A View of Command, Control, Communications and Computer Architectures at the Dawn of Network Centric Warfare

In March 2004, the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) in cooperation with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Office of Force Transformation (OFT) initiated a study focusing on the U.S. Army V Corps and 3rd Infantry Division's major combat operations during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cogan, Kevin J
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
ACQUISITION
ARCHITECTURE
ARMY
ARMY OPERATIONS
CASE STUDIES
COMMAND AND CONTROL SYSTEMS
COMMUNICATION AND RADIO SYSTEMS
COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS
Computer Programming and Software
CYCLES
ENCAPSULATION
FOCUSING
MILITARY OPERATIONS
MILITARY PLANNING
NETWORK CENTRIC WARFARE
Radio Communications
SKILLS
TIME INTERVALS
TRANSFORMATIONS
TWILIGHT
WARFARE
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Summary:In March 2004, the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) in cooperation with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Office of Force Transformation (OFT) initiated a study focusing on the U.S. Army V Corps and 3rd Infantry Division's major combat operations during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). This study, entitled Network Centric Warfare Case Study: U.S. V Corps and 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) during Operation Iraqi Freedom Combat Operations (March-April 2003) is one of several case studies commissioned by OFT to determine the military's ability to conduct operations in accordance with network centric warfare (NCW) concepts. The March 2004 study culminated in the first of three volumes entitled Operations. In March 2006, the study was expanded to include both the communications architecture for OIF combat operations (Volume II) as well as NCW insights (Volume III). This issue paper focuses on Volume II, which analyzes command, control, communications, and computer architectures to ascertain the potential strategic and operational implications of net-centric operations from an acquisition perspective. Volume II critically analyzes the history of communications architecture acquisition before OIF and the inadequacy of current acquisition cycle times to keep pace with the rapid advances in technology. It provides the reader with three insights: (1) a historical view of advances in technology which ultimately enabled a computer communications network; (2) an encapsulation of the Army command, control, communications, and computer (C4) architecture for two specific time frames of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) referred to as pre-OIF and OIF- 1; and (3) examines future communications programs that are underway for next generation C4 architectures with respect to the ability of the Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition process to keep pace with the rapid advances in technology.