By PHILLIP THOMPSON

Phillip Thompson, a Marine Corps veteran, is a senior fellow with the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit public-policy think tank in Arlington, Va.

 
A running joke in the U.S. Marine Corps is that the two most common after-action comments following a field exercise are, "We learned a lot," and, "Comm [communications] was fouled up again."

With luck, the latter statement will soon be history--primarily because the Marine Corps has learned a lot in recent years.

Much of that learning has been about communications, where the main lesson is that the Corps' C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) technology is outdated and the comm equipment itself is heavy to carry and often more of a hindrance than a help. In an era of "Palm Pilots" and cell phones the size of credit cards, many Marines are frustrated at having to cart around 20 or more pounds of communication equipment designed before laptop computers were ever heard of, especially when the older gear is sometimes only barely adequate for "shooting, moving, and communicating" over long distances.

The frustration is not just about a heavy load on a sore back or the inability to pass along a target list. It has to do more with the fact that obsolete tactical communications equipment inhibits the Corps' ability to fulfill its goal of transforming amphibious operations from an over-the-beach enterprise to an over-the-horizon one. If the Corps is ever to realize the ambitious goals outlined in its "Operational Maneuver From the Sea" battle doctrine it must find a way to communicate continuously, and wirelessly, over the horizon--from the decks of amphibious ships to the cockpit of an MV-22 Osprey to the squad speeding inland aboard an Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV).

A Fast Fix Needed

The Osprey cruises at 275 knots in airplane mode--the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter that the Osprey is replacing flies at only 145 knots. The Corps' current amphibious-assault vehicle travels at 25 mph over land, but its replacement, the AAAV, is expected to nearly double that speed--to 45 mph. Indeed, the speed of future amphibious operations probably will see Marines outrunning the range of their comm gear even before networks can be established.

One concept that offers hope for future improvements is a technique called "Extending the Littoral Battlespace," or ELB. A sort of "unplugged" version of current communications, it offers Marines a wireless network far more streamlined than current C4ISR networks and a shared picture of the battlefield as visible and as readily available to the individual rifleman in a fighting hole as it is to the battle-force commander on board a command ship 100 miles away.

The ELB concept was at the center of a $150 million Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) conducted in April 1999 during Exercise Kernel Blitz on the West Coast. The demonstration was led by the Office of Naval Research, working in conjunction with the new Advanced Technology Systems Division of General Dynamics, which began work on the concept in 1998.

Today, explained Scott Sears of the Advanced Technology Systems Division, Marines aboard amphibious ships "go deaf" when they head for shore, either aboard CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters or in amphibious-assault vehicles (AAVs). Their only means of communicating, usually, is by voice radios. Once on the beach, they must reestablish a workable communications "node," a process that can take anywhere from six to 10 hours. Only after the node is set up can the Marines establish the comm links they will need with other command-and-control elements afloat, ashore, and in the air.

The Unencumbered Scenario

In an overland scenario on the hypothetical littoral battlefield of the future Marines will not want to stop at the beach, though. Instead, their goal will be to move directly to their combat objective, which sometimes might be as far as 200 miles inland. The tactics and techniques of doing so are being tested now in the Corps' Capable Warrior experiments. But to do it seamlessly, not to mention successfully, Marines will need more than line-of-sight radios and cumbersome satellite gear and PCs.

One purpose of the Kernel Blitz demonstration, according to information released by the Office of Naval Research, was to " ... exploit the potential of emerging technological capabilities to provide theaterwide situation understanding, effective remote fires, and a robust interconnected information infrastructure. This ... is a concept-based demonstration to enhance Joint Expeditionary Warfare capabilities for the [21st] century.

"In the changing global environment, the [demonstration] proposes a range of operational and tactical concepts that leverage command, control, communications, computational, and other technologies to exploit information and improve precision fires and targeting in future operations."

In other words, the ELB concept will be realized by giving strike forces continuous command-and-control capabilities all the way from the well deck of a ship to the urban battlefield of the future.

Applying the lessons learned from the Hunter Warrior experiments of the mid-1990s--in which Marines booted up and wired into nearly every information-technology system on the shelf in an effort to give every combatant a common picture of the battlefield--Kernel Blitz pioneered the use of a wireless "WARNET." The idea was to use existing off-the-shelf technology, both government and commercial, to reduce not only costs but also the R&D (research and development) time needed to field the gear.

Unlike current systems--VHF, UHF, PC-based applications and the like--WARNET offered a higher-capability go-anywhere wireless system that could go wherever a Marine could: aboard an MV-22, on patrol in the jungle, or in a "Humvee" (HMMWV--high-mobility multiwheeled vehicle) speeding down an interstate highway.

Using essentially the same technology used on college campuses to build wireless wide-area networks, or WANs, WARNET demonstrated its usefulness when a Marine communicated with his command element aboard the amphibious command ship USS Coronado, which was 135 nautical miles away, without using a satellite.

Arrows vs. WMDs

In a related and even more revealing experiment, the flexibility and ease of integration of the new system was demonstrated when a team of Marines was put ashore near a simulated Third World town. Its mission: to locate and neutralize any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that might be hidden in the area.

In this experiment the team had no idea in which building the WMDs might be concealed; the team leader "flying shotgun" in a helicopter over the town and the unit commander aboard ship many miles away also had no information about the weapons. However, using an image of the town from a simulated unmanned aerial vehicle--another helicopter--the unit commander was able to draw a rough map of the town on a "white board" in front of a camera aboard the ship, with the assault team leader watching on his laptop computer aboard the CH-46. As the real-time images were transformed into "check over there" guidance from the unit commander, the team leader was able to direct his Marines on the ground--who saw the same picture on their hand-held computers--to the target without exposing them to unnecessary risks. The Marines on the ground were actually moving toward the target at the same time the directional arrows were being drawn on the white board hundreds of miles away.

This type of on-the-fly video teleconferencing, and tactical planning, reduces to about two minutes the processing time needed to transform information into intelligence--regardless of the commander's location, be it aboard ship or hundreds of miles overland from the target. The Marines in the battle experiment discussed were able to attack their target within minutes of locating it, instead of hours, or even days, as would be the case with current gear.

Leveraging Existing Technology

Much of the success of the WARNET experiments can be credited to the ready availability of the needed components. In its simplest form, the wireless network is established with the insertion of a WAN card into a PC or laptop computer.

The future Marine Corps command-and-control network envisioned by designers calls for about 10 megabytes of bandwidth--in lay terms, enough to enable a field commander to maintain a network capable of conducting 10-way video teleconference calls across vast distances.

The Marines do not have to wait for such networks to be invented, fortunately, nor until all their current communications gear is replaced. Because COTS systems and existing technology were used, the Marines in Kernel Blitz were able to integrate WARNET with their own SINCGARS (single-channel ground and airborne radio system) secure radios. The result was what Sears described as a "wireless, high-bandwidth channel of information on the fly."

Where will it end? Another "major field demonstration," the next evolutionary step for the ELB concept, is planned for April 2001. And the Marine Corps isn't alone in its quest for significantly improved wireless communication systems. The Army has begun experimenting with similar concepts as well.

Ultimately, Sears said, the day will come when a tank commander leading his unit through hilly terrain will be able to call his commander and say, "I need a picture of what's over the next hill," and get that image within seconds. That is the way that "shooting, moving, and communicating" should be.

And will be, in the not-too-distant future.