OT: Industry group seeks to link DoD networks
By George Leopold
EE Times
Sep 28, 2004
WASHINGTON — A consortium of 28 aerospace and IT companies unveiled an initiative on Tuesday (Sept. 28) aimed at developing a common networking architecture that would link military and homeland security users and a range of sensor systems to an interoperable, global network.
The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium is a response to Defense Department transformation efforts aimed at linking its forces around the world. Consortium members said military officials requested their help in developing the interoperable network. The effort also builds on past efforts to link, or fuse, military sensors and data. Those efforts have taken on greater urgency as Pentagon leaders seek to transform U.S. military operations. A key element is network-centric military operations.
"The companies are working together to enable network-centric operations," said Oracle's Gary O'Shaugnessy.
Systems connected to the proposed interoperable network would operate as nodes on a common, secure network, added Carl O'Berry, an executive of Boeing Corp. Current networks do not allow information sharing.
A 1996 effort in Bosnia called the Command and Control Augmentation System served as a prototype for what military planners are seeking. The "publish and subscribe system" provided an encrypted bit stream of intelligence data at 30 Mbits/s. The network-centric initiative would build on these earlier networking programs, according to Paul Kaminski, a former DoD acquisition chief who is serving as an advisor to the industry consortium.
O'Shaughnessy said the consortium will define and deploy a set of guidelines based on open standards that would permit most systems and types of information to interoperate on the global network. The group is working to enable network-centric operations using emerging network standards, the Oracle executive added.
Discussion aimed at forming the group began last November, and formal meetings began last month. Initial talks are focusing on collaborating on standards development and developing "common semantics," executives said. So far, the group has established no implementation plan for delivering its blueprint for a common network architecture.
"We're committed to finding a way forward," one consortium member said.
The group will also seek to apply industry standards to DoD's existing network reference models and sensor systems. In the past, there has been little interoperability among networks operated by different military services, making it difficult to share battlefield information. "We will try to fill those gaps," a consortium executive said.
Among the consortium's other members are Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems.
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