Land Warfare: BCSS an evolving and vital Land Force capability | ADM Nov 2010
The Army’s Battlefield Command Support System – a major plank in the networking of the Land Force – now forms part of the Joint Command Support Environment, an integrated operational environment that links all ADF elements.
But has the relevance of BCSS at the lower tactical level been eclipsed by the Army’s new battle management system?
Tom Muir | Canberra
For many years Saab Systems Australia has been involved in the design and development of what was the Australian Army’s Tactical Command and Control System, now known as the Land 75 Battlefield Command Support System (BCSS).
The system has been in service with the Australian Army since 1999 on an ever-increasing scale with incremental capability rollouts.
BCSS enhances combat power by providing an efficient and effective means of managing and distributing information on the battlefield.
It provides commanders with critical information such as location and combat readiness of own forces, enemy strengths and intentions, environmental conditions, mobility, terrain and intervisibility.
It is a fully deployable and scalable system providing near real-time situational awareness and messaging across a wide range of communications bearers including Combat Net Radio, Local Area Networks, Wide Area Networks, satellite and point-to-point serial links.
Deployed at Army Divisional Headquarters and below, BCSS users exchange information on BCSS networks, both wired and wireless, originally using structured Australian Standard Message Text Format (ASMTF) and unstructured proprietary message formats (now replaced by VMF messaging).
Commensurate with its development in an era of restricted radio bandwidths, BCSS was engineered from its foundation to be fully deployable providing near real-time situational awareness and messaging across a range of communications bearers including the ageing Raven combat net radio (CNR), satellite links through Parakeet, and cabled and wireless LANs and WANs.
Indeed developer Saab Systems Australia was able to boast that good basic engineering had enabled the BCSS to accommodate the Raven CNR’s very restricted bandwidth while taking full advantage of higher bandwidths available in local and wide area networks.
Support functions include a range of tools to assist operational planning, logistic support requirements, intelligence databases as well as analysis and reporting tools.
BCSS features include:
• Enhanced Situational Awareness through a common GIS interface.
• Automatic Blue Force tracking through GPS based positioning.
• Moving map display supporting multiple formats and projections.
• Track and overlay display and creation.
• Geo-referenced Data display on the tactical picture.
• 2D and 3D Terrain Analysis functions.
• Military Messaging including USMTF, ASMTF and VMF Message formats
• Operational Planning tools for the generation of plans, orders and briefing materials, customisable to the end user’s doctrine.
• Logistic Support and Capability Status tools.
• Engineering tools to support calculation of mobility, offensive and defensive works.
• Intelligence databases and tools for analysis, recording and reporting.
• Interoperability with other Combat Management Systems such as the ANZAC CMS.
Today BCSS provides a flexible information flow with integrated functionality throughout all stages of an operation.
Near real time situational awareness overlays combined with operational status updates give commanders a high level of battlefield information.
The system is inherently capable of growth to include additional functionality, more hardware platforms and to operate at lower formation levels.
Under Land 75‘s current phase the systems’ functionality continues to be enhanced with the focus on stability and interoperability with rollout continuing within the Australian Army.
BCSS into BMS
Phase 3.4 of Land 75 was aimed at a further rollout of the BCSS to Land Force units which would see the deployment of BCSS functions within armoured combat vehicles and in miniature form, for use by platoon or section leaders of dismounted groups.
This was to be an interim Battle Management System (BMS).
Saab invested its own R&D in the development of a BMS compatible with current Army Command Support Systems and which would provide the advantages of BCSS from Joint Force HQ, and higher echelon commands, down to lower tactical elements.
This work identified appropriate functionality for a vehicle-installed BMS to be expanded to include a dismounted soldier capability.
An important feature was the tailoring of the human machine interface (HMI) to ensure user-friendly operation.
Concept trials of the BMS hardware and software successfully demonstrated situational awareness, C2 support, communications to support these functions and a sensor interface such as a UAV or ARH.
Future functionality would include planning, engineering and fire support tools together with route planning and execution, drawing upon the 3D contouring of terrain mapping.
The BMS would comprise a suite of applications providing scalability from hand held devices, through vehicle integrated systems to large multi-screen HQ installations.
Saab collaborated with the Land 125 (Soldier Combat System) project office to trial software for the Dismounted BMS application and the tactical level needs.
This, together with the results of previous trials, was used to define the essential elements for a Dismounted BMS.
Core capabilities would meet situational awareness, command and control, and communications requirements.
An important proviso in the defining of supplied capabilities was that they would not overload the user with non-critical functions.
But there were major challenges in bringing near real time data down to the dismounted soldier – in this case probably the platoon or section leader.
It was anticipated that Land 125 would see the individual soldier in contact with his section leader through the Personal Role Radio (PRR) which has become a specialised niche in military communications.
The PRRs defining characteristic is that it connects the individual horizontally within the section, a role some have dubbed the ‘section loudhailer’.
Presumably the Dismounted BMS may need some broadcast capability to aid the dissemination of information to the individual via his PRR.
In the BCSS process Saab had developed a common architecture for BCSS (Land 75), BMS (Land 75 Ph 3.4) and Dismounted BMS (Land 125 Ph 3), providing a cohesive architecture throughout the battlespace including a Joint Tactical Common Operating Picture.
Insofar as it would overlap the Air and Maritime command support environments the company also saw it as providing the basis for the private enterprise architecture sought for the JP 2030 Joint Command Support Systems Environment.
VMF messaging
With the introduction of a Battle Management System (BMS) which uses only VMF for information exchange, BCSS and the BMS were going to need to exchange information.
Saab Systems, teamed with Northrop Grumman, integrated VMF capability into the BCSS so that users could send and receive VMF and Message Text Format (MTF) messages using US and Australian standards.
The system interaction enabled the exchange of critical situational awareness such as unit locations and target positions, and also allowed orders to be sent from headquarters and for individual units to pass reports back up the line.
Australian BCSS users were able to interact with US counterparts using the existing BCSS system with its familiar interfaces.
Tactical BFT
There was an assumption that a fully interoperable Blue Force SA system would be sought as part of major upcoming software upgrades for Land 75 BMS/BCSS.
When it arrived, a Blue Force SA COP would be fielded across the battlefield down to fire team leaders, now finding positional reassurance from their BMS tablets.
Thus far we understand no decision has yet been made regarding the incorporation of a track server/track management system into the BCSS and it may be that the real-time situational awareness, Blue Force Tracking, and target location capabilities, presented as 3D mapping overlays in the Elbit BMS software, has to some extent eclipsed the requirement for the BCSS to provide the Blue Force Tactical Operational Picture at the lower tactical level.
Saab WISE technology for a Joint COP
In April this year under the Capability and Technology Demonstrator (CTD) Program, Saab Technologies Australia was contracted to conduct technology transfer and training in the Widely Integrated Systems Environment (WISE) software tool.
WISE, a Swedish software technology, facilitates connectivity between information systems such as the ADF’s Battlefield Command Support System, GBAD Tactical Command and Control System for air defence missile systems, NATO tactical data links 11 and 16 and the ANZAC naval combat management systems.
“We are working with the ADF and the DSTO to develop and disseminate a common operating picture from existing systems,” Saab business development manager Gerard Ogden said.
“We are merging operating pictures from a range of maritime, land and aerospace systems to create a joint picture.
“WISE is a low-cost technology that offers the potential to connect a wide range of systems without needing to re-engineer the software of either system.
“It can also be used as a test-bed to evaluate competing systems and to test how they will interact with existing system.”
Saab is aiming to demonstrate the potential of WISE to increase ADF capability through:
• increased connectivity between disparate C4I systems enabling information sharing in a joint environment;
• creation of a Joint Common Operating Picture (COP) through integration of existing maritime, land and air C4I systems;
• increased situation awareness for commanders and their staff enabling faster decision cycles and reducing the risk of fratricide;
• a facility to reduce the risks associated with acquiring, integrating and sustaining future C4I capabilities; and
• optimising current operational C4I systems to produce better performance and training outcomes for the ADF.
This CTD project will run until early 2011.