Air-Missile Defense
Written by Program Executive Office, Missile and Space
GCT 2011 Volume: 2 Issue: 6 (November/December)
The U.S. Army Air and Missile Defense (AMD) Concept and Operational and Organizational Plan for the Future Force calls for a transformation to a network-centric Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense (AIAMD) capability that enables effective use of all Army AMD sensors and weapons with common battle management, command, control, communications, computers and intelligence.
This future architecture will enable the distributed support of engagements with available sensor assets not limited to system-centric organic sensors. The United States Army Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space (PEO MS) is applying an AIAMD system of systems (SoS) acquisition approach to meet the requirements of the soldier and obtain the desired capabilities of the Army AMD future force. This approach calls for a restructuring of systems into sensor and weapon components with common command and control (C2) using a standard set of interfaces among those components and a standardized set of networks to communicate. The AIAMD Program is a direct response to the Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense System of Systems Increment 2 Capability Development Document.
System Description
The AIAMD Program will enable transformation to a networkcentric system of systems capability that integrates all Army AMD sensors, weapons, and C2. The AIAMD Program will initially integrate the Patriot radar and launchers, Improved Sentinel, and Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System components to support the engagement of threats including air breathing targets, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial systems and tactical ballistic missiles.
As additional capabilities are developed and fielded, the AIAMD architecture will include the terminal high altitude area defense, indirect fire protection capability and avenger components, as well as the air defense and airspace management cell. As a result, AIAMD common software and common soldier-machine interfaces will be fielded from AMD platoon to Army Air and Missile Defense Command levels. The AIAMD program achieves its objective by establishing the IAMD architecture and developing these major end items: the IAMD battle command system (IBCS) engagement operations center (EOC) that provides a common mission command capability; plug and fight kits that will network enable multiple sensor and weapon components; and an integrated fire control network, with established communications protocols, standards and interface control documents, that allows joint access, provides fire control connectivity and enables distributed operations. Further, it will provide standard configurations and capabilities at each echelon, thereby addressing the significant training and operations challenges caused by soldiers currently burdened with having to master multiple unique C2 systems. It allows AMD forces to organize based on mission, enemy, terrain, troops, time available and civilian considerations. AMD sensors, weapons and IBCS EOCs are added to the AMD Task Force (TF) to enable the broader missions and wider span of control executed at higher echelons. AMD TF communication capabilities will enable a commander to easily maintain C2 over a wide area, thus significantly increasing the commander’s ability to provide protection from long-range threats. The network-enabled plug and fight architecture and common IBCS EOC will enable dynamic defense design and task force tailoring, and provide the capability for interdependent, network-centric operations that link joint IAMD protection to the supported force scheme of operations and maneuver.
Acquisition Approach
The AIAMD program represents a shift from a traditional systemcentric weapon systems acquisition to a component-based acquisition approach. This component-based acquisition approach will provide the most efficient way to acquire and integrate the components of the incremental AIAMD architecture. Unlike traditional acquisition programs that focus primarily on the development of a single system or platform, the AIAMD program is structured to enable the development of an overarching SoS capability with all participating AMD components functioning interdependently to provide total operational capabilities not achievable by the individual element systems.
Program Status
The IAMD Project Office successfully achieved Milestone B (MS B) approval in December 2009 and was the first program to reach MS B under the new competitive prototyping policy. Northrop Grumman was selected as the prime contractor as a result of the competition. A subsequent contract was awarded to Raytheon to assist in the network enabling of the weapon systems. The program is progressing through engineering and manufacturing development. The next major review will be a series of component critical design reviews culminating in an AIAMD Program critical design review. The project office works closely with the combat developer and Training and Doctrine Command capability managers at Fort Sill to resolve questions and issues and ensure their complete understanding of the program design as it is developed.
Design Concept: Enterprise Architecture
Historically, weapon and sensor system developments have relied on tightly-coupled, vendor-unique, proprietary, closed systems in order to meet their performance requirements. The result has been systems with exceptional capabilities that are difficult to maintain, evolve and modernize. This issue is further exacerbated by the inclusion of proprietary software and data inhibiting the government’s ability to cost-effectively manage the system’s life cycle. Advances in computing capacity, information technology, and communication bandwidth and latency now make it possible to integrate these stovepipe systems to create an operationally effective, integrated system of systems.
In order to comply with the government’s modular open systems approach initiative and the AIAMD open architecture computing environment guidance document, the IBCS contractor is implementing a non-proprietary enterprise architecture and software approach. The enterprise architecture is not the software architecture of the components, but how the components interact. The intent of this approach is to maintain the established component interaction structures while individual software components are added and deleted. The enterprise architecture is driven by information and network standards, not individual software components. The IBCS integration strategy is not to view the system as an integration of existing weapons and sensors or other software components in a point-to-point fashion, but to integrate components into an Enterprise Integration Bus (EIB)—a data architecture that enables sensor/weapon integration. Information flows onto or off the EIB from anonymous publishers and subscribers, thereby maintaining loose coupling and well-defined modularity in an extensible, flexible architecture.
The EIB is depicted as a set of information pipelines that software components (red boxes) can publish information to or draw information from (subscribe to). The actual pipelines themselves are aggregates of certain information categories. The data definitions for information on the bus are conceptually independent from the producers and consumers, making the software components more self-contained, modular and replaceable.
Virtual Machine Approach
IBCS development will maximize the utilization of non-developmental item (NDI)/government furnished equipment software in order to reduce development efforts and cost, maximize supportability, minimize life cycle cost, and minimize unique training needs. The design uses a Virtual Machine (VM) approach to integrate NDI into the architecture.
The NDIs are brought into the architecture with their native operating system by means of virtual machines. The VM-based NDI can expose its native warfighter machine interface (WMI), thereby retaining its native capabilities without compromise and at minimal cost. In addition, adaptors are built to expose information from the NDI on the EIB. EIB information can be used by other IBCS software components to enhance or provide other value-added functionality. The IBCS CWMI can use this information to display in conjunction with the native WMI, thereby integrating it into the more comprehensive display environment. The VM makes it possible to accommodate various NDI components without devoting unique hardware/operating system to the application. As more applications migrate to a thin client approach where the WMIs are not as tightly coupled into the functional processing, more information can be brought to the EIB for direct access by the CWMI, thereby making a migration path for a more integrated fire control environment.
IBCS Software
Eight IBCS common software modules (CSMs) are in development in accordance with the Software Domain Description Document (SD3) and Common Warfighter Machine Interface (CWMI) Style Guide. The SD3 provides descriptions of the IBCS from a software perspective and logical software decomposition that spans the AIAMD architecture. The CWMI Style Guide defines a common look and feel for the user interface based on usability experiments conducted with soldiers in the field, allowing them to test the prototype user interface components and collect qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate operator preferences. By following the CWMI Style Guide, software developers will be able to improve and standardize user interfaces for the warfighter, which should significantly increase operator efficiency and safety, decrease operator errors, minimize training needs, and add substantive strategic advantage in combat. The IBCS CSM software components are being designed for strategic reuse to include preplanned variation mechanisms.
AIAMD SoS is designed for the future and will provide the Army AMD commanders and soldiers with a single air and missile defense mission command capability—all echelons, all systems. ♦