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home > November/December, 2007 issue > article
NAS panel recommends unified network-centric center
By Brian Robinson
Special to Defense Systems
A panel at the National Academy of Sciences has recommended that the Army create a single research center to focus on developing the technologies and human-based skills needed for network-centric warfare.
The center, which would be based at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, would also provide primary support for all other military services and joint operations.
The Army asked the National Research Council’s Board on Army Science and Technology to define advanced operating models and architectures for future Army laboratories and centers. This action followed a 2005 NRC report that defined the general parameters for network science studies.
That led the BAST, in its recently published “Strategy for an Army Center for Network Science, Technology and Experimentation,” to recommend an “increased investment in the behavioral and social sciences research that would consider human performance in networks and add to understanding of the adversary.”
The center would take advantage of moves initiated through recent base realignment and closure decisions, which will see the relocations of various key Army NSTE organizations.
The Army Research Laboratory at Adelphi, Md., and the Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center at Fort Monmouth, N.J., are scheduled to move to the Aberdeen facility along with elements of other organizations involved with the NSTE.
Without a plan to combine and unify these NSTE activities, the BAST report said, the Army “will merely relocate and reconstruct CERDEC at APG in its present form and fail to capitalize on the synergies possible with network science research.”
Extraordinary leadership will be needed to coordinate and implement this new organization, and a director for all Army NSTE activities should be assigned immediately, the BAST said. The document also called for the designation of at least two deputy directors of technology and human performance/adversary understanding.
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