Adapting industry practices for a Trusted COP supporting agile command and control in Fleet Battle Management

Abstract

Navy leadership has articulated interest in understanding game changing technologies that permit employment of network centric (versus platform centric) battle management. To explore this problem statement, the project team employed a model-based systems engineering approach to examine segments of both the operational and physical networking and communication architectures. Various alternatives were explored with the intent in making recommendations for technology investment by the U.S. Navy. Research conducted by the project team on industry analogues shows that financial industry also relies on network technology as well as operational architecture to effectively execute transactions valued at trillions of dollars daily on a global scale. Global banking systems employ a "Clearing House" approach that settles critical transactions quickly and "keeps track" of all transactions. This allows Banks to quickly understand debits and credits and minimize liquidity risk. Re-thinking conventional data management into a structure that address "mission risk" as key metric may allow alternative architectures to be employed for fleet battle management. The project team's research and modeling showed that while communications and network technologies may offer improvement, game changing approaches would more likely emerge as a result from rethinking organizational communication architectures.