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posted by on Wednesday February 22 2017, @11:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the frakking-toasters dept.

The Army and Navy must link their missile defense systems into a single network so Navy weapons can hit targets spotted by Army radars and vice versa, the chief of Pacific Command said today. That's a daunting technical task, but if surmounted, it could dramatically improve defense against North Korean, Chinese, or Russian missile salvos.

"I believe that Army missileers should incorporate their air defense systems into the Navy's integrated fire control – counter-air, or NIFC-CA, architecture," Adm. Harry Harris told the AFCEA West convention here.

"I want them to be able to deliver a missile on target, and I want them to be able to do it interchangeably," Harris elaborated to reporters afterwards. "In other words, I want the Navy to be able to do the sensing and the Army to do the shooting, or the Army to do the sensing and the Navy to do the shooting." A Navy E-2D Hawkeye radar plane might spot an incoming missile for a land-based Army Patriot battery, for example, or an Army AN/TPY-2 radar might send targeting data to an Aegis destroyer.

[...] Harris is equally excited about other applications of computer networks to warfare, particularly robotics. At the Super Bowl, "300 quad copters put on light show as an opening act for Lady Gaga — who was terrific by the way," Harris told AFCEA. "What interests me in these examples is not the drones per se, or even Lady Gaga, for that matter. What interests me is the network that allows a hundred drones or more to fly in formation, to receive new orders, and to report back. That, said there's a dark side(:) As soon as we figure out how to do this, someone else will try to hack into it."

To help make these visions reality, Harris encouraged the technologists in the audience to pitch their innovations to the Pentagon — not necessarily to his headquarters in Hawaii. "My wallet really is small. The combatant commanders don't buy stuff except in specialized areas," he told AFCEA. "You have to, at the end of the day, pitch it to the services, (to) acquisition folks at the various service secretariats and OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense). The combatant commanders can help pull, but you have to push."

Source: Breaking Defense


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  • (Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Thursday February 23 2017, @08:06PM

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 23 2017, @08:06PM (#470869)

    "In today's news: Software glitch clears the sky over Asia, all airplanes shot down. Pentagon declines to comment."

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