NC3 Commercial Development & Prototyping

Mission — Nuclear Command Control and Communications (NC3) source

The DAF nuclear enterprise has historically used unique closed systems to provide the high degree of mission assurance and security needed for this mission. Furthermore, the rapid development of the nuclear enterprise required the fielding of the most advanced technology of that time, and in most cases utilized technology that was well ahead of the commercial sector. Today the technological world is very different and in cases such as satellite communications and information technology (IT) systems the commercial sector has raced ahead of government unique systems. Commercial Leveraging for the nuclear enterprise will explore a range of key technologies that are either commercial, or commercial entwined with government system to quantitatively determine whether these capabilities provide increased resilience, improved reconstitution, or lower cost for applications within the DOD nuclear enterprise. It is not intended to replace baseline systems but rather will be prototypes to augment existing capabilities. The program will reduce risk in leveraging emerging commercial-based technologies by partnering with industry while providing access to Government analysis, testing and certification capabilities. Prime investments focus on Government-Industry partnerships to influence and militarize emerging commercial capabilities to ensure US competitive advantage in key technology areas. Experimentation efforts will be employed to explore new concepts and their applications in future operating environments within a system-of-systems context taking risks early in the acquisition process to drive a more optimized and efficient acquisition approach significantly reducing overall acquisitions costs. Prototyping of commercially derived technologies into government systems, followed by operational experimentation of the performance and security, will enable these candidate technologies to move into warfighting capability faster and at a lower cost, based on demonstrated low-risk prototypes. Efforts include a focus on communications, secure data flow, and incorporating commercial approaches for a coarse navigation capability. Communications will focus primarily on satellite links by prototyping terminals that can gain access and switch across multiple commercial and government links from a common terminal. Multiple commercial vendors will be competitively awarded contracts for these prototypes and will work with the government partners to interface with selected platforms across the enterprise. Secure data flow will test various techniques across commercial and DOD partners to smartly utilize multiple communications paths to increase resilience, and to integrate with hybrid architectures under USSF and across terrestrial networks. Coarse navigation will explore, test and prototype commercially derived approaches to resiliently provide a very coarse navigation capability to disadvantaged users. This capability does not replace GPS or other advanced precision DOD Position-Navigation-Timing capabilities or approach their exquisite capabilities but will instead provide a back-up option for a coarse capability for a scenario when no other options are available to the DOD user. This program element may include necessary civilian pay expenses required to manage, execute, and deliver weapon system capability. The use of such program funds would be in addition to the civilian pay expenses budgeted in program element 0605827F, 0605828F, 0605829F, 0605831F, 0605832F, 0605833F, 0605898F, 0606398F, 0605831F, and/or 0606017F. This effort is in Budget Activity 4, Advanced Component Development and Prototypes (ACD&P), because efforts are necessary to evaluate integrated technologies, representative modes or prototype systems in a high fidelity and realistic operating environment.

Accomplishments & Planned Programs (1)