...its Network Centric Warfare Roadmap a blueprint for achieving a fully network-enabled defense force by 2020.
Rear Adm. Matt Tripovich, the department’s head of capability systems, launched the update at the Australian International Air Show here March 21...
Australia has no “NCW project” as such, Tripovich said at the launch. Instead, the original identified some 48 major projects already in the pipeline that, collectively, will deliver the Australian Defence Force’s network-enabled capability. Together these are worth nearly 28 billion Australian dollars ($22 billion) and range from the acquisition of airborne early warning aircraft and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) to tactical data links, satellite communications systems and amphibious landing ships with integrated command-and-control suites.
A key difference in the new edition of the plan...is the inclusion of the government’s Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation (RPDE) Agency...the agency spends up to 20 million Australian dollars each year funding research and development and studies by combined industry-Defence Department teams...
Some 83 Australian defense companies have joined the agency.
Among its early successes:
---development of a low-cost networking system that allows Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) AP-3C Orion patrol planes flying over Iraq to download surveillance data to handheld computers used by armored and surveillance units on the ground.
--The Coastwatch program will see Surveillance Australia, an Adelaide subsidiary of Britain’s Cobham, operate a fleet of 10 Bombardier Dash 8-200 and -300 surveillance aircraft. Their 10-year, 1.1 billion Australian dollar contract comes into effect in 2008 and will be the largest civil airborne surveillance operation in the world.
--two surveillance helicopters, along with a fixed ground station located in Canberra and two mobile ground stations.
The SIM (Surveillance Information Management) will fuse data from the Dash 8s’ Raytheon SeaVue radars and Wescam WX20 forward-looking infrared sensors. This will be downloaded via satellite data links to the ground stations to be distributed to Coastwatch and Navy patrol boats and other users such as the Australian Federal Police and Australia’s quarantine, fisheries protection and drug enforcement authorities.
--a ruggedized Personal Digital Assistant, a helmet-mounted monocular (one-eye) display to view maps and data, a navigation system and a weapon-mounted fire-control system. ...Some or all of these components would be suitable for inclusion in the Australian Army’s Soldier Combat System. Project Land 125...to equip infantry soldiers and armored vehicles with a suite of sensors, communications equipment and displays.
Future phases of this project were recently combined with an upgrade to the Army’s Battlespace Command Support System program..
-- a multimillion-dollar contract to build the ground-based control and imagery exploitation system for the RAAF’s future unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)...the RAAF plans to acquire a high-altitude long-endurance UAV system worth an estimated 1.5 billion Australian dollars to carry out extended surveillance missions over the ocean, land and coastal areas. The RAAF in January signed a pact with the U.S. Navy to collaborate on the development of a Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS)..
.. the RAAF plans to develop its own suite of ground-based command, control and communications systems, a package dubbed the Integrated Ground Environment...the deal would likely be worth “hundreds rather than tens” of millions of Australian dollars".
--a Maritime Patrol Aircraft variant of the Airbus A319 airliner as a replacement for the RAAF’s fleet of 18 AP-3C Orion patrol aircraft.. The RAAF plans to buy up to nine aircraft, worth an estimated 4.5 billion Australian dollars.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2641848&C=asiapac | Defense News
~What happens to all these multi-billion dollar systems and networks if the space junk the NASA Orbital Debris Project is dutifully keeping tabs on begins to interfere with 'ground-based commands'?
Not a problem? They'll just retrofit every system through a series of blimps, 'permanently' flying UAVs or heavily guarded cell-phone like towers to cover all of Australia and far out to sea?
You can't put an actual price on network centric warfare: CoastWatch, Surveillance Information Management, Broad Area Maritime Surveillance; Integrated Ground Environment; the Australian Army’s Soldier Combat System, or Battlespace Command Support now can you?
Ruggedized?
Posted by Stubbornson at March 27, 2007 04:39 AM