Aeronautics is closely involved in the development of Network Centric Warfare (NCW), or Network Centric Operations (NCO), a newly emerging military doctrine that aims to exploit technical advances in information technology and telecommunications to improve situational awareness and the speed of decision-making.
The vision for Network Centric Warfare is to provide seamless access to timely information to all war fighters and decision-makers at every echelon in the military hierarchy. This enables all elements, including individual infantry soldiers, ground vehicles, command centers, aircraft and naval vessels, to share the information collected to be combined into a coherent, accurate picture of the battlefield.
Having rapid access to reliable situational awareness and a relevant common operational picture results in faster strategic planning and more effective tactical decisions. Targets can be more rapidly detected and intercepted, and tragic “friendly fire” events can be more successfully avoided.
Aeronautics develops and supplies many of the advanced systems and communications setups, which form key elements for achieving the Network Centric Warfare goal, including:
- Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) sensors, mounted on manned or unmanned airborne, ground or seagoing platforms. These ISR sensors may operate in the visible, infrared or radar spectra.
- Control stations for the operation of unmanned platforms and distribution of tactical data.
- Reliable communications links.
- Sophisticated control software interface, enabling all tactical elements to be located on continuously updated digital map.
Integration of surveillance video, from manned or unmanned ISR platforms, with digital map.
- Man-portable or vehicle installed Remote Video Terminals (RVT), for direct reception of ISR video and telemetry by mobile ground forces
- Airborne Radio Frequency (RF) relay systems for range extension.
Central to the Network Centric Warfare concept is system compatibility and interoperability. The different elements in an Network Centric Warfare system must be able to interface and ‘talk’ to each other if the system is to be effective. Aeronautics achieves this through unified systems architecture, based on the outstanding UMAS™, a universal unit that combines all full flight control, navigation, payload control and communications functions on one 32-bit processor. The UMAS™ is featured in all Aeronautics’ ISR platforms and control stations.
