Disruptive Technologies: Part 2

These disruptive technologies can be classified in several ways.

Foremost are technologies that drive information and communications which is a critical element in designing the battle space and the conduct of war itself.  Effective and secure communications, presently relying on radio and satellite technologies, are central and critical to all forms of maritime operations. With the emphasis on network enabled operations highly capable and large capacity networks are becoming a sine-quo-non for modern command, control, communication, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, which must function faultlessly, ensure secure and stable connectivity as well as interoperability between platforms and deployed fleets, and be robust to meet rising voice, data and video requirements in combat. New technologies such as Software Defined Radio(SDR) and laser transmitters, Free-space optical (FSO) communication links provide high-bandwidth communication with point to point transmission, high transmission rates and safety from interception. The potential disruptive technologies for maritime communications could include high throughput satellite communications, more effective data analytics, greater autonomy and robotics, and new methods of securely sharing operational information through enterprise grade security architectures. The technology would enable shore based headquarters to identify the health of hull, propulsion systems, equipment and machinery and prepare the requisite logistics and maintenance shore support well before the platform returns from a deployment. Once blue laser technology is mastered to link submerged submarines with collaborating aircraft and can be generated at low cost and energy levels submarine communications as we know them would become obsolete. The Internet of Everything and techniques of cloud computing are futuristic technological innovations that would also disrupt the existing model of data transfer, information sharing and communications.

From look outs with a geospatial imprint of a few miles and temporal imprint of several hours’ new technologies have transformed the surveillance horizon to virtually cover the whole earth and compressed the temporal to a few seconds that can mean the difference between defeat and victory. Emerging surveillance technologies are a result of revolutionary concepts of electronics particularly the huge potential that Terahertz electronics, nano-technology, smart materials and bio-computational or quantum computing techniques on the one hand and miniaturisation and the development of MEMS based EM sensors and IoE on the other. These will revolutionise the Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) domain making many of today’s Combat Management System (CMS) concepts obsolete.

The entire Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop for data driven warfare has transformed from quantum to continuous and this real time full digital feedback with near auto/aided process gives the decision maker access to broad spectrum knowledge on real time which is backed by Big Data analytics and ultra-high speed computer processing and secure transmission technologies. These are all driven by advances in materials, automation and machine learning amongst others. Future command and control systems are moving towards cognitive computing and artificial intelligence assisted decision making.

These innovations will disruptively change the Navy’s Combat Management System  (CMS) architecture, the sensor shooter interfaces, the network of networks riding on cloud computing, Internet of things and the futuristic Internet of  Everything into a distributive and yet concentrated force generation and application architecture. In turn this will spawn cyber attack and interference prevention technologies opening up a new frontier in combat and opportunity for industry. This transformation to a real time data-driven, evidence based decision making process combines the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with analytics and cloud computing combined with intelligent precision weapons will lead away from reactive diagnostic Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) to a proactive cognitive Maritime Theatre Dominance (MTD) combat suite.

The paradigm shift that would be most visible in CMS architecture is that the conventional hierarchical command and control system as the system-user interface would be replaced with a highly secure ‘buddy’ horizontally distributed, information pooling and dissemination control system but with rigorous ‘operational’ interlocks on a centralised combat system platform. Such a model would require that 5G computers and networks access and control multi-spectral data in a multi point to multi point architecture and solve complicated, analytical problems with perfect memory and assured repeatability whilst the commander does the judgmental and command decision making – basis heuristic cues provided by the CMS.

In addition, to the technical features, these will also allow cost reduction of the systems, increase the efficiency and the development of smart radars drawing upon materials and computing technologies leading to revolutionary radar systems. Space will be increasingly congested, contested, and competitive and space based systems would be subject to denial, degradation, or destruction to snip the “network of networks”. Other disruptions is the possibility of cognitive radar that relies on a perception-action cycle in which echoic flow is the perception and steering instructions are the actions that would enable a robotic vehicle to safely navigate around obstacles, traffic and narrow areas. The world of COBOTs (Collaborative Robots) is not far away.

A second basket of disruptive technologies that will reconfigure future forces are advanced materials comprising ultra-powerful, ultra-light, ultra-conductive  man-made metals, that can combine to create meta materials, polymers, alloys and composites. New materials such as Carbon Nano Tubes(CNT) and graphene may introduce a shipbuilding revolution where the integrated graphene  hull itself has data/power cables embedded in it with infinite redundancy. With further refinement in additive manufacturing using three-dimensional printing (3D Printing) and special materials, it could be possible to potentially build spares or even ammunition at sea and these technologies in turn will impact the way navies have looked at maintenance and logistics to support fleets at sea. Such a transformation has an immense impact on the electronics and telecommunications industry, the metals business, on welding technologies and even cables looms and harnesses business all of which may not be able to survive this innovation. Potentially, hulls may be graphene based whilst composite content could increase in superstructure/masts for ships. Submarines may also see increased applications of composites in hydroplanes, rudder, sail/fin construction amongst other structures and internal fittings that would reduce footprint and radiated signature. For industry, these are signals of alarm impacting shipbuilding steel demand and also pointers where new business opportunities are headed.