'Horizontal Fusion' Makes Troops Less Vulnerable, More Lethal

Monday, September 29, 2003

By Rudi Williams

American Forces Press Service

"They're trying to equip each soldier with computing capacity. Soldiers would actually have the hardware or the capability built into their clothing, which can do a number of things: It will get you the information you need and also provide the ability to better track enemy and blue forces. If you can better track the forces, you have better situational awareness of what's going on in the field."

Marian Cherry is the portfolio manager in DoD's Networks and Information Integration Office. The horizontal fusion concept is a DoD transformation initiative focused on enabling "net-centric" warfare.

Image Credit: Rudi Williams -- AFPS

WASHINGTON -- AFPS
The Defense Department's unquenchable quest to make troops less vulnerable and more lethal has led to a concept called "horizontal fusion."

Horizontal fusion is a DoD transformation initiative focused on enabling "net- centric" warfare.

DoD officials said net-centric warfare is a concept of operations with information superiority and the ability to make sense of that information as its foundation. The idea is to increase combat power by utilizing all assets in the field and at home to link decision makers and shooters electronically. With access to the same information at the same time, they achieve shared awareness, increased speed of command, higher tempo of operations, greater lethality, increased survivability and a degree of self-synchronization, officials said.

"Net-centric warfare has a lot of implications," said Marian Cherry, the horizontal fusion portfolio manager in DoD's Networks and Information Integration Office. "But the major thing is to be able to communicate, work in real time with anybody, anywhere, to solve a problem.

"That means, if I need to talk to a DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), CIA or J-2 (military intelligence) analyst all at one time to collaborate on a problem, I can do that," she continued. "I can connect everybody up, and they can have a collaboration session -- chat back and forth to solve the problem. That's one aspect of net-centric warfighting."

In other words, net-centric warfare is the flexibility in providing battlefield intelligence from intelligence analysts or commander to troops in the field and from the troops to the commander, all the way down to platoon, squad and small groups of special operations personnel on a clandestine mission, Cherry said.
(More: Military.com)
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Dan