By Geoff Fein

The Marine Corps and Navy are expected to begin fielding this fall an over the horizon, on-the-move command and control system that can be integrated into a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP).

The Mobile Modular Command and Control (M2C2) program, was in response to an urgent warfighter need, Basil Moncrief, technology transition manager for Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) command and control (C2) systems, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.

“We’ve taken an ONR (Office of Naval Research) prototype design and basically gone into production with it on a limited scale,” he said. “We have a system that is going to be fielded and sustained as opposed to a technology platform.”

A number of organizations played an active role in pulling the effort together, according to Erik Gardner, program manager for MAGTF C2 systems.

“We wouldn’t be here today without the sponsorship of each of the commands, their leadership as well as the commitment from the team that came together,” Gardner told Defense Daily during the same interview. “It was an enterprise team effort that made this happen–SPAWAR Atlantic, SPAWAR PAC, ONR, MARFORPAC, Third Marines…that’s the enterprise team that put this together.”

Every team member provided a critical contribution, whether it was from taking the warfighter requirements and translating that into technical specifications to go build a system or the users who tested and fielded the system to make sure that the user interface had been built properly to the systems engineers, Gardner said.

“At the end of the day I had to package it in such a way that we could meet the requirements for information security and information assurance accreditation,” he said. All of those elements drove this design and the contributions of that team…they are the ones who came together to put it together.”

The key aspect of the effort is a secure wireless connection back to a hub vehicle, which allows the commander and his staff to set up a temporary command post, Col. Mike Bergerud, deputy program group director for program group 11, told Defense Daily during the same interview.

“That’s part of the integration and team effort of all of this–no one agency can do this alone,” Bergerud said. “It takes a lot of agencies to pull it all together especially when you are doing something as quickly as we have done with M2C2.”

Putting a satellite communication system on land platform had never been done before, George Solhan, ONR Director, Expeditionary Warfare and Combating Terrorism, told Defense Daily in separate interview.

“Synching up with a satellite requires very precise pointing of the apertures, doing it in a high ‘jitter’ environment where they are bouncing along the road, is pretty tough to do,” he said. “We worked that problem for a number of years. One of the beauties was we did a number of operational experiments with MARFOR Experimentation Center, which is a lot like [the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab].”

The mantra for M2C2 was always about open architecture, modular satellite communications on the move, terrestrial communications and multi-level security, Solhan said. “And V- 22 internally transportable.”

M2C2 uses off-the-shelf technologies, Moncrief said, along with an existing Ku-band satellite communication on the move system that was built into the vehicle. “[I] Can’t say it was a big technology challenge, but on the other hand it hadn’t really been done before.”

Tests were done at Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Charleston, S.C., and are currently underway at Marine Corps base camp Pendleton, Calif., Moncrief noted. “We are doing final testing now.”

Prototypes were also tested during Mojave Viper Training and during Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), he added.

Integration of the communications and electronics into MRAP has been done at the MRAP integration facility at SPAWAR Charleston.

“It’s basically taken us six months to pull an integrated package together in an MRAP and we will be fielding the system in the fall,” he said.

The total package includes a suite of standard tactical radios and laptops, Moncrief said. “Although [they are] not military laptops, they are widely used and supportable so most of the sustainment for the system is pretty cut and dry.

“It’s the capability that’s put together as an integrated package that’s pretty new. The Ku-band [satellite communications] is the thing we’ve had to pay extra attention to as far as spare and repair parts and engineering support in the field,” he added. “But we have all of that built into a 12-month sustainment package, so that for the first 12 months the systems will be fully sustained and then based on lessons we learn at that time we will adjust that package.”

During that 12-month period, the Marine Corps will field a service desk to handle calls from the field for spares, repairs and training, on a 24/7 basis, Bergerud said.

“What we’ve set up is centralized logistics support point down at Charleston and that’s where the help desk will reside along with the management of the field engineers and all of the spare and repair parts,” he said.