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home > July 16, 2007 issue > article
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| Photography by Sentek Consulting |
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| Hamlin Tallent |
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Re-engineering for new requirements
By Retired Rear Adm. Hamlin Tallent
Special to Defense Systems
We must work our way out of Iraq.” This cornerstone sentence for most presidential aspirants has led to many of the congressional changes following the last election. However, I — as do many American people — think the phrase is incomplete. So, I suggest we complete it this way. “We must work our way out of Iraq and refocus our efforts and resources on fighting the global war on terrorism on a global scale and in a preventive fashion that halts the extremist messages of terror.”
This can be done if we deploy our assets and modify the role of our armed forces to combat this new foe more effectively. Take the Navy for instance — a formidable entity that relies on the aircraft carrier, its 80-plus aircraft wing, and sophisticated, classified weapons and communications systems to project strike power anywhere in the world. Although bombing missions have their place in the war on terrorism, it is not enough to win a war that has at its center the requirement to shape perceptions and “win hearts and minds.”
So let’s reduce the amount of carrier aviation assets onboard to add other missions, such as medical outreach, well and road building, teaching, policing, disaster relief and agricultural development.
We could also have missions that empower a foreign government’s coastal patrol and fisheries regulation. Conducting these missions would require support from many agencies, ranging from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA and FBI to the State, Commerce and Treasury departments. The result would be a true representation of our national capability residing on a self-sufficient, mobile and deployable platform to advance our national strategy. By doing so, we would retain our ability to project strike power from aircraft carriers but would add missions to these ships that could be rotated into environments we wish to affect.
Much of the information required to support this activity is not in classified military systems and databases, but it is in the open and supported by unclassified technology systems.
Communications lines could be created in partnership with Navy and corporate entities using open-source technology systems, such as available earth-mapping and virtual chat applications, could facilitate real-time response to emergencies as they happen in an area of operation.
This would alleviate the concern of providing fledgling governments in Third World countries access to secure the Defense Department’s IP-based networks while providing moderate ruling parties access to valuable information that will help them counter insurgents and terrorists.
Although Navy ships are primarily designed for major combat operations, their mobility, capacity for mission sustainability, and comprehensive command-and-control suites make them ideal and critical to serve the maritime environment in the global war on terrorism.
Tallent is vice president of C4ISR systems at Sentek Consulting.
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