[Infowarrior] - Navy's Command Center of the Future

[Richard Forno]

Inside the Navy's Command Center of the Future
by Daniel Terdiman
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10362933-52.html?
SAN DIEGO--I have seen the future of military command centers, and it  
is small rooms with glass walls and video screens with built-in  
artificial intelligence.

That's probably a gross oversimplification, but those are certainly  
some of the elements on display at the Navy's Command Center of the  
Future, a prototype project currently under way at the Space and Naval  
Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center Pacific here.

For those not familiar with SPAWAR, it is a Navy laboratory tasked  
with "creating an unfair advantage for our war fighters," according to  
Jim Fallin, the facility's director of communications, that designs  
"systems, infrastructure, sensors and the means needed to create a  
fully netted combat force that operates and interlaces all the domains  
of warfare, from seabed to space."

With clients and partners that include the U.S. Army, Marines, and Air  
Force, as well as many universities and other institutions, SPAWAR is  
a growing--and hiring--research institution that aims to give  
America's military services "the ability to disrupt any adversary's  
ability to conduct warfare."


Photos: Looking in on the Navy's Command Center of the Future
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And given that these are the guys recently tasked with reworking the  
White House's famous Situation Room, they also seem like the right  
ones to take the traditional military command center--with huge rooms,  
row after row after row of desks with computers and huge video  
screens--and flip such environments on their head. In other words,  
SPAWAR has nothing short of a major assignment on its hands: to build  
the kind of center that will best serve the soldiers and decision  
makers of the future, all while minimizing the physical space  
necessary for such rooms and maximizing the use of technology.

Showcasing the technology of the future
The Command Center of the Future (CCoF), which has had a budget so far  
of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, first opened its doors just  
four months ago and is clearly not yet finished. But given that it's a  
prototype of the kinds of military action centers that are likely to  
be in use five or ten years down the line, it's probably best that the  
SPAWAR folks not rush to finish their work.

Upon entering what turns out to be a pretty small room deep inside a  
nondescript SPAWAR office building, visitors are greeted initially by  
a wall of military insignia and then by a dimly-lit, quiet, room with  
gleaming glass walls and banks of video screens installed behind the  
glass.

According to my host, SPAWAR research engineer Jeff Clarkson, who is  
leading the project, the CCoF has as one of its main purposes the  
highlighting and showcasing of the technologies of the future.

Notwithstanding the visit of a CNET News reporter, the typical visitor  
since the doors to the CCoF opened four months ago have included VIPs  
like Navy admirals, the secretary of the Navy, the chief of Naval  
Operations, and others eager to see the kinds of facilities likely to  
be featured on warships and in Department of Defense facilities a few  
years from now.

And the idea behind this room--which is far from operational--is to  
convey, in its small space, what a future command center may well look  
like, Clarkson said.

One clear goal of the CCoF is to show how military decision makers no  
longer need to be together in a single room in order to work on  
actionable intelligence, make strategic decisions, or communicate with  
subordinate personnel around the world. Rather, the room is designed  
to bring together those who need to be involved in discussions  
surrounding specific military engagements, regardless of whether  
they're local. Indeed, the room's very mission statement is to make it  
possible to rely on video teleconferencing and artificial intelligence  
in such meetings.

And while the CCoF is still in its early stages--its many video  
screens are still tuned to cable news channels rather than remote Navy  
locations--Clarkson and his team are hopeful that they will soon move  
to the next stage and build into the room the technologies that will  
showcase just how the people who will use it will interact with the  
tools of the future.

For example, while the video screens today are nothing more than TVs  
with shiny glass covers, they will soon feature multitouch overlays  
that will mean many of the glass surfaces will allow decision makers  
to manipulate data and other information simply by running their  
fingers over the glass, much as users of iPhones do today.

Similarly, while it's still in a presentation stage, the CCoF will be  
used for things like mocking up Flash representations of the control  
system of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) so that decision makers can  
see how much control they have over such assets from far across the  
world.

'The art of the possible'
Just after entering the room, visitors notice an area that is  
separated from the main space by its own set of glass walls. In normal  
circumstances, this is where to place junior staff members in front of  
a couple of computers.

But the idea behind this sub-room is to give decision makers a  
private, secure, place to go for classified discussions. And while it  
might initially be counter-intuitive to have such discussions in what  
at first appears much like a fish tank, Clarkson explained that in  
fact, that room is designed with glass that can automatically turn  
dark, as well as sound-proofing that can make it entirely secure.

And the point of this, Clarkson continued, is to make it possible for  
such senior officials to be able to huddle together for highly  
sensitive discussions without having to leave the command center,  
saving a great deal of time for everyone involved.

To be sure, this room inside this San Diego building is by no means a  
final product. In fact, even when future command centers are being  
constructed, they will likely have an infinite number of sizes and  
configurations that will match their surroundings: smaller rooms on  
Navy ships and larger ones inside Department of Defense buildings,  
Clarkson said.

But for now, as military VIPs show up to see the prototype, the idea  
is really to give them a sense of "the art of the possible," as Fallin  
put it.

Changing mission needs
Clarkson said that one of the major focuses of the CCoF is to prove  
that such an environment can be flexible and adaptable to "changing  
mission needs."

That means that the rooms need to be easily reconfigurable, something  
that is clear in how it was set up during my visit. On one side of the  
room, a group of eight chairs was set up as a place for seating junior  
staff while senior officials put their heads together at the main  
round-table.

But that configuration was just one way for the room to be presented,  
Clarkson said. And anyway, many of those who would take place in the  
kinds of discussions that would be centered in the room would be at  
remote locations, communicating via teleconference.

Yet Clarkson said even such virtual communication would be aided by  
the latest technologies. One such advance would be an implementation  
of artificial intelligence that would display, on the appropriate  
screens on the glass walls, documents being talked about by those on  
the screens.

In other words, Clarkson said, the CCoF would have AI meant to discern  
what is being talked about during a teleconference and to know how to  
source up whatever documents are needed as they're needed.

At the same time, the technology could also keep track of those on- 
screen and show, for the benefit of those in the room, little heads-up  
displays (HUDs) that identify each on-screen speaker.

And while the command centers of the future may be needed by senior  
officials to set strategy during specific action, they are also likely  
to be manned 24/7 by junior officials making sure that proper  
communications with supporting organizations are always under way.

Ultimately, Clarkson said, the state-of-the-art in command center  
workflow theory is built around the idea of flow. He explained that  
research has shown that decision makers think better if they can move  
around while they talk and that's why the CCoF here has been designed  
to allow such senior officials to walk and talk and never lose sight  
of those they're communicating with. In the past, by comparison, the  
experience has been much more sedentary, with officials coming in and  
sitting down at a table the entire time.

"We want to create a sense of guests and hosts being able to walk  
(around) together and still be discussing," said Clarkson. "They still  
have security and still have information, and they can look up  
something if (they) need it."

And while the command center of the past--like, say, the alternate  
command center of the North American Aerospace Defense Command  
(NORAD)--has traditionally been a basketball court-size space with  
endless rows of desks, Clarkson said he hopes that the work being done  
on the CCoF will demonstrate that in the wars of the future, what's  
really needed is technology to bring dispersed people together so that  
they can discuss the important topics of the day, no matter where they  
are.

"We're just trying to show what's possible," Clarkson said, "what's  
coming down the pipeline, and what we envision the future to be."

  Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net  
culture, and everything in between.