Progressing toward a net-centric force.

• Author: Farrell, Lawrence P., Jr.
• Position: President's perspective - Editorial

Part of the much talked-about transformation of our military is the ability of the services to seamlessly integrate and fight as a joint force.

As we saw in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the services have come a long way in this arena. The senior commanders of the war unanimously agreed that, in this conflict, operations were much more integrated than in any previous campaign.

Despite this recent success, much work remains ahead, particularly in the joint command and control area, where gaps and seams still exist, largely due to the lack of interoperability between each service's command and control systems.

This is a significant task, not only for the services, bur also for the industry, which must be prepared to change the traditional approaches to meeting service-unique customer requirements.

As far as joint command and control is concerned, the challenge is enormous. Not only are there lots of different stove-piped architectures to sort through, but there are also multiple players who have a role in setting requirements.

The job that lies ahead is difficult, but not impossible. As we have seen in recent weeks, changes already are under way in how requirements and standards are being developed in joint battle management, command and control.

During the past several months, specifically, the office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, and the U.S. Joint Forces Command, have been working on the development of a Joint Battle Management Command & Control (BMC2) Roadmap.

The Roadmap will provide the services, the Defense Department and the Joint Staff an update on those systems that require interoperability and will address whether those systems can effectively interact in our new environment of a capability-based military and net-centric operations.

The kickoff of the Roadmap occurred in late July, when officials from the Pentagon, Joint Forces Command and the services addressed a contingent of senior military, government and industry attendees at the Joint Battle Management Command and Control (JBMC2) Summit.

Interoperability is at the heart of JMBC2. Both the acting undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, Mike Wynne, and John Stenbit, the assistant secretary of defense for networks and information integration, stated at the Summit that OSD will focus on the critical interactions that will facilitate truly joint operations, via a new Joint Battlespace management architecture.

It...