Development of a Naval C2 Capability Evaluation Facility

Abstract : At the tactical level, Command and Control (C2) Agility implies that command staff has a range of well-developed, and understood, concepts of operation that they can choose from for their organizations. The development of alternative operational concepts, even to adjust an operations centre to the inclusion of new or changed capabilities can be problematic at the unit level. For a naval platform, changes to the physical environment are generally both difficult and expensive. In order to support naval concept development and experimentation, Defence R&D Canada has developed the concept of a Maritime Capability Evaluation Facility. This concept would provide the reconfigurable physical infrastructure to conduct operator in the loop experimentation on C2 concepts, thus enabling the investigation of concepts of operation early in the naval capability development cycle. A prototype facility to support submarine C2 research has been developed and used to investigate a wide range of technologies that could be used in the development of a full Navy capability. This paper describes the prototype and a number of the technologies investigated.