Net–Centric Warfare
SPARTA's Net Centric Warfare Business Area combines our in-depth technical expertise with our thorough knowledge of military systems and environments to provide innovative solutions to the challenges and opportunities of Net Centric Warfare (NCW). The DoD, and each of the military services, is embarking on NCW, an initiative that will transform the development and operation of military systems. NCW enables speed of command through vertical and horizontal integration of sensors and weapons.
SPARTA Capabilities
SPARTA's Net Centric Warfare-specific areas of expertise include the following:
- System analysis
- System engineering
- Software development and integration
- Information assurance
- Modeling and simulation
System Analysis
SPARTA provides technical insight into the most challenging problems in a Net Centric Warfare environment. For example, our Single Integrated Air Picture (SIAP) engineers provide the variance analysis for tracking ballistic missiles, predicting both the flight path of the U.S. missiles and the intercept approach for enemy missiles. SPARTA contributes to the emerging capabilities to enable NCW through Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR), threat identification, network intrusion, and sensor registration.
System Engineering
SPARTA's system engineering expertise spans the technical and domain environments that must be integrated to provide a concept of operations and a technical architecture for NCW. Our engineer/analysts complete detailed tracking and analysis studies to define concepts and models for weapons systems coordination. We develop and integrate environments allowing command and control prototypes to be integrated and evaluated with both deployed systems and simulated systems. We identify the security issues and define realistic solutions for cross-domain command and control and data exchange that spans the enterprise architecture.
Software Development and Integration
SPARTA engineers apply object-oriented technologies and techniques to develop and integrate the components that provide NCW Community of Interest capabilities and services. SPARTA is developing a services based architecture for integration of missile defense planning capabilities and evolving it to the emerging Net Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) product baseline. Our Java-based 3D visualization tool for C4ISR End-to-End Resource Analysis (CERA) is being integrated with an Open Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Consortium-compliant distributed architecture to provide an enterprise-based analysis tool for space-based systems. SPARTA provides the COTS/government off-the-shelf (GOTS) integration expertise for the Joint National Integration Center, involving architecture definition, capability integration design, product interface definition and development, and integration environment test and evaluation. Our engineers work with service-based enterprise integration for emerging and legacy systems.
Information Assurance
SPARTA works with various clients to define and implement solutions for an assured enterprise environment for reliable command and control and data exchange to enable NCW. SPARTA develops intelligent automated tools that embody in-depth knowledge of the Common Criteria to guide developers in producing accreditable enterprise components. SPARTA has a comprehensive approach to cryptologic systems management. SPARTA's expertise encompasses Key Management Infrastructure/ Public Key Infrastructure (KMI/PKI), which provides security management infrastructure to facilitate key enable capabilities for NCW. SPARTA is currently working on an emerging capability to provide cross-domain solutions through the prevailing use of cryptography for realistic coalition warfare infrastructures with enhanced security though cryptographically enforced access controls.
Modeling and Simulation (M&S)
SPARTA provides M&S tools to evaluate and assess NCW mission concepts and capabilities. The C4ISR Decision Support Center uses SPARTA's Alternative Investments in Military Systems (AIMS) tool to evaluate focused logistics concepts, as well as to evaluate the impact of a broad range of weapons, sensors, and C4ISR concepts on the outcome of a conflict. AIMS and CERA, along with all of our M&S tools, can be used alone, integrated with other SPARTA military worth assessment tools, or integrated with other industry standard engineering and weapons effects tools, such as Satellite Tool Kit (STK) or Extended Air Defense Simulation (EADSIM), or Extended Air Defense Testbed (EADTB), to provide service-based enterprise solutions for NCW. We also architect and design enterprise-based training simulation systems. SPARTA provides systems architecture expertise, model and simulation development, infrastructure engineering, and detailed weapons system effectiveness and geopositioning support for the Armys Live Training Transformation family of programs, including the Common Training Instrumentation Architecture and the National Training Center Objective Instrumentation System.
Recent Accomplishments
SPARTA is a key contributor to the Armys NCW infrastructure for Future Combat Systems (FCS) in the areas of Training Support, Logistics Decision Support System, Network Management, and Situational Understanding. SPARTA contributed analytical and engineering expertise to develop enterprise architecture capabilities for the MDA, Navy, Army, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and Air Force. SPARTA developed an end-to-end NCW model to provide quantitative modeling and to identify the demand on communications from netted weapons and sensors, define information flow, and analyze the potential of self-synchronized operations. SPARTA then completed a comprehensive study of the NCW enabling capabilities for the Global Information Grid to focus our capability development and strategic pursuits for the future. The overarching investment project in NCW has been titled NESTOR (Also See NESTOR Whitepaper). Within NESTOR, we have an Effects Based Operations (EBO) model focused on Infrastructure Interdependencies (See NEMO Whitepaper).