Network Challenges

In Galrahn's article over at the USNI blog, he wrote one thing that especially caught my attention.

I caught Bob Work again right before he had to catch his plane, and he noted that VADM Dorsett is the guy who gets to figure out all the big network challenges to make the Navy work.

And in Opening Arguments: a FY 2011 Budget he identifies the battle network challenge as the fourth biggest issue.

These made me think of a Letter to Parliament in the Netherlands I just read. The letter is about the final evaluation of the deployment of HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën to Somalia (in Dutch) from March 26-June 28 under operation Allied Protector in 2009.

It was published January 12 and when I read it there was one sentence that stood out for me:

De Zeven Provinciën was the only ship [of all the Task Forces] that connection wise could communicate with TF465 (operation Atalanta), TF151 (Combined Task Force 151) and the own combined fleet (operation Allied Protector, TF410).

At that time it meant vessels from the US, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Turkey, Singapore, South-Korea, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands.
These are all allies and they can't communicate with each other?

The QDR places a great amount of emphasis on Partnerships, at least according to Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney.
So I'd say VADM Dorsett has a lot of work to do. Not only the internal challenge for the US navy, but also the external challenge of connecting allied nations into this network, which is especially useful in a time of fewer and fewer vessels and a bigger and bigger need for real-time information.