Integrated Network Operations for Future Army Tactical Networks

Military Network Operations (NetOps) consist of three main components: network management, network defense (information assurance), and content staging (information dissemination management). NetOps capabilities include organizations, procedures, and technologies required to manage, defend, and utilize a network. Conventionally NetOps components are regarded as functionally orthogonal and operationally independent. However, based on our experience¹ with the future Army tactical network that consist of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), we believe these components should be integrated to enhance NetOps in MANET environments. We envision that with the creation of an over-arching architectural framework to underlie NetOps components, future Army tactical network operations will provide better support to network centric warfare. Also, the focus of NetOps should transition from maintaining network operations to providing optimal communications. In this paper, we describe issues and challenges associated with integrating NetOps components for future Army tactical networks, and discuss path forward.