Training and education for network centric warfare : issues for New Zealand's Defence Force : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Defence and Strategic Studies at Massey University

The concept of Network centric warfare (NCW) is viewed as the next revolution in military affairs. Its introduction globally will necessarily affect the way the New Zealand Armed Forces operates in future conflicts. With the increasing use of digital technology in the military environment the need for and degree of increasing knowledge of Network Centric Warfare and its concepts must be explored.This country will have to combine its own definition and understanding of NCW into the framework of its Armed Force if it wants to continue to remain interoperable with technologically advanced coalition forces. This thesis looks into the issues and solutions which have been considered by other countries in their attempts to implement the NCW concept. It examines in detail how issues and solutions could be applied to New Zealand's attempt at NCW. Chapters One and Two define the academic processes which have been used in this study. They also give a brief introduction to the broad idea of Network Centric Warfare and its origins. Chapter Three examines in detail the complex evolution of the concept of Network Centric Warfare to its present state. In particular, it looks at how the events of September 11th 2001 have redefined warfare and the impact of that revolution on the traditional NCW concept. This chapter also focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of NCW which have now been proven through the experiences of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. These two conflicts have been described as the first information technology wars of the 21st century. Chapter Four focuses on how the concept of Network Centric Warfare has and will affect the specifics of personnel and make-up of the New Zealand Defence Force, as it makes the transition from a Platform centric to a Network Centric approach in warfare. The special focus in this chapter is on the New Zealand Army. The concepts of the ethos and cultural identity of a force are introduced here, with a view to revealing the influences that the adaptation of NCW methods and techniques can have on the organisation of that force. The discussion concludes that the introduction of NCW can have profound and permanent effect on a force's ethos and identity. This chapter also considers the influence of technology can help in the recruitment and retention of highly skilled people in the Army. Chapter Five shows how the adoption of the concept of Network Centric warfare also has the potential to fundamentally change the way in which higher level policy and doctrine are introduced and modified in the Armed Forces. This chapter looks at how future infrastructure and policies will need to have increased flexibility built into them from the start in order to embrace the demands of NCW for rapid developments in information technology and force-wide diffusion of such developments. Chapter Six discusses a third important consequence of adopting the concept of Network Centric Warfare. Namely, how the introduction of NCW will affect both training and education of service personnel. In particular, it examines how the change from Platform Centric to Network Centric forms of warfare puts changing demands on the skill sets and needs required of service personnel. Examples are given of the new skill sets needed in order for them to work effectively in a NCW environment. Chapter Seven discusses the formation of a new training branch of service which will need to be set up to accommodate the new methods and skills that NCW brings to the battlefield. Included in this chapter are the imperatives of Information Warfare, Electronic Warfare, and Computer Network Operations for such a branch. Alongside Air, Land, Sea and Space NCW brings with it the creation of a fifth battle space. This battle-space is cyberspace which encompasses the electromagnetic sphere, the Internet and all manner of Wide and Local Area Networks (WANs and LANs). Chapter Eight returns to the issue of training and education introduced in Chapter Six, but focuses specifically on the use of simulation techniques and technologies. Such techniques will be required in order to help train soldiers to work effectively and efficiently under NCW. Why other training methods won't work well given an NCW environment, and why simulation technologies will work, is explained with examples of each. This chapter argues in particular that simulation provides the most effective training in the unified data architecture that will be needed to provide cross platform capability and inter and intra service solutions in Network Centric Warfare. Examples of data solutions are provided to help explain the underlying simulation concepts and methods. Chapter Nine is the conclusion of this study. It reviews the results of this thesis and provides recommendations on the implementation of the Network Centric Warfare environment required in the New Zealand Armed Forces

Unmanned systems interoperability standards

Over the past several years, there has been rapid growth in the development and employment of unmanned systems in military and civilian endeavors. Some military organizations have expressed concern that these systems are being fielded without sufficient capabilities to interoperate with existing systems. Despite recognition of this requirement, interoperability efforts remain diverse and disjointed across the United States and internationally. The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Monterey, California, was sponsored by the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise (JGRE) in Fiscal Year 2016 (FY16) to explore (1) enhancement of robotics education; (2) improved representation of robotic systems in combat simulations; and (3) interoperability standards for military robotics systems. This report discusses work performed in FY16 to identify current and emerging interoperability standards for unmanned systems, including interactions of robotic systems with command and control (C2) and simulation systems. The investigation included assessment of the applicability of standardization activities in the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) in its development of the Phase 1 Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) and currently in-progress Command and Control Systems - Simulation Systems Interoperation (C2SIM) standardization efforts. The report provides a recommended approach, standards, activities, and timetable for a cross-system communications roadmap.Secretary of Defense Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise, 3090 Defense Pentagon, Room 5C756, Washington, DC 20301Office of the Secretary of Defense Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

U.S. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS) and Network Centric Warfare (NCW) impacts on combat aviation tactics from Gulf War I through 2007 Iraq

Unmanned, aerial vehicles (UAVs) are an increasingly important element of many modern militaries. Their success on battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the globe has driven demand for a variety of types of unmanned vehicles. Their proven value consists in low risk and low cost, and their capabilities include persistent surveillance, tactical and combat reconnaissance, resilience, and dynamic re-tasking. This research evaluates past, current, and possible future operating environments for several UAV platforms to survey the changing dynamics of combat-aviation tactics and make recommendations regarding UAV employment scenarios to the Turkish military. While UAVs have already established their importance in military operations, ongoing evaluations of UAV operating environments, capabilities, technologies, concepts, and organizational issues inform the development of future systems. To what extent will UAV capabilities increasingly define tomorrow's missions, requirements, and results in surveillance and combat tactics? Integrating UAVs and concepts of operations (CONOPS) on future battlefields is an emergent science. Managing a transition from manned- to unmanned and remotely piloted aviation platforms involves new technological complexity and new aviation personnel roles, especially for combat pilots. Managing a UAV military transformation involves cultural change, which can be measured in decades.http://archive.org/details/usunmannedaerial109454211Turkish Air Force authors.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Malicious Digital Penetration of United States Weaponized Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems: A National Security Perspective Concerning the Complexity of Military UAVs and Hacking

The United States’ (US) military unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has seen increased usage under the post 9/11 military engagements in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and within American borders. However, the very digital networks controlling these aircrafts are now enduring malicious intrusions (hacking) by America’s enemies. . The digital intrusions serve as a presage over the very digital networks the US relies upon to safeguard its national security and interests and domestic territory. The complexity surrounding the hacking of US military UAVs appears to be increasing, given the advancements in digital networks and the seemingly inauspicious nature of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. Being most victimized by malicious digital intrusions, the US continues its military components towards growing dependence upon digital networks in advancing warfare and national security and interests. Thus, America’s netcentric warfare perspectives may perpetuate a chaotic environment where the use of military force is the sole means of safeguarding its digital networks

UAV generalized longitudinal model for autopilot controller designs

This paper is deposited under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial International Licence 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0, and any reuse is allowed in accordance with the terms outlined by the licence. To reuse the AAM for commercial purposes, permission should be sought by contacting [email protected]. For the sake of clarity, commercial usage would be considered as, but not limited to: o Copying or downloading AAMs for further distribution for a fee; o Any use of the AAM in conjunction with advertising; o Any use of the AAM by for promotional purposes by for-profit organisations; o Any use that would confer monetary reward, commercial gain or commercial exploitation.This paper aims to overcome the main obstacle to compare the merits of the different control strategies for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to assess autopilot performances. Up to now, the published studies of control strategies have been carried out over disperse models, thus being complicated, if not impossible, to compare the merits of each proposal. The authors present a worked benchmark for autopilots studies, consisting of generalized models obtained by merging UAVs’ parameters gathered from selected literature (journals) with other parameters directly obtained by the authors to include some relevant UAVs whose models are not provided in the literature. To obtain them it has been used a dedicated software (from U.S. Air Force).The proposed models have been constructed by averaging both the main aircraft defining parameters (model derivatives) and pole-zero locations of longitudinal transfer functions. The suitability of the used methodologies has been checked from their capability to fit the short period and the phugoid modes. Previous analytical model arrangement has been required to match a uniform set of parameters, as the inner state variables are neither the same along the different published models nor between the additional models the authors have here contributed. Besides, moving models between the space state representation and transfer function is not just a simple averaging process, as neither the parameters nor the model orders are the same in the different published works. So, the junction of the models to a common set of parameters requires some residual’s computation and transient responses assessment (even Fourier analysis has been included to preserve the dominance of the phugoid) to keep the main properties of the models. The least mean squares technique has been used to have better fittings between SISO model parameters with state–space ones.Both the SISO (Laplace) and state-space models for the longitudinal transfer function of an “averaged” fixed-wing UAV are proposed. Research limitations/implications. More complicated situations, such as strong wind conditions, need another kind of models, usually based on finite element method simulation. These particular models apply fluid dynamics to study aerostructural aircraft aspects, such as flutter and other aerolastic aspects, the behavior under icing conditions or other distributed parameter problems. Even some models aim to control other aspects than the autopilot, such as the trajectory prediction. However, these models are not the most suitable for the basic UAV autopilot design (early design), so they are outside the objective of this paper. Obviously, the here-considered UAVs are not all the existing ones, but the number is large enough to consider the result as a reliable and realistic representation. The presented study may be seen as a stepping stone, allowing to include other UAVs in future works.The proposed models can be used as benchmarks, or as a previous step to produce improved benchmarks, in order to have a common and realistic scenario the compare the benefits of the different control actions in UAV autopilots continuously presented in the published research. A work with the scope of the presented one, merging model parameters from literature with other (often referred in papers and websites) whose parameters have been obtained by the authors has been never publishedPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A teleoperated unmanned rotorcraft flight test technique

NASA and the U.S. Army are jointly developing a teleoperated unmanned rotorcraft research platform at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center. This effort is intended to provide the rotorcraft research community an intermediate step between wind tunnel rotorcraft studies and full scale flight testing. The research vehicle is scaled such that it can be operated in the NASA Langley 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel or be flown freely at an outside test range. This paper briefly describes the system's requirements and the techniques used to marry the various technologies present in the system to meet these requirements. The paper also discusses the status of the development effort

Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots

This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan

Unmanned Systems Sentinel / 11 January 2016

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited