By Geoff Fein
Without secure and interoperable networks, the Navy won’t be able to achieve two of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) cooperative strategy’s overarching themes–cooperation among all maritime services and preventing and winning small wars, a top Navy official said yesterday.
The challenge the Navy has is in delivering intelligence and information to the warfighter virtually and instantaneously against the 21st century cyber threat, Vice Adm. Harry Harris, deputy CNO communications networks and deputy chief of information, told attendees at the annual AFCEA Naval IT Day in McLean, Va.
“We have to do this in a fiscally constrained environment,” he said. “We can’t afford to invest in every IT innovation that you all have to offer us.”
The fiscal constraints won’t be changing in the near future, Harris noted. That will require the Navy to anticipate the nation’s adversaries moves.
“If we are bold, innovative, and creative, we can stay ahead of our adversaries,” Harris said. “But if we are timid, stale in our thinking, if we are static in network design or network security, then our adversaries can and will turn Moore’s Law to their advantage.”
The Navy’s move toward advanced information technology (IT) systems presents opportunities, Harris said.
“The opportunity to bring together emerging technologies to allow us to develop a true network centric environment that enables the warfighter to access data, services, and applications, anywhere in the world, at any time, to act with immediacy and decisiveness when warranted,” he added.
Harris told the gathering that the Navy realizes its networks are “inefficient” and inadequately secured to meet the threats the service may soon face.
“We also believe we are not getting a proper return on our IT investments. So we have made significant realignments and refocused to produce a Naval Network Environment (NNE) for the Department of the Navy (DON),” Harris added.
When fully implemented the NNE will integrate a series of high secure and reliable enterprise wide voice, video, and data services around a single network, Harris said. “It will result in a standardized new environment with joint interoperability, enhanced information sharing with our partners, and increased command and control of our network resources.”
NNE will include the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN); One Net, the Navy’s overseas network; the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprises Services (CANES) and the Marine Corps Enterprise Network (MCEN).
“Our goal is to have all Navy users on an approved network by 2016,” Harris said.
Existing legacy networks will either migrate to one of the approved enterprise networks or will be designated an accepted network based on unique requirements, he added.
“We are developing a naval network migration plan that will make sure our NNE vision remains flexible enough to meet our 21st century maritime mission requirements ,” Harris said. “To do this, we must improve the security of our network in a manner that will balance our capability against emerging threats.”
That will require leveraging commercial technologies, he added.