Making Net Ready Technologies Real for Rotorcraft

Network Centric Operations (NCO) and Net Ready technologies are commonly discussed in the context of future operations. Challenges are to determine which of these technologies make sense, and which can be affordably integrated to achieve desired improvements in mission effectiveness. This paper presents an approach to address these challenges including a detailed analysis on compliance with selected elements of the government’s Net Ready Key Performance Parameter (NR-KPP). The discussion will include: (a) Sources of requirements, (b) Technical approach, and (c) Compliance with the NR-KPP. Concepts are applicable to all tactical platforms, but examples in this paper will be on rotorcraft applications. Sources of requirements include military strategy documents, platform upgrade plans, and discussions with operational users. In addition, the Department of Defense provides requirements guidance on interoperability in the Global Information Grid. A System of Systems Engineering (SoSE) method will be presented. The technical approach involves application independence from communication equipment, middleware, and network processing hardware. Technologies to achieve this approach will also be discussed, and they include heterogeneous networking, advanced interoperable middleware, and applications of emerging network processing standards. The principal requirement for net-enabled tactical platforms is the NR-KPP, which contains four major areas of compliance: (a) Integrated architecture products, (b) Key Interface Profiles, (c) Information Assurance, and (d) Network Centric Operations and Warfare Reference Model (NCOW-RM). This paper contains a short discussion on these four areas of compliance. The NCOW-RM analysis includes a recommended subset of operational activities suitable for application to most tactical platforms. A proposed mapping of this subset of NCOW-RM operational activities and net centric attributes to various middleware modules will be presented as part of a suggested compliance approach.