With both China and Pakistan hell-bent on stoking insurgencies within India, our cutting edge forces will need to be equipped with the requirements to cope with the 21st century threats including high-tech terrorists and insurgents wielding modern weapons, communications, and equipment and providing fleeting targets.

Technology has poised commanders to see their areas of responsibility in depth and in real near time. It is possible to develop an accurate common picture and share it both horizontally and vertically. Precisely locating, identifying, tracking and attacking targets by appropriate means and monitoring effects is a reality. Operating in joint environments and mature capability to conduct multi-dimensional simultaneous operations is facilitated. Success in future military operations will require a telescoped decision-action cycle and the ability to conduct operations simultaneously within an all arms group.

Requirement

The Army wants the objective of the system to provide a command, control and information (C2I) integration tool supporting every level of military users ranging from individual soldier to battalion group/combat group commander in the tactical battle area (TBA), which will provide in near real time an appropriate, common and comprehensive tactical picture by integration of inputs from all elements in a battle group. The integration will include inputs from command and control elements, detachments, supporting arms, surveillance devices and headquarters, thereby providing a distinct edge in the successful conduct of operations and optimisation of resources.

Capabilities

The capabilities required of the battlefield management system (BMS) are: to provide a command and control system spanning the TBA spreading across individuals, detachments, combat platforms, sensors, subunits, units to the battalion commander/regiment commander; achieve faster reaction capability and flexibility in command and control by providing information automatically at the right place and in the right time, thereby compressing the observe orient decide and act (OODA) loop; providing a strong foundation for making decisions based on near real time, consistent and well-structured information, thereby enhancing the information handling capability of commanders at all levels; strengthening information exchange by having a strong messaging and replication mechanism; improving and modernising presentation of information in near real time; integrating with other command and control system.

Areas of Interest

There are numerous areas of interest that include developing a suitable application on an intuitive operating system, geographic information system (GIS) suitability customised to meet military requirements, voice and data communications that should always remain up, computer hardware which is rugged and non-obtrusive, retro-fitment maintaining platform integrity and system integration to include application software, data links with radio systems, integration of battalion/regiment level sensors battlefield surveillance radar (BFSR), thermal imagers, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) data, satellite imagery, etc. The BMS being looked at will perform a variety of operational situational awareness and decision support functions at a battalion group/combat group level.

The lowest level to which the system will be connected is individual soldier/combat platform and the highest level will be the battalion/regiment commander. The system will be further integrated to the tactical command, control, communications and information (Tac C3I) system through the command information decision support system (CIDSS). The BMS will comprise a tactical handheld computer with individual soldiers and tactical computers at Battle Group Headquarters and combat vehicles. Computers will be integrated employing application and database servers connected on a dataenabled communication network. The system will enable generation of common operational picture by integrating inputs from all relevant sources within a battle group by integrated use of GIS and global positioning system (GPS). The BMS will be a highly mobile system which is able to network itself by integration of components and provide a high data rate. The communications should not interfere with the legacy communication equipment and should easily be retrofitted into combat platform. The communications system should optimally utilise the bandwidth available for military communications involving voice and data including video streaming and imageries. It should be scalable to ensure its availability to all elements and range from being man-portable to being fitted in combat vehicles. The earlier the Army acquires the BMS, the better will be its capacity in network-centric warfare.

Communications

The BMS sought by the Army will perform a variety of operational situational awareness and decision support functions at a battalion/combat group level. The lowest level to which the system will be connected is individual soldier/combat platform and the highest level will be the battalion/regiment commander integrating to the Tac C3I System through the CIDSS, enabling a common operational picture, integrating all sources through integrated use of GIS and GPS, will be a highly mobile and with high data rate. The communications should not interfere with the legacy communication equipment and should easily be retrofitted into combat platform. Communications should optimally utilise the bandwidth available for military communications involving voice, data, imageries and video streaming. It should be scalable to ensure its availability to all elements and range from being manportable to being fitted in combat vehicles. When pitted against the future requirements, the legacy communication devices are physically incompatible, follow different link protocols, have issues of address, reach and quality of service (QoS). The legacy of existing combat net radios (CNR) are with fixed frequency (analogue), are capable of limited communication and data rates besides the requirement of a modem for data transmission, are not secure and have no data encryption facility. In effect, the present family of radio sets does not meet the requirements of a NCW Force that would facilitate transmission of voice, video and data simultaneously. For BMS to be successful; there is a need for a reliable, robust, resilient and efficient communication system that assures that the network is always functional. Net-centricity warrants a paradigm shift from voice-centric to datacentric systems and networks eventually enabling NCW capabilities. For BMS communications, the Indian Army would be looking for long-range high bandwidth data transmission (live streaming), facilitating messaging, including voice mail, quickly deployable, self-configuring and self-healing networks, easy to customise, rolling coverage and interoperability. The focus will have to be on change in network topology, non line of sight communications, spectrum management, network management systems, QoS (including latency, assured delivery, jitter), security of communications, networks and storage, robustness and authentication. Deployment of new technologies like software defined radios (SDRs) that can also communicate with CNRs to offset growth in demand for spectrum needs serious thought. Compression technologies for passage of information must be capitalised. Test bed for the BMS should be at full scale, down to the individual soldier. It is prudent to do this and then think of eliminating a particular piece of equipment than adopting the reverse approach. There is a need to review the communication philosophy of the Army. While legacy radios have their limitations, the change management towards fielding of latest technology like SDRs and communication infrastructure will need to be fine tuned. Applications will need to be standardised and adaptable to any communication system including COTS products. Bandwidth requirements for the BMS need to be viewed keeping in mind the incremental requirements that would be required progressively over the years. A conservative approach by the Army at this stage, which is likely due to the limitations of legacy communication equipment, could limit exploitation of future technology. As an indicator, the US Army catered for one 1GB bandwidth for a combat team two years back and plans incremental upgrades. The government needs to examine allotment of a dedicated defence band from the spectrum to meet the bandwidth requirement of the services and keeping in mind threats to national security. This will also adequately address the communication requirements of the BMS. Robust security algorithms must be speedily developed to ensure security of both stored data as well as transmitted information.