Navy leads effort to field joint air-defense network.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

A cruise-missile defense network that would connect Navy ships at sea, Air Force early-warning aircraft, Marine Corps radar systems and Army anti-missile batteries, is technologically an achievable goal.

In reality, however, a joint network as such is unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future, because each service employs different sensor-netting techniques, and their hardware and software are incompatible.

Among the most promising technologies that merge sensor data is the Navy's radar-networking system known as the cooperative engagement capability. Engineers at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, Md., developed the original CEC in the mid-1980s.

The technology was tested successfully at sea in the mid- and late 1990s. The Navy is installing CEC suites--consisting of jam-proof antennas, radio transmitters and data processors--on several warships and command-and-control aircraft.

The technology impressed the Defense Departments top acquisition official, Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, who is an advocate of network-centric warfare. But rather than allow the Navy to continue to spend millions of dollars on the current version of CEC for its own ships and aircraft, Aldridge asked the service to design an upgraded CEC, called Block II, that would be compatible and interoperable with the other services.

The Navy is working to comply with Aldridge's directive, even though his office did nor give the Navy precise guidance on how to make CEC joint. Further, it appears that the other services remain uninterested in CEC as a combat data-link, and continue to evaluate other technologies.

The Defense Department would like, ultimately, to have a so-called "joint composite tracking network" that would provide real-time sensor measurement data to all the firing units in the theater. The JCTN potentially would enable units to engage a target with their own weapons, even if that target's track did not come from their organic sensors.

The CEC picture, said Navy officials, would cover a much larger geographical area than that of any single sensor.

A solicitation seeking proposals for CEC Block II from potential contractors is scheduled for next spring. This will be an unusual project, officials said, because the Navy does not necessarily know the exact requirements of the other services. Its plan is to design a CEC upgrade that will have an "open architecture," so the non-Navy weapon systems can be integrated mote easily.

The Navy officer in charge of surface-warfare network systems and integration, Capt. Brad Hicks, said that the CEC technology could be adapted for other services, but that it's not clear yet what the other services really want.

Before he was named to his current position at Navy headquarters, Hicks was the commander of a naval battle group and gained first-hand experience with the CEC technology.

The next spiral, or Block II, will be based on "joint characteristics and attributes" that the Defense Department believes CEC should have, Hicks explained. Those attributes were...