ONR Report for Rocnrol

Rocnrol stands for ‘Remote Operations Center Network with Real-time Operational Links. It is an infrastructural substrate, an initial technology layer which can dynamically adapt to emerging capabilities and constraints in order to optimize intelligent interhuman communication and information exchanges. After Commander Ellen Jewett gave a description of recently enhanced ways of working in the Operations Center using ‘commercial off-the-shelf technology,’ we demonstrated our work on the RocnRol wireless system. RocnRol allows the Operations center to have connectivity to multiple key decision makers who are at any given time not in the OpCenter.

Summary of Commander Ellen Jewett’s JOC Presentation

Originally the Joint Operations Center (i.e., JOC) of the USS Coronado had 6 anchor desks, the battle watch captain, the assistant battlewatch captain, two operational specialists and an Information Technology man. There are 10-12 people in the JOC at any watch section monitoring 18 separate single data source inputs. People would be focused on the diplay in front of them and the large screens across the front which had more static displays showing a single thing. The process would be to look at the data, turn it into information, then manually forward it to the battlewatch or assistant battlewatch. He would then take the information and physically integrate it into the picture he sees on his own single screen. In this way, information funnels upward with no lateral communication, no exchange and collaboration between the anchor desk as a general rule, and the focus is very much on the details. Eventually, the admiral was briefed on available technologies. The result of this was a technological transformation of the OpCenter information process from Military Specified to “COTS” (Commercial Off The Shelf) technology. On May 19, 2000 we deployed for RMPAC, our major exercise which happens every other year. The exercise was a total success owing in large measure to the success of our going to these reliable and well known COTS technologies.

Among the changes made to the USS Coronado JOC are the following:

· Commercial video card allowing dual screen capablity. This board is actually one large desktop. We can exchange the information as it is two computers driving the large screens at the front of the JOC. The assistant battlewatch captain has control of two of the four screens at any time. By just an AV switch the battleship captain has control of two screens. We can show any three out of four screens at any one time. Typically what we’ll show is the operating area and it shows both the ground, surface, and subsurface pictures based on our Global Command and Control system.

· NIMA (National Imagery and Mapping Agency) charts. The charts are available commercially and to any military or governmental agency. Thus, we are able to use some good charting tools and compare things so that, for example, Hawaii looks like Hawaii; you’re not just seeing gray masses and blue masses like we had in the past. By adding in the NIMA charts we get a lot more intelligence and information out of it.

· Going Web-based was a key change in the JOC. CommandNet is a web-based tool that allowed us to run any of our battle logs. A log is a time based record of all of actions. We had a battlewatch captain’s log, an intelligence log, an air command-control log, and a communications log which told which circuits were up and down at a glance. Anyone with access to the web could monitor the overall picture whether is was the war, the Intel, or the communications. It looked very much like NetMeeting: time, entry, who did it, and date. You could then run through and organize, prepare for what’s going on, go back and do searches, etc. All the benefits of being web based.

· With Lotus Domino Notes, and Domino replication services we were able to take the whole of the battle group, and put in all of the information that was necessary to coordinate between a complex battle group from the info systems, intelligence, legal rules of engagement, even to the whether. And so now instead of looking at a whether picture, or whether message, where there’s a lot of descriptions, geo-reference points and jargon which means nothing to you, you can actually see the satellite display or visual image of the information just through drilling down through the web site.

· We used preformatted templates that were out there. This allowed us to fill in the blanks so that anyone could update the web site if they were given the correct permissions to it without having to be the webmaster. So in this when looking for information pieces or triggers that would dictate that something else was going to happen, we could in real time color code them so that everyone could keep pace of what was information and what was currently happening.

· Web Centric to the Log Book that was on the web

· We used Net Meeting to help us manage all of the different information that comes in here. In the JOC there are 8 red phones with the handsets. These are different communications circuits that we monitor to give us the status of what’s going on. 12 people in the room, 8 different handsets, 8 different radio channels being monitored. It is a lot of information. We set up an information server, an ILS server on our network, and the key people who we needed to communicate with who each manage one of the pieces of the big picture; we hosted the web site. We invited key people to join us and then we just set up a chat session. Instead of picking up the radio headset and get through clearly and trying to communicate with each other we were able to basically type it in, have a dialog, be able to communicate clearly—if you went off line you logged back on—and we continued the watchflow as information came in we would be able to access the information, talk to other people to confirm it and then literally cut and paste to the Command Net Log without much duplication.

· The smartboard version of a white board. The advantage of doing our operations this way is being able to use the NT toolset to cut and paste. This allows taking a copy of a picture from one place, putting somewhere else and annotating it. Rather than the former practice of doing a 15-20 page description, or filling out a template, I take information as things are happening, copy and paste it onto a whiteboard, and annotate it with the smart board technology (write, erase, etc.). This can the be added as a power point presentation, a JPG to an email, or used in Net Meeting on a shared desktop.

The relationship between this change over to COTS in the JOC and RocnRol?

In that 19 days the Coronado was able to both change the technologies for sharing information, and to visualize communications with the fleet. However, the new chief of naval operations saw the improvements as only as 50% successful. Because even though interaction with information changed, how that information is communicated throughout the staff and to people on board the ship had not yet changed. Individuals are forced to come to one physical location to interact with all the information. Admiral Cohen’s vision was to look at what COTS technology was doing in a more mobile format to see if the center could become a remote access OpCenter, what came to be called Rocnrol: Remote Operations Center Network with Real-time Operational Links. The wireless lan, the 802.11 standard has been proven to be a very robust standard and has the capability and flexibility of being put on board a ship. It has been proven through a DARPA program called DAWN (Demonstration of Advanced Wireless Network). With this network on board and the capacities of the new opcenter here, the goal for RocnRol was to combine the capabilities of both and port out to some roaming devices the ability to have real time links, to communicate with key people. Essentially, the Coronado wanted to take the wireless technology, combine it with the infrastructure that was in place and develop a set of methods to communicate with key people, whether or not it was handheld, laptop, wearable. There’s a whole range of devices that can be utilized with the same technology we have here just going wireless so that now we were not always dependent on a physical location. Most importantly, JOC was now able to communicate with key people who have multiple functions throughout the day.

In summary, the primary initial functions of Rocnrol are to link human intelligences that are about the ship through roaming devices back into the opcenter. The first step is to link the people to the needs of the opcenter, not necessarily a total exchange of information. The goal is not to take the opcenter itself and put it all into the displays of those roaming persons. Instead, RocnRol provides a messaging process so key people may be reached and who may input the specific information asked of them into the opcenter. RocnRol allows you to reach out and touch their device and port that information so you can fill in the picture being put together in the center. It is opcenter centered. 12 key decision makers need to be integrated as their input is determinative of what happens in the big operational picture. They need to be accessible in real time throughout the day. Using things that are familiar and capabilities that are out there and testing the robustness of it within the different platforms no matter the hardware device has proven to be the greatest benefit for the JOC. Going with webcentric, and the other familiar tools has actually proven the robustness of Rocnrol. The ability for the layered approach, the different functions, and just being able to pick up any mobile device and to use it as a walkie talkie has demonstrated the success of the system.

Marcus Schmidt provides and explains the RocnRol Demo to Ellen Jewett.

So there is a wireless NetOp here,

with a wireless networking card. This is a wireless PDA (personal digital assistant) running Window CE. The laptop would represent the OpCenter, with a web page

giving you here a form that has different options of addressees. For instance the PDA device would be IPAC number 1. And you can mark this off on the OpCenter laptop if you want to send a message to IPAC number 1. You can have some preset messages or you could type in your own message. I am going to send as an example a message to

Number 1 from the OpCenter.

I just select number 1 here in the laptop webpage options and then number one message from the laptop message presets on the web page, and hit submit. This web page here on the PDA is being flashed every five seconds and you see here the time stamp with the current time now and the message number one being displayed. We have here then a browser on both sides, no plug-ins and no Java.

Then I can acknowledge receipt of this message by hitting this submit button and you would see in the corresponding frame of this page in the command center ‘acknowledge’ with the new time stamp .

Ellen: during “battle rhythm” there are meetings going on at different points of the day. If something comes up of higher importance they may need to reschedule one of these meetings. Now we’ll have anywhere from five to fifteen people involved in this. If they are one of those key people that we notify, at least we can be saving them time by saying “meeting rescheduled in a different location and/or different time. Acknowledge” Because of this tool we can send out a message to multiple people and not depend that somebody is going to find them, or that they are going to have time to go to the current system and check there, or look on their laptops or desktops, read through all the message traffic coming in and say “OK, I need to go to this place.” This is a true benefit for sending out information. We can send it out to a whole group of people that, depending on how we set it up we can it up so it accesses not only the people on the Roc network, but we can also send it so it can interface through with the unclassified network.

Marcus: the key here is having everything web based so messages here at this place can be created and the layout can be done using HTML which many are familiar with. This is very easily customizable. Then just use any device with a browser and you have a complete redirectional communication tool.

The next thing is that instead of using the WebCentric messaging with a browser, we can do email from the OpCenter to the PDA and back using email programs.

Ellen: What about the Qube?

Marcus: the qube centric web server has its own email server so you can from any location send out emails, assign names to all those computers, and do it as usual. There a program on the Windows CE machine which functions like Outlook/outlook express and will work fine. There is really no learning curve.

Cori: Where is the qube physically?

Tim: In the Network operations center at the far end of the ship.

Marcus: and its hooked up to one of those hubs that connect all the access points.

Ellen: so its physically tied into the access point, but not part of the ship’s backbone system. So this set of mailboxes is not redundant set, but a second level that doesn’t interfere with the ship’s mailboxing system. So again, totally reconfigurable depending on the type of operations. If we want this wireless system for the joint operations center because we are doing an exercise we can set up a series of mailboxes and the hand held devices can address those. If we have a civil military operation out of the CMOC here, we would set up a series of CMOC mailboxes which would be totally independent of the joint operations center. So this qube and the plug and play capabilities of it give us total flexibility of any type of op center network that needs to be set up. And the same format and web browsing capability will be familiar to us its just a different function we are using the communications interface for.

Marcus: the Cobalt server is running different programs. It is running an email server program which is handling the email traffic back and forth. It is running Perl that allows us to write CGI scripts that handle this webcentric messaging system. You can essentially install any kind of server software since it is Linux based with an Apache server so is very upgradable.

The next level above these IPAQ CE devices would be a full grown PC which is this box here. It has a Pentium 266, runs Windows 98 although it comes with Linux and has all the standard ports: Ethernet, usb, vga, serial, keyboard, two PC card slots. This can go through the wireless network using the card which goes in the IPAQ and depending on your application one would use a little keyboard that can be strapped on the arm or a waterproof , or different input devices. For display are included the HMD like the Sony which is VGA compatible, or this microoptical that is being used unobtrusively, as well as little hand held displays. The battery life exceeds 8 or 10 hours so one can walk around use the wireless, communicate, use all the standard voiceover IP programs, use Net Meeting, use email, whatever’s out there. The idea in here is to provide the roaming personnel with their own PC so they can go somewhere and plug into existing network. That would resolve a lot of security issues. Plug into any display or keyboard. So you would have your PC with all this secured information on you by yourself for carrying. Of course, webcentric messaging system would apply to these PCs as well and emails, desktop sharing, net meeting, VCN. We can use NeatTools to provide simple chat, x messaging, vibrational alarms, and so on.

Ellen: the great capability of this is that it weighs 10 ounces vs. 6 lbs for a laptop. We can throw this into a little canvas bag with the peripherals that you need (wearable keyboard/full, hand held twitler system, or even a micro keyboard system) and then use whatever display technology you need. A visor, monocles, small LCD. It gives us flexibility to configure it for exactly what mission we want to use it. Our IT folks who are doing system repairs can basically take all of the information either connect through the existing infrastructure through the new card, the wireless card, can actually take a PC card with all the tech reference manuals on it and go hands on to site with the computer on their person giving them total mobility throughout the ship as well as working with the Op Center to be able to pull up reference information. An example would be our legal officer, the jag, having to look up references for rules of engagement. If he can have the whole legal system fitting onto a PC card, he can now on the fly in real time lookup information to support whatever the admiral is saying or at leas provide him with a selection for a course of action. The flexibility of the technology gives us the ability to have an OpCenter regardless of the physical location.

The wireless card fits in any pc card whether it be laptop, wearable, desktop, and so on. You can now put as much technical information in any format, any application that can be read by consistent systems we have on board, mutually exchangeable. I can pull out the wireless card and then access whatever information is on the compact flash memory and take it into a more robust system if I want.