Officers of all three Services and members of the defence industry participated in the seminar on networkcentric warfare organised by SP Guide Publications and Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) recently

Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) is a concept of operations that generates increased combat power by networking sensors, decision-makers and shooters to achieve shared awareness and synchronised activity. NCW uses information for the benefit of the war-fighters in peace and in war. The military calls it “situational awareness” which implies awareness regarding terrain including objectives/targets, enemy, and own forces. This information is passed from the sensors deployed on the ground, at sea, in the air and in the space (satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, aircraft, radars, etc) through broadband digital communication networks to frontline units and the decision-makers in the rear in real/near real time frame thus making the battlefield transparent and reducing response time.

Seminar Details

A joint seminar on networkcentric warfare was held on April 21 by SP Guide Publications and Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) at the Indian Army’s Manekshaw Centre, New Delhi. The audience comprised officers of all three Services and members of the defence industry. The seminar was well received by the audience and interesting discussions ensued at the end of each session with active participation of all the officers.

In the inaugural session, the welcome address was given by Brigadier (Retd) Gurmeet Kanwal, Director, CLAWS, while the keynote address was given by Dr V.K. Saraswat, Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister and the vote of thanks was given by Jayant Baranwal, the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of SP Guide Publications.

Two technical sessions, pre and post lunch, were as under:

a) Session 1: NCW and the Indian Armed Forces: The present status and concerns.
b) Session 2: Future prospects and challenges for NCW.

Highlights of the Seminar

Dr Saraswat in his keynote address said that NCW was a key enabling concept that underpins the country’s military future joint operations concept. It does not dictate how the military intends to fight but this capability will provide the means for transition from a network aware force to seamless, network enabled, information-age force. He said that military response to NCW was that it translates an information advantage in to a decisive war fighting advantage. NCW is characterised by shared battle space awareness, shared knowledge of commanders intent, self-synchronisation, speed of command and rapid lockout. The war-fighting advantage exploits behavioural change and new doctrine to enable self-synchronisation, speed of command and increased combat power.

He elaborated that NGN is a packet-based network able to provide telecommunication services and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions are independent from underlying transportrelated technologies. Military NGN architecture consisted of wireless networking, advanced computing and nano technology, radar sensors and information fusion, and information assurance and networking security. He also explained future generation networks and radio systems.

The pre-lunch session was chaired by Lt General N.B. Singh, Director General Information Systems. In his opening remarks, the General pointed out the advantages of NCW and the challenges posed by it and said that the armed forces were gradually progressing in acquiring this capability.

Major General D.V. Kalra spoke on “Indian Army’s march towards net-centric warfare.” He focused on the emerging battlefield, the military systems under development and the challenges faced by the Services. He emphasised the impact of technology and highlighted the impact of increased intelligence and surveillance capabilities, enhanced weapon ranges, accuracy lethality of the weapons, proliferation of GIS-GIT, increased volumes and high speeds of data transmission, availability of alternate media, seamless communications, faster processors, miniaturisation and visual displays.

He explained that NCW is an information superiority-enabled concept that generates increased combat power, by robust networking of sensors, decision-makers and shooters, to achieve shared situational awareness, increased speed of command, higher tempo of operations, focused application of fire and increased survivability, which leads to enhanced mission effectiveness. It involves transforming information superiority into combat power by effectively linking knowledgeable entities in the battle space. Tactical command control, communications and intelligence (Tac C3I) is NCW in the tactical battle area (TBA). He said that information grid provides computing and communication backplane (convergence and information assurance) and sensors and shooters plug into the information grid for situational awareness and engagement. Hence essence of NCW was in transforming information superiority into combat power by effectively linking knowledgeable entities in the battle space.