
DATE: Wednesday, October 22, 1997           TAG: 9710210394

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SERIES: FUTURE OF THE FLEET

        COMMUNICATION

        The Cold War's end, advanced gadgetry and a new breed of sailor have

        upended the assumptions that have guided the Navy for decades. Each

        Wednesday through November, The Virginian-Pilot's Military Team will

        offer up a vision of the seagoing service of the early 21st century. 

SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: ABOARD THE MOUNT WHITNEY          LENGTH:  318 lines

CHANGING THE STYLE OF WAR

The phone rang in his cabin a few minutes into Vice Adm. Vern Clark's evening ``tabletop brief'' with two dozen other officer-warriors aboard this command ship of the 2nd Fleet. Clark swiveled in his chair to hear the news.

``Sir, the Koronan Army . . . is attacking the 41st Mechanized Brigade of Kartuna from two positions,'' the vice admiral's flag secretary reported from across the room. Clark nodded, then seized the moment.

``OK, if we get an affirmation of that, we are going to roll here,'' he declared, stretching out his long arms, then clenching a fist under his jaw. ``We'd better get moving. We're inside his cycle.''

The ``cycle'' was the enemy's anticipated step-by-step decisions over the starting days of the war. The challenge for Clark's task force was to strike down its foe just as it was beginning to move.

Within hours, Navy cruisers, destroyers and subs launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at key outposts of the invading force. That helped clear the way for a massive Navy and Air Force bombing attack that short-circuited the main thrusts of the enemy's campaign.

After a joint mine-clearing operation, American ground forces swept ashore a week later to mop up the bedraggled Koronan foot soldiers. The war was over. There had been only a handful of American casualties.

It was all pretend, of course. Kartuna and Korona were created by the scripters of an elaborate Joint Task Force Exercise orchestrated twice a year by Clark and his training staff at the Norfolk-based 2nd Fleet.

The three-week scenario off the Virginia and Carolina coast helps prepare deploying carrier battle groups and amphibious forces for real-life threats in the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.

For the decision-makers under Clark's tutelage, there are few more-intense experiences short of a real shooting war. ``He really keeps them under the gun,'' said Rear Adm. Stephen H. Baker, commander of the Navy's Operational Test and Evaluation Force. ``Those guys are lean, mean, steely-eyed killers when they deploy.''

But if the recent exercise is any indication, the ``killers'' of tomorrow's Navy will be much different from those of yesteryear. More and more, leaders such as Clark are measuring their forces not so much by how well they shoot guns or missiles, drop bombs or maneuver ships, but by how effectively they operate as a link in a vast and ever-growing communications network.

``If I can maximize the enemy's weaknesses with the better use of information . . . then I win,'' Clark said.

In the new military order, battlespace has become ``infosphere.'' Dominate it - use computers, satellites and other rapidly advancing technologies to beat your enemy at acquiring, distributing and processing information - and you've won the war. So the thinking goes.

Some refer to this emerging style of doing battle as ``network-centric warfare.''

Vice Adm. Arthur K. Cebrowski, generally regarded as the Navy's top futurist, calls it the next revolution in military affairs. He has said that in coming decades, it will have profound effects on the culture of the Navy as ships, subs, airplanes and their weapons become push-button ``peripherals'' in the war-fighting arsenal, whose heart is a colossally powerful communications network.

Baker, whose job is to evaluate emerging technologies, predicts that over the next 15 years, new visual-display systems will enable ``a battle group commander who's off the coast of China, Bosnia or Iraq - name your hot spot of the world - to see all the players on the chessboard in a three-dimensional manner.''

The value of all this? Advocates say it cuts through ``the fog of war.'' By making it easier and quicker to distribute and digest information, they say, even an outgunned force can use its knowledge advantage to beat its opponent to punch after punch.

``It's a force multiplier, simple as that,'' said Cmdr. Don Pacetti, former communications officer for the 2nd Fleet. ``You build a battle plan and generate an operational tempo that . . . lets you apply pressure at his weak points before he can react.''

Navy leaders such as Clark describe this use of the information advantage as getting inside the enemy's decision cycle - which is why on an afternoon in late August, the vice admiral was jaunty about the performance of the joint task force he had led into mock battle the night before.

Over the previous few days, Clark had prodded his commanders - among them Rear Adm. Michael G. Mullen, commander of the carrier George Washington's battle group - to develop several alternatives for air attacks in the first 24 hours of the conflict.

Each would be based on a different course of action by the invading enemy. Each would be tailored to deliver a maximum trumping of the various anticipated enemy courses.

For Clark, this was no make-work experiment.

He wanted to capitalize on improvements in the distribution of intelligence information and better integration of the radars and other sensors used by members of the task force. He knew that the task force's computing power, satellite communications networks and a new secret Internet homepage made it possible to update an air campaign plan and get the information to the participants faster than ever.

In the Guidance Apportionment and Targeting center, Clark's prodding strained relations among the Air Force and Navy pilots assigned to help develop the air campaigns. Clustered around a big green chalkboard in a large desk-filled room, they argued quietly - and gestured loudly - as they hashed out the plans. ``Food fight,'' one flier said, nodding in the pilots' direction.

``Most of them had never done this before, never even seen it, never thought about doing this before,'' Clark said of his air commanders. ``In fact, there were several people who said you couldn't do it.''

But by doing so, ``we raised the bar significantly,'' he said. ``In a crisis situation, this kind of contingency planning . . . is what war-fighting leaders are supposed to do.''

A folksy, bespectacled 53-year-old, Clark has earned a reputation as one of the most forceful intellects of the Navy's post-Cold War era. He made it clear he is convinced of the value of what he calls ``information operations.''

By using its information advantage to hit an enemy with overwhelming precision, he contended, it will be possible for the U.S. military to dramatically cut casualties.

``People forget we lost 408,000 people in World War II,'' Clark said. ``Four hundred and eight thousand: an incredible number.'' Today, he said, ``we go into operations with the objective of not losing a soul. We don't go into it thinking anymore, `OK, what can I afford to lose?' ''

There are economic implications, as well.

Using information technologies to integrate their units more effectively, Clark said, the Navy and other services will be able to achieve ``overwhelming force'' with fewer people and weapons.

That will strengthen America's economic power, he said, because ``warfare is ultimately about economics. The nations with the economic power to sustain are the ones that come out victorious.''

Not everybody is so enthusiastic about an infosphere-dominated future.

``Unless we watch ourselves, we can develop a mind-set that with all the technologies . . . we have, no one can touch us,'' retired Rear Adm. Leonard Picotte, a longtime amphibious officer, warned at a recent U.S. Naval Institute symposium in Virginia Beach.

When casualties occur in conflict, he said, ``we may find . . . we don't have the political will to stick in there and win.''

Some worry that the Navy and other services are building systems to defeat high-tech enemies when their foes might turn out to be low-tech.

``In Somalia, we ran into that,'' said Seymour Deitchman, a consultant to the National Research Council's Naval Studies Board. There, he said, ``the enemy passed messages with drums and our force didn't get the messages.'' The U.S. military ran into similar experiences against ``a lot of primitive technology'' in Vietnam, he noted.

Others think the U.S. military faces an ``information overload'' that may cripple its ability to act.

In a more technologically focused environment, the Navy is turning to managers and administrators instead of leaders, lamented Cmdr. Gerard Roncolato, commanding officer of the Mayport, Fla.-based guided missile destroyer The Sullivans.

``We encourage people who do well at executing established procedures but when faced with uncertainties, unexpected circumstances, unanticipated conditions are unable . . . to assess what has to be done and . . . act on that,'' Roncolato said.

At Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, in a low-slung stucco-like building ringed by barbed wire, Capt. Martin Sherrard spends his whole workday dealing with risks of the infosphere era.

Sherrard heads the Fleet Information Warfare Center, a job that puts him in charge of a new type of ``anti'' warfare. In this case, it's protecting the Navy's computers from invasions - by everybody from thrill-seeking hackers to cyber-terrorists.

As it relies more on its technological advantage, Sherrard explained, the Navy will have more to lose than any of its foes from a penetration or failure of its networks.

In search of unauthorized entries, his highly skilled technicians use sensors implanted in ships' computer systems to analyze strokes on keyboards. Another group studies the latest viruses that have invaded Navy computers.

The overall focus is on eliminating ``vulnerabilities,'' said Sherrard, who spent time on the George Washington during the recent exercise as part of an evaluation team.

Military analysts say that information warfare threats will grow to include attacks on the satellites upon which the Navy and other services are depending for transmitting information.

And at a House National Security Committee hearing in July, several current and former Pentagon officials warned that by detonating a nuclear bomb at a very high altitude, an enemy could generate an electromagnetic pulse that would cripple the U.S. communications infrastructure.

One speaker said the United States is inviting a ``Pearl Harbor-class'' catastrophe by not devoting more attention to the threat of such a blast.

Look inside your heart,'' Cmdr. Craig Lilly, 2nd Fleet's chief meteorologist, boomed out over the loudspeaker in the Mount Whitney's Joint Operations Center. ``If you don't need to be here, please consider looking at it from another location.''

``It'' was the daily commander's brief headed by Clark. Aboard his command ship during the task force exercise, the late-afternoon event was the hottest ticket around. Sixty people crowded into a space about the size of a large living room that was jammed with dozens of computer terminals. On the front wall were four large projection screens with multicolored maps of ships, planes and ground forces.

Here was where all the key bits of information gathered up by satellites, radars and other sensors were integrated into real-time, big-picture displays. One such display melds information that only three years ago was split among 34 different computer screens.

For the most part, the computers are off-the-shelf, not custom-made. They use everyday civilian software programs like Microsoft PowerPoint or Netscape Navigator that are adapted for military use.

Each display - whether it be a chart, graph or map - is designed to be as easy as possible to digest. ``That way, the puzzle fits and I can personally process it,'' Clark said.

Military people call what Clark strives for ``situational awareness,'' or SA for short. The faster you get it and the more complete it is, the more time you have to consider your options and then come up with a plan. That's why the increasing ``connectivity'' available to Navy ships, particularly command platforms like the Mount Whitney, has become so important.

``Admiral's in the JOC,'' a petty officer called out, and in strode Clark. He slid into a high-backed chair. A tiny camera hanging from the ceiling captured his image and fed it via satellite to a half-dozen other exercise participants as far away as Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. Clark could see the others, as well.

Such face-to-face videoconferences were impossible five years ago, but are becoming routine on ships like the Mount Whitney, thanks to huge leaps in the ``bandwidth'' available to them via satellite.

Pacetti said that, five years ago, in the Mount Whitney's presatellite days, its data circuits had the capacity to move about 750 bits of information per second - enough for no more than written messages. In today's digital environment, its pipeline is about 2.5 million bits wide - big enough not only to conduct multiple videoconferences, but to simultaneously send and receive detailed maps and photographs and make 60 telephone calls to anywhere in the world. The 2nd Fleet staffers have e-mail and Internet access, as well.

Navy officials say the 636-foot ship's data-link capacity could double or even triple over the next several years. They say such advances will better position Navy command ships to be operations centers for future conflicts, even if a U.S. joint task force is led by an Air Force or Army general.

``If you have to go ashore to set up your architecture, it can take you weeks. But we carry our connectivity . . . on our backs like a turtle,'' Pacetti said. ``It's so good we can stay back away from a hot shooting war . .

On Day 8 of the recent exercise, the communications circuits were particularly busy.

The scripters of the exercise were shoving their ``bad guy'' planes and ships into the face of the battle group, trying to provoke Mullen's forces into shooting first. Meanwhile, a couple of enemy subs kept ducking in and out of detection.

Capt. Craig Patten, 2nd Fleet's training director, oversaw the maneuvering. Communicating by e-mail, phone and videoconference to an exercise control group at Dam Neck in Virginia Beach, Patten slowed down or sped up the computer-assisted action. Throughout the three weeks, Patten's group would introduce 27,000 ``injects'' into the exercise - everything from changing the course of an enemy sub to depositing in the intelligence center of one of the battle group's ships an intercepted enemy radio message.

It was all part of ``stressing the seams'' of the battle group, Patten explained. More and more, he noted, that means testing how well vast amounts of information are sorted, analyzed and acted upon.

``Our challenge remains to sift out what I call the gems,'' Patten said. ``Where is the one guy or the two guys that are going to get through and bite me?''

On this day, such threats were obviously on Clark's mind. As the head trainer, he knew what was going to happen and when. But he had to step back and, for the battle group's benefit, push the Navy forces to fill gaps in their knowledge.

``So we really don't know what we've got, huh?'' he said after one intelligence officer's hedge-filled update on the whereabouts of the enemy's subs. ``How old's our data?'' he interjected during another presentation.

Over time, Clark said, the fog will be easier to cut as the military branches operate together more effectively. By sharing communications networks and radar pictures, they can maximize each other's advantages, he said, and cut the cost of arming for battle.

But as the recent exercise illustrated, joint operations are still far easier said than done.

For several days, 12th Air Force officers aboard the Mount Whitney couldn't get their tactical phones to connect to their base in Arizona. The ship and the air base, it turned out, had incompatible versions of the same commercial communications software.

The problem shone a light on a problem that Baker said is growing as each of the service branches relies more and more on commercial off-the-shelf technologies.

``With our checkbook being rather small nowadays . . . we can't buy on upgrade and put it on every ship and every airplane,'' he said. As software matures, he said, ``we have to make sure that it's also inter-operable.''

Pacetti said such an experience teaches the importance of redundancy in communications. Increasingly, it will be vital to maintain multiple channels for transporting data as the Navy and other services are networked more closely, he said.

All in all, however, he and other current and former 2nd Fleet staffers said the biggest issue facing military leaders in the infosphere will be learning to control the spigot.

In the future, individual soldiers or Marines will carry cameras and microphones that could be connected by satellite all the way to the commander in chief, said Maj. Kelly Morningstar, 2nd Fleet's Army liaison officer. ``You could have the president sitting in his office telling you, `Don't shoot that guy. Get that guy behind the tree.' ''

What will develop is ``scalable granularity,'' Pacetti predicted. For most things, a three-star joint task force commander like Clark will want only the best possible big picture. For some, such as an embassy evacuation or a behind-the-lines rescue of an aviator, he'll want as detailed a picture as he can get.

Real-time video would have saved Clark some anxiety one night during the recent exercise, when an Air Force special forces aircraft was diverted to ``rescue'' a sailor posing as a Navy flier lost at sea. Though thoroughly scripted to limit risks, it was nonetheless a daring operation.

``It's the big wide ocean out there and guys were going to jump out of an airplane and take a boat with them, and there's a guy in the water down there to save,'' Clark recalled. ``And I looked at that and said, `Boy, I hope this works.' ''

That it did was a testament to advances in links between the services. Nearly all communications in the round robin necessary to complete the rescue, including the call to the Air Force MC-130, were made via a satellite network.

The success offered a glimpse into why Navy leaders such as Clark are so enthusiastic about a more information-intensive future.

``I'll tell you: That was the ultimate in job satisfaction,'' he said, beaming. ``Pretty neat. Pretty neat.'' MEMO: Staff writer Dale Eisman contributed to this report. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

NHAT MYER

The Virginian-Pilot

Capt. Craig Patten stands in the Joint Operations Center aboard the

Mount Whitney, where he helps

NHAT MYER

The Virginian-Pilot

A glimpse of future "jointness": Navy Chief Petty Officer Rich

Harris, an operations specialist, relaxes with Air Force Maj. Brian

Fenelon, left, and Army Maj. Kelly Morningstar after an exercise.

NHAT MYER

The Virginian-Pilot

Vice Adm. Vern Clark poises for a ship-to-ship-to-shore