Under the Ships Signal Exploitation Equipment (SSEE) program, and similar programs for its subsurface and airborne platforms, the US Navy is fielding a family of communications electronic support (ES) sensors based on new architectural principals. These sensors are built from fully commercial hardware and digital interconnection fabrics. Key sensor capabilities are software-based, where this software is developed using Software Product Line Practices , . These practices have allowed for frequent hardware technology insertions while maintaining full reuse of a single software baseline across platforms. Electronic Attack (EA) systems being fielded today have not yet adopted these architectural principals. Instead, they are characterized by long-lead, purpose-built hardware and software. The objectives of this Command and Control Communications Systems Denial proposal are formulate an EA appliqu design that fits within these emerging ES systems, and to formulate the weapon control mechanisms needed to allow complex target signal activity to be observed and attacked with precision. This last step is key to giving the IO weapon operator the ability to achieve specific effects ranging from denial of an entire class of activity to deception of a specific entity during a specific phase of military activity.
Benefit: The Basic Phase I effort will result in a detailed design for an electronic attack (EA) equipment appliqu that conforms to the architectural principals of the current generation ship-board electronic support (ES) sensors. The effort will also result in detailed design concept of a tasking and control mechanism for this EA capability. Although this weapon control design will be built on the specialized visualization approaches that exist for several very different target signal classes, it will apply a single, coherent API model to them all, allowing IO users to select target entities or events as graphical objects from those displays, and transforming these selections into precise attack parameters. It will map these parameters into the CORBA, XML, and DBMS infrastructure of the host ES/EA system. If selected, the optional prototype and demonstration (Task 5) will provide a quick test and operational model of this design concept. This design concept will be the starting point for the Phase II development of an IO control segment addressing the highest priority C2 targets signals. Successful completion of Phase II of this SBIR will result in low-cost EA capability that integrates architecturally and operationally with hundreds of fielded ES sensors, providing a widely deployed, persistent, and network-enabled IO capability. Such C2 Denial capability will have a large and immediate potential for sales across a range of customers, primarily because it will be directly tied to three major DoD-wide imperatives: - The widespread deployment of communications ES sensors based on commercial hardware and software product line practices. - The tremendous push within Navy, DoD and allied or coalition countries to place IO on an equal footing with other weapon types. - The demand that all future sensors and weapons be network enabled under constructs such as FORCEnet and the DoD Global Information Grid (GIG). The direct market for integration into systems already under contract or part of stated inventory objectives will be over 200 systems for the US Navy, Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Marines. Near-term opportunities include systems and platforms for which concept development is underway. These represent a combined potential of another 500 systems for US, UK, Australian and Canadian services. Subject to export authorization, subsets of this capability could also be provided to allied and coalition partner services.
Keywords: denial, denial, Command and Control Networks, Information operations, Sensor Tasking, mission planning, information warfare, Deception
