Page 100 - Australian Defence Magazine June 2021

98 LAND FORCES RESILIENCE
JUNE 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
DISCONNECTED OPERATIONS: HOW TO GO DARK AND WIN
Military organisations face increasing pressure to move to a more distributed operational model than ever before, making them less vulnerable to physical attack, but asking serious connectivity and logistical questions.
MATT MEDLEY | UK
MILITARY operations, in line with the connectivity devel- opments in the outside world, have become increasingly connected. Operations are underpinned by a robust digital backbone that provides the connectivity that allows mili- tary organisations to take a huge step towards Total Asset Readiness, tying together the thousands of data steps and processes to provide information for military operators to keep updated on the status, whereabouts and availability of equipment and personnel—uninterrupted and in real time.
But many such operations are, from a tactical and stra- tegic planning point of view, becoming more widely dis- tributed than ever before. We can see this in business. Gartner listed ‘anywhere operations’ as one of its top stra- tegic technology trends for 2021, defined as “an IT oper- ating model designed to support customers everywhere, enable employees everywhere and manage the deployment of business services across distributed infrastructures.”
For the military, any connectivity interruption puts im- mediate pressure on their digital backbone, stretching it to near breaking point. At the critical moment of service, when a commander is planning a mission to deploy key assets, that person needs to have a totally accurate representation of the equipment at their disposal. Failure at this crucial moment could compromise mission success and potentially endanger
military personnel. It’s these periods of non- connectivity that the spotlight is now on.
CONNECTIVITY UNDER
THE MICROSCOPE
A recent study from RAND Corporation illus- trates this perfectly in the context of the Air Force. The study focuses on a set of emerging concepts for ‘distributed operations’ that call for a larger number of airbases to complicate enemy targeting and use a more decentralised command and control approach.
In direct response to increased air and mis- sile threats posed to larger main bases, the study notes that the US Air Force is shifting toward concentrating on conducting missions from smaller forward operating locations or bases (FOBs). In order to maximise visibility, there needs to be consistent connectivity between a main operating centre or base (MOB) and these
distributed FOBs. RAND then rightly highlights that any dis- ruption to this connectivity by enemy attack on long-distance communications systems, including satellites and long-dis- tance fibre, can seriously compromise mission success.
There are also planned instances where units will be conducting operations in ‘dark mode’. A small percent- age of top-secret military operations will, by their sensi- tive nature, take place in a disconnected environment, without outside-world connectivity and with a purposely minimised electronic signature. For some military units, planned instances of disconnected operations is part of the normal day-to-day business. Think a navy frigate sail- ing in the South Pacific where it operates in a disconnect- ed, intermittent, and limited bandwidth mode for much of its detachment unless using satellite.
The key requirement in both of these unplanned and planned disconnected operations scenarios is the ability to aggregate, update and re-sync data back to a MOB as soon as connectivity is re-established—mitigating the impact of any outage.
ABOVE: Many modern militaries have a heavy reliance on their digital backbones. What happens when it is compromised?
IMAGE VIA IFS