DIAMONDShield: Realizing New Levels of Situational Awareness
Integrating Ground-Based Missile Defence with Air Operations
Growing national security concerns throughout the Middle East – and the world - have created an imperative need for advanced Defence systems to protect populations from quick-strike threats. Nations are addressing this pressing demand with sophisticated air and missile Defence systems, but in doing so they have identified an additional piece of the protective architecture that must be in place to realize the full effectiveness of these highly capable but independent systems.
That additional piece is command-and-control integration. Nations such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have recognized the need for improved linkage of Defence systems at the battle management level, and they are moving toward acquiring command & control (C2) integration technology. Despite progress however, there remains much room for improvement in the ability of systems to work together in a shared environment that consolidates processes and distributes real-time information on threats ranging from theater ballistic missiles to small attack boats.
To deliver the advantages of improved battle management capabilities, Lockheed Martin has introduced a new system called DIAMONDShield, an interoperable C2 platform with an array of automated decision-support tools. Based on more than 10 years of success in developing and delivering advanced C2 systems for the U.S. Department of Defence, DIAMONDShield integrates air and missile Defence systems in complex national and multi-national operations — with capabilities ideally suited to address challenges in regions like the Middle East with a wide range of threats.
Defining the Challenge
Turkey itself is surrounded by nations of political instability and military tensions. It has responded with upgrades of its defensive systems and it has made progress toward integrating its systems to improve its threat detection and optimize its response to them. Nevertheless, military leadership has recognized that more needs to be done to fully integrate all of the nation’s C2 systems — including military satellites, airborne early warning systems and radar systems — across air, land, sea and space domains. To maximize the quality and scope of the information, the national command center should also be integrated with regional and international coalition forces.
Even when these systems are fully networked, another challenge arises. To achieve true situational awareness, commanders of C2 centers must be able comprehend the flood of information flowing into the center and make the right decisions within very short time windows. The simple fact is that operators of individual air and missile systems often rely on verbal communication and analytical skills to evaluate data and provide commanders with decision-quality information and real-time situational awareness of the entire battle space. But no matter how skilled and well-trained these individuals may be, they are not capable of processing the huge amount of incoming data in a high-velocity battle environment that demands quick decisions.
Official U.S. Air Force doctrine explains the primary concern created by information overload: “During a contingency, a commander usually cannot sort through a vast amount of data. There is simply too much data available and not enough time. [Commanders] could miss the truly important nugget of information while sorting through a mountain of data.” As a result, the choice of weapon systems or timing of the response could be less that optimal or even detrimental to the command’s military objectives.
Overcoming ‘Information Overload’
The U.S. Air Force has addressed the concern about commanders being overwhelmed by too much data with a number of systems that consolidate and convert data into decision-quality information. One of them is the Theater Battle Management Core System (TBMCS), developed by Lockheed Martin and deployed in 2000. TBMCS, resident at air operations centers and joint command centers and Navy ships around the globe, is the primary system for planning and executing joint air campaigns, and coordinating and directing flying operations from units as diverse as F-16 fighters, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and even cruise missiles. Using a net-centric open architecture powered by web-based applications and services, TBMCS feeds real-time information to many users, from the Joint Forces Air Commander to air operations center staffs, to pilots and weapons control officers on the battlefield.
In addition, Lockheed Martin has been responsible for the development and deployment of the Command, Control, Battle Management and Communications (C2BMC) system for U.S. national missile Defence. C2BMC is the critical integrating command and control function that provides warfighters with a flexible, real-time capability to plan, monitor, and manage the Defence of the United States, its deployed forces, and its friends and allies against all types of ballistic missile threats through the boost, mid-course, and terminal phases. C2BMC integrates and interconnects a wide range of defensive systems, from ships to ground-based interceptors such as Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) batteries, into an integrated system-of-systems with a common battlespace.
Yet another system is the U.S. Air Force’s Integrated Space Command and Control (ISC2) system, which Lockheed Martin modernized by integrating approximately 40 systems into a common, interoperable C2 information technology infrastructure. Employing an enterprise-wide open architecture, the modernized system dramatically improved interoperability among air, missile and space Defence systems by enabling a common operational picture and global integration of information. Data updates, regardless of their source, can be fused and made available to authorized users worldwide.
DIAMONDShield- Command & Control of Air & Missile Defence
Drawing on the experience and expertise gained through its work with each of these systems, Lockheed Martin developed DIAMONDShield to bring similar capabilities to U.S. allies. Investing internal research and development dollars, Lockheed Martin tasked system engineers from the TBMCS, ISC2 and C2BMC programs to use their expertise to evaluate how they might improve and enhance an integrated C2 architecture if they were to design the systems anew.
The resulting product is a next-generation system built on open, non-proprietary software and scaled to the needs of individual Defence customers, with a flexible suite of C2 decision-making tools. DIAMONDShield creates a picture of the battle space and alerts operators to potential threats, and also integrates missile Defence systems such as the THAAD and the Patriot PAC-3. Among its many decision-support capabilities is the system’s ability to advise operators on the best missile system to employ to destroy a threat. Overall, the system dramatically improves commanders’ ability to make decisions faster, operate command centers with fewer people, and have higher confidence in achieving mission success.
DIAMONDShield Capabilities
DIAMONDShield addresses AOC capability challenges by providing an accurate and understandable picture of the battlespace, along with the tools to plan and execute missions rapidly, with high assurance. A visual representation of the battlespace can be created by correlating data from joint military weapons and sensors as well as civilian radars.
Air Defence and air component forces create operational plans and tactical missions using map based planning wizards that link the Commander’s objectives to selected missions. Mission plans are evaluated and scored against various threat profiles and the final plan execution can be previewed using a temporal fly out tool. Airspace planning is done using three-dimensional mapping tools and deconfliction tools, which evaluate potential conflicts.
The DIAMONDShield system offers a layered enterprise Defence that includes physical security, network intrusion detection and protection for servers and clients. The network is monitored and managed from a central network operations center where technicians are automatically alerted to problems and guided through trouble shooting procedures to restore operational capability.
Allies working together
One of the most-attractive features of the DIAMONDShield solution is that it’s based on US & NATO standards and communication protocols, which enables it to integrate with coalition forces and greatly expand a given nation’s defensive capabilities and improve its performance in collaboration with allied nations. In essence, it provides a given nation with a native advanced C-2 system that can network quickly and efficiently with coalition forces.
In addition, the system includes built-in cyber security features that deter, recognize and shut down cyber-attack attempts. The security features draw on the expertise gained by Lockheed Martin through its leadership in intelligence-driven cyber security and the research and development performed at its own Security Intelligence Center.
If one thing is certain in these uncertain times, it is that threats to national security, particularly in regions experiencing political changes, are likely to expand both in number and in severity. That has already been seen in the large increase in missile threats over the past 10 years, and the trend is showing no signs of abating. Because of the research-and-development investment already made by Lockheed Martin in the DIAMONDShield™ system, nations can deploy and begin operating the world’s most-sophisticated system for protecting themselves against these threats within a matter of months, not years as would be required for other systems that are not fully developed.
Lockheed Martin’s DIAMONDShield™ system achieves a new level of interoperability among existing systems, an ability to incorporate future Defence systems and upgrades, joint operations capabilities with allies, and unprecedented real-time battle space visualization features and planning tools. In dangerous times, it integrates all of the assets at a nation’s command to protect its people and its resources.
