, engineers, and scientists. We need to tailor technologies and systems to the ways our people receive, process, and act on information­­which can be dramatically different from person to person and at varying levels of authority and responsibility, from the joint task force commander to the tactical action officer in a warship and submarine and the aviator in the cockpit."

The Integrated Command Environment and the Command 21 Knowledge Wall are two ways in which the vision postulated might someday be realized. But, as Gunn recognized after his "back to the future" visit at Dahlgren: "We need it now."