Navy Wants to Weave LCS, Unmanned Systems, Subs into New Battle Network

[nitpicker]

https://news.usni.org/2016/12/12/navy-wants-to-weave-lcs-unmanned-systems-subs-into-new-battle-network

Navy Wants to Weave LCS, Unmanned Systems, Subs into New Battle Network

By: Megan Eckstein
December 12, 2016 5:35 PM

The Navy is looked to expand the web of connections currently linking its ships, planes and weapons to include submarines, smaller ships and unmanned systems to create a warfighting network that would be challenging for an adversary to bring down, the Navy’s surface warfare director (OPNAV N96) said. Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall said that the Navy is comfortable with its Aegis Combat System and the Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) construct built around it, but that the service would have to expand this idea to keep up with global threats.
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This means bringing in submarines, small ships like the Littoral Combat Ship or even the Mk VI patrol boat, and unmanned boats, along with new aircraft and sensors. NIFC-CA traditionally connects a ship with the Aegis Combat System, an E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft and weapons like the Standard Missile (SM) family of weapons.

Boxall told USNI News after his presentation that the addition of the over-the-horizon missile to the LCS is exciting because it helps extend the reach of the LCS ships individually and helps them take a more aggressive offensive posture, but it also fits in with this idea of a more netted Navy.

With the addition of over-the-horizon firing, “now you have that capability on a small ship, we’ve got to be able to make sure we can command and control and stay with it, so the network becomes part of that. So a sensor which can support that ship and that weapon needs to be good enough to keep that network robust, and so if we lose one sensor we have a way to back it up,” he said. One way to add redundancy and increase the robustness of this capability is to net the LCS, its MH-60R helicopter as the sensor, and the missile itself into other naval networks.

“Right now LCS is not a NIFC-CA-capable platform, but the concept that we use for NIFC-CA could be, whether we look at future unmanned air or even using existing helicopters that we have,” Boxall said.
“We have helicopters that are on LCS right now – our most capable MH-60R helicopter, and that’s got a very good over the horizon capability. So do we complement that, or is that the long-term answer?”

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