AI and C4ISR Interoperability in NATO Maritime Operations: Advancing Joint Capabilities for Multinational Defence
Most people haven’t experienced a maritime operations room during conflict, so it’s easy to anchor one’s thinking of this environment in Hollywood. This normally features disproportionately senior officers in a darkened CiC, staring at a video display that clearly shows the location and actions of the protagonists in bright, primary colours. Think Top Gun: Maverick, and you’ve got the idea!
In the movies, the clutter is removed and attention drawn to the data that matters, typically interspersed with live action from the scene. With such clarity, how can commanders make poor decisions? And yet, in the real world, making good and timely decisions is one of the illusive arts of command. Beyond Hollywood, however, the fog of war is real.
Even when the picture is clear, the arc of the “story” may not be. Have you ever lost at chess? Chess is the ultimate transparent battlefield and yet one can still be surprised by the opponent’s actions. There is no script and war, especially, does not follow a pre-determined narrative. Choices matter and these must be made on incomplete and imperfect information. Decide too soon and you might miss a vital piece of the jigsaw; wait too long and the opportunity, and the day, may be lost.
So how can industry help our maritime commanders with this art? How can we turn fiction into reality? We can provide tools that present a clearer and more complete picture, bringing to the fore that information which is the most vital at the time when a decision is needed most. This is not a trivial undertaking, especially in a multi-national Alliance like NATO. Let’s step through it.
First, we need to build the picture; to detect what is happening in the real world and then represent that in a model. Traditionally, the picture available to the commander would be developed primarily from the ship’s own sensors; linked together through a combat management system, which ingests data from each of these sensors and places them into a time-series of labelled data.
These sensors can be radars of various types, electro-optic devices, electronic warfare systems and so on. This data is augmented by other ships and aircraft, who pass their own tracks of real-world objects via tactical data links. These real-time systems produce tracks of sufficient quality and timeliness for targeting and control of the ship’s weapons. They also pass tracks into non or near-real-time systems to build a wider-area Recognised Maritime Picture. So far so good, but this architecture is designed for an era where the radius of tactical interest was tens of miles. The world has changed.
The recent actions in the Red Sea and elsewhere have shown that this radius has significantly expanded and extends across the traditional environmental seams. The immediate tactical picture must therefore be fused with a wide-area intelligence picture across multiple domains and amongst Joint, multi-national Forces. The output of this must allow decision making at greater ranges, synchronised across the NATO Task Force and layers of command. The ‘traditional’ approach to Command, Control, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) isn’t going to cut it.
There is an increased need for data integration and fusion from multiple sources, in various data formats with different labelling (and none); perhaps working to different time and geodesic synchronisations, and certainly at a variety of security classifications. The use of AI here is essential. Only with such techniques can we address the need to integrate data from such diverse sources as: satellites, drones, open-source databases, intelligence analysis, and the ship’s and Task Force’s own sensors to provide a comprehensive model of the operationally relevant world.
Such a picture must be assured for validity. There will always be errors but, also, the enemy will try and “spoof” us. This may be as obvious as jamming satellite navigation systems, or as sophisticated as a discrete cyber incursion into our networks. Sophisticated tools are needed to identify, neutralise and optimise against threats; reacting at machine speeds, not human ones, to safeguard the data.
The data and the compiled picture need to be communicated across the Task Force and the wider operational area. The nature of maritime networks is that they are bandwidth constrained, suffer from intermittent connectivity, and often significant latency; even before one considers the effect of a contested electromagnetic environment. Actively managing and dynamically reconfiguring data flows to make best use of the capacity of these networks is essential to avoid bottlenecks.
Increasingly, constellations of low earth orbit satellites can provide broadband connectivity; although sovereign means of assured communications are still required for critical tasks. AI enabled optimisation and dynamic reconfiguration of such networks can ensure reliable, secure and compatible data transfer between different NATO forces. This will become increasingly vital for maintaining interoperability.
Having built and shared our multi-domain tactical picture, its information needs to be presented to commanders to support optimised decision making. The challenge is bringing crucial items of interest to the fore in a way that brings clarity. This is essential if the rest of the process is to be of any use whatsoever. There is no point in having such information, shared across a Task Force, if the effect is to overwhelm commanders and leads to decision paralysis. We need the critical data to be presented in bright, primary colours with the clutter removed. Here again, AI techniques exist today that can turn fiction into reality. They need to be deployed rapidly and iterated to develop system expertise and user confidence.
Only by pairing expert human commanders and cutting-edge AI technology can we thus deliver the decision-making advantage that modern maritime commanders need to seize and retain the initiative in today’s warfare. Much of this technology exists now and, given the threats arrayed against NATO, we cannot afford to wait. By leveraging these capabilities, AI can significantly enhance the interoperability and effectiveness of Maritime Operations. And we must do this with alacrity so that, as one NATO, we truly are ready to “fight tonight”!
