Ericsson Microwave Systems: Network-Centric Warfare Initiatives

Information-based warfare is part of an evolution of the traditional military command-and-control (C2) strategy into a broader concept of command, control, communication, computers and intelligence (C4I). And when it comes to computers and communications, military organizations are borrowing a page from the civilian market and from technology providers such as Ericsson Microwave Systems and Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Overview

In a high-tech laboratory near Gothenburg, Sweden, experts from Ericsson Microwave Systems and Sun Professional Services are playing war games. In that pristine environment, scenarios such as the following attempt to simulate a more complex reality of rapidly escalating—and potentially catastrophic—confrontations:

Tension is high in the Baltic Sea. Sweden's armed forces are on alert, and a reconnaissance unit is dispatched to the harbor of Slite on Gotland. One of the scouts spots five helicopters approaching the harbor at low altitude. He identifies them as adversaries, presses an alarm button and starts a network-attached remote video camera. A message goes out over a secure IP network containing the alarm, the exact enemy position as detected by a Global Position Satellite (GPS) and a live video feed.

Alarm indicators light up in command-and-control centers at the brigade level. The officer of the day evaluates the incoming information, takes command of the situation and contacts the ranger unit. The decision is made to launch a microwave-based mobile radar system in the vicinity of the incident to strengthen surveillance and provide advance notification about additional helicopters approaching. When five new helicopters are spotted nearing Slite, several Swedish Airforce aircraft—fed with detailed real-time information from the radar over the network—attack the advancing helicopters over the open sea.

It may read like a scene from the latest box-office blockbuster, but this is how armed forces worldwide are actually preparing to fight their battles in the 21st century and beyond. Defense strategists are talking about the Revolution in Military Affairs, or RMA, a globally recognized term that refers to the transformation of modern military conflict from battles waged primarily with equipment and troops to information-based maneuvers that may — or may not — lead to combat. Victory is achieved through dominant battlespace awareness (DBA), that is, the ability to gather, process and disseminate information faster and better than the enemy.

Information-based warfare is part of an evolution of the traditional military command-and- control (C2) strategy into a broader concept of command, control, communication, computers and intelligence (C4I). And when it comes to computers and communications, military organizations are borrowing a page from the civilian market and from technology providers such as Ericsson Microwave Systems and Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Shared Vision Leads to Synergistic Partnership

A wholly owned subsidiary of Ericsson AB, Ericsson Microwave Systems (Ericsson Microwave) was established 45 years ago with funding from the Swedish Armed Forces. Its objective is to leverage Ericsson's unique expertise in microwave technology for defense electronics. Ericsson's airborne radar and computer systems as well as ground- and sea-based sensors play a vital role in the Swedish Armed Forces' highly sophisticated early warning and control systems.

To incorporate these and other systems into its C4I strategy, the Swedish Armed Forces needed to make them available to widely distributed and disparate units, which band together for specific missions. The sensors — as well as the applications and information that utilize them — needed to be on a single network. Enabling such network-centric warfare, however, was a challenge for the Swedish Armed Forces. In all armed forces, systems development has been locked into "stove pipes" with little or no communication between each other.

D E F E N S E

Ericsson Microwave teamed up with Sun in mid 2000, when the Swedish Armed Forces announced that it would begin a strong push towards a network-centric infrastructure. A major Swedish network-centric warfare operational demonstration is slated for 2005, leading to an all-encompassing network-centric systems architecture that is planned for deployment in 2010.

Over the past few years, Ericsson Microwave's role within the Ericsson Group has evolved. Ericsson Microwave now serves as a key account manager handling worldwide offerings of Ericsson telecommunications technology to military customers.

Svante Bergh, vice president of Ericsson Microwave AB, says the partnership with Sun was the natural consequence of a meeting of minds. "Sun, Ericsson and the Swedish Armed Forces share the same network-centric vision," he notes. "Technologies such as Java"!, Jini, "and JXTA all help accomplish the same goal: to get everything and everyone securely interconnected, regardless of device type or platform."

According to Bergh, the advantage of a network-centric infrastructure lies not only in interoperability but also in operational flexibility. "We want to help commanders put together applications on demand," he says, echoing the vision of the SunOpen Net Environment (Sun ONE) framework. " In the Slite Harbor scenario, both the soldiers and the commanders can instantaneously access video cameras, radars and other sensors as needed, creating an application that integrates information from all the sensors and delivers it in real time to all the troops and commanders who need it — on the ground, at sea or in the air. Once the situation is resolved, the application is discarded and the ad-hoc 'unit' is disbanded."

Creating a Seamless Virtual Network

One of the technologies that Ericsson and Sun leveraged for the creation of applications on demand is the JXTA peer-to-peer programming and computing platform. An industry-wide research project led by Sun, JXTA technology was conceived to assist developers in creating flexible, interoperable applications that are available on a variety of devices. JXTA peer groups allow users on a network to become aware of each other, while JXTA peer pipes provide the ability to connect peers across the network in a distributed fashion. JXTA peer monitoring helps establish control policies among peers, and JXTA security is a mechanism for ensuring privacy, confidentiality, identity and controlled access to devices.

All of these concepts are essential to the logistics of a military operation. Peer groups allow highly mobile units to interact instantaneously without the constraints of permanent network connection. Monitoring and security facilitate an orderly command-and-control process, even in chaotic situations. And peer pipes eliminate the traditional silos of information—due to a decentralized legacy environment—that can slow the dissemination of information throughout the chain of command.

"One of the problems that arise when migrating to a network-centric environment is how to integrate with legacy systems," explains Ericsson Microwave Systems Specialist Lennart Bie. "They typically have proprietary point-to-point connections, but have never all been tied together or made accessible over an IP network. One of the projects we conducted with Sun was the encapsulation of the proprietary interfaces within the IP protocol. We've already demonstrated to the Swedish Armed Forces how IP encapsulation can create a seamless virtual network across all the legacy silos."

The Sun and Ericsson Microwave team also leveraged Jini network technology to allow clients and services to connect to, and disconnect from, the network in an ad-hoc fashion, eliminating the need for any pre-configuration. In this context, a service can be an application component or a sensor. Jini technology employs a lookup service (LUS) that finds available services. Each service provides the LUS with an object called a proxy, which contains the service's attributes and communication instructions, enabling the LUS to register it on the network. A network client that needs to use one of the services will find the LUS, obtain the proxy of the desired service, and use the proxy to interact with the service.

"But it's not about this or any other technology in particular," Bergh emphasizes. "It's the Ericsson military and telecommunications technologies together with the network-centric philosophy from Sun that drives everything we do. Sun's network-centric technologies are open and standards-based, making international C4I collaboration easier. And Sun Professional Services brings its expertise and experience in applying network-centric technologies both in civilian and military situations."

Preparing for the Unexpected

To expedite the development of ideas and demonstrate network-centric warfare concepts to the Swedish Armed Forces, Ericsson Microwave established a DBA Lab in 1998. Sun joined the lab in 2000, working with Ericsson Microwave to combine their latest technologies and expertise in a creative environment that would foster rapid concept development and demonstration. At the DBA Lab, Ericsson Giraffe AMB (Agile Multi Beam) radars, video cameras and other sensors, as well as SunRaydigital appliances and UltraSPARC- based Sun Enterpriseservers running the SolarisOperating Environment are connected over an IP network, simulating peers connecting to a virtual network from various field units as well as brigade-level and top-level commands.

Using this environment, Ericsson and Sun demonstrated at the last Swedish military information technology (MILINF) show how a command-and-control application could be created in just five minutes, and yet be resilient enough to take advantage of dynamically added/removed network services.

Ericsson foresees the concepts developed with Sun at the DBA Lab being easily adaptable to many other command-and-control situations. "The events of September 11th and other disasters have reminded us just how important it is to facilitate efficient communication and coordination between firefighters, police and the armed forces," Bergh says. "The ability to create applications on demand makes such unpredictable situations much more manageable since command-and-control centers can access all available resources, even those with which they previously had no affiliation or pre-defined network connections."

D E F E N S E

As the nations of the world become increasingly interdependent — economically, politically and militarily — they are recognizing the need to cooperate more closely on network-centric warfare technologies, using open standards-based technologies. Contributing to this effort, Sun is serving as a liaison between the Swedish development team and Sun labs in the U.S. that are doing similar work for the U.S. Department of Defense as well as civilian clients. "As a small and very technology-savvy country, Sweden provides the perfect environment for rapid network-centric concept development," Bergh says. "The years of research that Sun has invested in network-centric solutions worldwide will help us achieve our goals even faster."