3.12 Ocean Battlespace Environment
The warfighter needs an affordable, reliable operational capability in all environments and the ability to foresee environmental changes that may affect his capabilities. The variable ocean environment greatly affects warfighter operations, such as movement of equipment and supplies over the beach, cruise missile targeting, or aircraft carrier operations; it also affects the performance of the sensors and systems used by the warfighter. Knowledge of this environment and its impact on the various sensors available to the warfighter are critical to the choice of sensor(s), ability to gain knowledge of the tactical battlespace, and effective delivery of weapons. Knowledge of the ocean battlespace environment is important to the Joint Warfighter S&T areas of Information Superiority, Precision Force, Combat Identification, Joint Countermine, Joint Theater Missile Defense, and Joint Readiness and Logistics. These needs translate to the requirements for understanding processes and phenomenology; measurements and mapping; nowcasts and forecasts of ocean variability; and translation of environmental effects to their impacts on sensors, platforms, structures, and operations. The products in this subarea are designed to increase the warfighter's knowledge of his battlespace environment to unclutter his tactical picture, give him tools to decide on tactics, and give him an advantage over his opponent through exploitation of environmental variability.
3.12.2.1 Goals and Timeframes. Anticipated conflicts encompassing the ocean battlespace environment involve increasing emphasis on mine, special, and amphibious warfare in addition to continuing concerns with antisubmarine warfare. Thus, increasing emphasis is on the coastal, shallow, and semienclosed sea areas where the ability to predict and simulate the spatial and temporal variability of the environment is a formidable challenge. The fundamental goal is sufficient understanding of the environment's effects on weapons, tactics, and operations, coupled with affordable technologies to observe, describe, and predict those effects. A complementary underlying goal is to encourage and aid the design and use of naval systems that are able to exploit environmental variability to military advantage. Anticipated goals are reflected in Table VII-13. Advances in understanding the ocean environment are critical for the design of new acoustic, optical, and electromagnetic sensors; signal analysis; and command and control.
| Fiscal Year | Goal |
|---|---|
| FY01 | First range-dependent, on-scene, adaptive-weapon, frequency-acoustic propagation model. 3D turbulence model for localized sediment scour in real time. 1/8 degree North Pacific Oceanographic Prediction System. |
| FY06 | Remote in situ autonomous coastal sensing system. Autonomous sea floor mapping system. Full spectrum noise model for ASW and MCM frequency bands. |
3.12.2.2 Major Technical Challenges. Past efforts have been predicated on the construction of databases supplemented by limited onsite information and have been aided by large-scale predictive models driven by large-scale observational programs. As the warfighter's needs move from the open sea to the littoral and the battlespace expands in complexity and rapidity of change, the science and technology of the ocean battlespace environments continues to develop models for forecasts and is moving toward the use of models as tools to interpolate and extrapolate and as a means to extract maximal information from available and disparate observations. The challenges are:
3.12.2.3 Related Federal and Private Sector Efforts. With the exception of coastal engineering, industry investments are small. Federal S&T is this area has been supported for many years by NOAA, NSF, USGS, MMS, NASA, and DOE; none of these non-DoD programs are aimed at warfighter requirements, especially if those requirements involve non-U.S. waters.
3.12.3 S&T Investment Strategy
Not all successful battlespace environment products result in formal, large-scale acquisition programs. Many result in a small number of software applications resident on just one or only a few DoD computers. Thus, the S&T transition and investment strategies have evolved to respond to the specific needs of a few specific customers, and issues such as affordability are not always critical since the major costs are, for example, in the first (and sometimes only) copy of some ocean forecasting software. Affordability mainly applies in the acquisition of ocean data through measurement and monitoring and the consequent construction of databases.
The ocean battlespace environment covers the domain from the bottom of the ocean to and including its surface and from deep water to the beach, including the waves breaking on the beach and the consequent modifications of the beach. The range of scales covered extends from fully global, transoceanic scales (10,000 km) down to the scale at which small eddies erode the bottom and bury mines (<1 m) and extends further to the scales of turbulence and of particulate and biological matter that scatter high-frequency sound and limit optical transmission in the water.
Seven distinct program elements (two in 6.1, the rest in 6.2 and higher) support the efforts, supplemented by partial funding from, and cooperative efforts with, many other PEs. The programs in this area include the scientific disciplines of oceanography, ocean geophysics and geology, hydrodynamic and sediment processes, and environmental aspects of ocean acoustics, which are linked to the Basic Research Program. The ocean battlespace environment area is divided into four technology thrusts for addressing warfighter requirements: models/forecasts, sensors and data, small-scale ocean processes and applications, and cooperative (performance and funding) efforts with other programs.
Ocean Models/Forecasts. This thrust covers global to littoral scales (about 1 km), with primary emphasis on support of undersea warfare, secondary emphasis on amphibious and strike warfare, and joint logistics over the shore (JLOTS). Developments in this thrust will primarily support the following areas of the JWSTP: Information Superiority, Joint Readiness and Logistics, Joint Countermine, Precision Force, Joint Theater Missile Defense, and Combat Identification. The primary technology topics are:
3.12.3.1 Technology Demonstrations. There are no specific ocean battlespace environment technology demonstrations at the present time. However, S&T developed under this subarea will be used in the Joint Mine Countermeasures ACTD involving Navy, Marine Corps, and Army, and in the Submarine Acoustic Communications ATD involving only the Navy. In general, S&T developed in this subarea establishes basic environmental understanding on which many system developments will rely.
3.12.3.2 Technology Development.
Forecast of Littoral Currents and Waves (DTO SE.45.01). This program aims to improve forecast capability for the small-scale currents and waves in the littoral coastal areas. The accurate characterization and forecast of the surf, coastal ocean currents, and waves are important to contingency planning, operational planning, and execution of a number of joint warfighter operations in the littoral environment. This program will establish capabilities important to the Information Superiority and Joint Readiness and Logistics areas of the JWSTP.
Autonomous Ocean Sampling Network: Mapping of Ocean Fields (DTO SE.47.01). Using an autonomous UUV, real-time ocean and bathymetric data that are necessary for MIW, AMW, and ASW operations will be acquired. Of great significance is the ability of UUVs to conduct ocean sampling in a covert manner, especially in those littoral operations where military interest must remain concealed but where environmental data are necessary prior to the operation. Capabilities established here will be of special relevance to the Joint Countermine and Information Superiority areas of the JWSTP.
3.12.3.3 Basic Research. Numerous basic research programs in both the Navy and the Army are in direct support of these technology efforts. Notably, the Army's efforts in surface wave prediction have critical application to the Navy and Marine Corps. The Navy programs in the areas of physical oceanography, remote sensing, coastal dynamics, geology and geophysics, oceanic biology, underwater acoustics, and the associated observations, databases, and models are key to enabling the development of the modeling and measuring techniques discussed above. Examples of research programs today that may provide the critical underlayment for tomorrow's applications include topics in nonlinear systems and chaos theory, aerosols, nested models for tactical scale predictions, multisensor data assimilation, and nonrandom distributions of biological sources of optical scattering.
