SAN DIEGO: The Army and Navy must link their missile defense systems into a single network so Navy weapons can hit targets spotted by Army radars and vice versa, the chief of Pacific Command said today. That’s a daunting technical task but, if surmounted, it could dramatically improve defense against North Korean, Chinese, or Russian missile salvos.

“I believe that Army missileers should incorporate their air defense systems into the Navy’s integrated fire control – counter-air, or NIFC-CA, architecture,” Adm. Harry Harris told the AFCEA-USNI West convention here.

“I want them to be able to deliver a missile on target, and I want them to be able to do it interchangeably,” Harris elaborated to reporters afterwards. “In other words, I want the Navy to be able to do the sensing and the Army to do the shooting, or the Army to do the sensing and the Navy to do the shooting.” A Navy E-2D Hawkeye radar plane might spot an incoming missile for a land-based Army Patriot battery, for example, or an Army AN/TPY-2 radar might send targeting data to an Aegis destroyer.

Getting data from any radar to any weapon this way is much easier said than done. The Army’s still working on making this happen among different Army systems, let alone with other services. Currently, for example, a Patriot battery gets targeting data from a purpose-built Patriot radar by way of a purpose-built Patriot command post. The Army’s developing a new network called IBCS to connect all its disparate air and missile defense systems, and it’s had some successful tests, but it’s years from entering service.

The Navy is further along, having already developed what Harris calls the “unbelievably powerful” NIFC-CA. That system lets high-flying, far-seeing aerial sensors like the E-2 Hawkeye or, in future, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter pass targeting data back to destroyers and cruisers. That lets surface ships shoot down incoming missiles before their own mast-mounted sensors could spot them. But NIFC-CA is specifically designed to communicate over a Navy network called CEC (Cooperative Engagement Capability), which then feeds data to the Aegis fire control system on Navy ships. Connecting NIFC-CA to the not-yet-complete Army IBCS network will be a very different challenge.

“These two systems ought to be talking to each other,” Harris said. “I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m not a technical guy, so I don’t know how to make it work…How they do it, that’s my challenge to my components, to Adm. Swift (Adm. Scott Swift, commander of Pacific Fleet) and to Gen. Brown (Gen. Robert Brown, commander of US Army Pacific).”

Brown in particular is playing a leading role in wargaming out the Army’s Multi-Domain Battle concept, which envisions land-based Army missile batteries firing “cross domain” on targets well out to sea. That includes not just missile defense interceptors but offensive anti-ship weapons as well. “As I’ve already told our outstanding US Army commander, Gen. Bob Brown, before I leave PACOM, I’d like to see the Army’s land forces conduct exercises to sink a ship — in a complex environment where our joint and combined forces are operating in other domains,” Harris told AFCEA. “The multi-domain battle and cross-domain fires concepts are the right approaches we need.. in order to win future battles.”

Harris is equally excited about other applications of computer networks to warfare, particularly robotics. At the Super Bowl, “300 quad copters put on light show as an opening act for Lady Gaga — who was terrific by the way,” Harris told AFCEA. “What interests me in these examples is not the drones per se, or even Lady Gaga, for that matter. What interests me is the network that allows a hundred drones or more to fly in formation, to receive new orders, and to report back. That, said there’s a dark side(:) As soon as we figure out how to do this, someone else will try to hack into it.”

To help make these visions reality, Harris encouraged the technologists in the audience to pitch their innovations to the Pentagon — not necessarily to his headquarters in Hawaii. “My wallet really is small. The combatant commanders don’t buy stuff except in specialized areas,” he told AFCEA. “You have to, at the end of the day, pitch it to the services, (to) acquisition folks at the various service secretariats and OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense). The combatant commanders can help pull, but you have to push.”