TACOMA – The Boeing Co. hopes to be a big player in “net-centric” warfare, launched two years ago when a Special Forces operative used a hand-held global-positioning device and a laptop to guide B-52 strikes against terrorist positions in Afghanistan.
“Net-centric operations” allow ground forces to communicate through a computer web with airborne and other units. The technology enables front-line troops and commanders in the rear to get a true picture of the battlefield and shortens response time.
Boeing recently offered reporters access to a usually classified facility in suburban Virginia, where the company offered a 90-minute demonstration, The News Tribune of Tacoma reported.
In the series of simulated exercises, aircraft – F/A-18s, F-15s, EA-18s, unmanned aerial vehicles, command-and-control planes, tilt-motor V-22s, Apache and CH-47 helicopters – ground commanders, ship-borne commanders and others were linked for simulated attacks, defense against attacks and extraction of troops caught behind enemy lines.
“The capabilities are mind-boggling,” said Jim Albaugh, who heads Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems program.
“For many years it used to be about force. Now, it’s all about networks – who can see first, who can react first,” he said.
Chicago-based Boeing has invested $500 million to develop net-centric technology and the Pentagon is committed to a 21st-century fighting force. But there are skeptics.
“It’s a fine idea,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. “But will it work? The jury is still out.”
Thompson said the idea was an outgrowth of the dot-com boom of the early 1990s, and might have deflated like the boom itself.
“You could say we are getting ready to fight a dot-com war at a time when the enemy is more conventional,” he said. “It seems better suited to fighting countries rather than guerrillas. If we were fighting the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), it might be effective.”
In theory, Thompson said, net-centric operations can apply to any threat, from conventional warfare to terrorism. But he said results in Iraq, where insurgents strike without warning, have been “ambiguous.”
Other analysts agree.
“I’m not sure anyone knows where we are headed,” said Chris Hellman, with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C.
Hellman said net-centric operations offer commanders potential for a “situational awareness” previously out of reach. The system can serve as a “force multiplier” that allows commanders to focus the firepower of even a small contingent of troops.
“They could face data overload,” he said. “How much information is enough, how much is too much?”
Boeing acknowledges current limitations.
“What you saw in Iraqi Freedom combined with Afghanistan was the first net-centric warfare,” said Carl O’Berry, a vice president of Boeing’s defense team. “But it wasn’t robust enough. There were weaknesses.”
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