Four NCOIC™ companies contribute

patterns for success

The Network Centric Operations Industry

Consortium (NCOIC™) is an organization

dedicated to network-centric operations and the

interoperability advantages that network-

centric operations (NCO) bring to customers

and end users. Its member companies

contribute thousands of hours every year to

advance that shared goal. Their collective

commitment to the technology, guiding principles, tools, social-political context and even the

NCO lexicon, is the core of the Consortium’s success.

Recently, four NCOIC member companies took that contribution even further by submitting

their intellectual property—network-centric patterns—to the organization, knowing that the

information would be shared with scores of members, some of whom are direct industry

competitors.

With gratitude for all NCOIC members’ contributions, this story spotlights Boeing, EADS,

Finmeccanica and Thales. Among them, the four submitted more than 100 proprietary patterns

for all members to evaluate and potentially, to modify.

Why would they do that? What benefits could patterns deliver to system designers and

customers? And just what is a pattern, anyway?

Why contribute company intellectual property to NCOIC?

“So that NCOIC’s technical teams could assess the patterns, modify them if necessary, and agree

about the relevance of their application,” says Claude Roche, EADS. “We should fight to

improve a pattern, not to defend it—if it is incomplete, we should make it better.”

“NCOIC’s initiative to collect, evaluate and tailor patterns is unique,” observes Riccardo

Massimelli, Finmeccanica. “There is no comparable initiative in which the main interests of

many actors can be recognized and validated by others—even competitors—in a way that

stimulates growth and allows the patterns to become mature enough for standardization at the

global level.”

“Boeing has done a great deal of work on patterns and their instantiations,” states Allen Jones,

Boeing. “We are contributing that knowledge to industry to enhance our customers’

interoperability.”

“We hope that our suppliers will use the patterns to develop their products,” comments

Francois-Xavier Lebas, THALES. “Our company delivers systems and systems-of-systems; to

get the best product into the market, we need to develop interoperable systems, and that requires

our suppliers’ support.”

Boeing, EADS, Finmecannica and Thales understand the potential value of patterns and readily

identified more than 100 potential patterns that could directly benefit product development and,

ultimately, customer capability. In addition to submitting a list, the companies contribute

resources and write the patterns. They submit their ideas, obtain member consensus and

shepherd the patterns through NCOIC’s formal review process. Twelve patterns are now in

development.

What is a pattern, anyway?

A pattern is a repeatable way to solve a class of problems that exist in an operational domain.

Patterns embody the best practices and knowledge of experts who have already solved certain

problems. A pattern is a set of instructions that say, “here’s what you must do and here’s what

you must avoid. A tailor, for instance, relies on a pattern for guidance about insetting a sleeve, or

matching a plaid fabric. Macintosh and Windows functions such as “file, view, edit” are

intuitively familiar because they are pattern-based.

In the words of Claude Roche, here’s how a pattern works:

“Imagine that you are equipping a room with an extensive home entertainment system. You

have a lot of wires and components that come from different manufacturers. One thing you must

know is how to plug the various wires into the various components—the patterns describe this

process. Without them, it’s difficult to know which wire goes into which plug.”

In these examples and many more, the use of patterns shortens development time and makes a

product easier for people to use.

When applied to the very complex network-centric challenge, patterns go further than simply

adhering to standards; if designers use the same patterns they can help to achieve interoperability

between products, systems and ultimately—people.

What benefits could patterns deliver to system designers and their customers?

Interoperability:

Claude Roche: “Take the case of a fighter aircraft—an F-15, F-25 or Rafale, for example—

these platforms carry missiles. If you want to plug a missile into the wing of an aircraft you need

a pattern, because it governs the mechanical, electronic and power aspects of the integration. So

the missile builder and the aircraft builder need to use the same pattern, if they want to achieve

interoperability.”

Riccardo Massimelli: “The patterns are considered the direct application of NCOIC’s processes

and tools. When applied to the context of customer interest, this gives validity to the

Consortium’s approach in solving the interoperability problem solving: the final goal is customer

satisfaction.”

Customer performance and satisfaction:

Francois-Xavier Lebas: “Our number one reason for sharing the patterns is customer

satisfaction. Our patterns will help to increase customer satisfaction because they will lead to

more open processes and standards that a large community has agreed to.”

Claude Roche: “The first priority for civil, military and security operations is that participants

are able to share their situational awareness—‘here’s where we are, where are you?’ The use of

patterns can give them a common operational picture (COP) to exchange friendly force tracking

information in order to enhance global operational efficiency—at the very least.”

Allen Jones: “Benefits of using patterns to develop products or systems are shortening

development time, providing flexibility in implementation and lowering development and

maintenance cost. Patterns could be used by a government procurement officer as an evaluation

template for competitions.”

Riccardo Massimelli: “The patterns are considered the direct application of NCOIC’s processes

and tools. When applied to the context of customer interest, this gives validity to the

Consortium’s approach in solving the interoperability problem: the final goal is customer

satisfaction.”

Competitiveness in a global era:

Francois-Xavier Lebas: “Some part of our intellectual property contained within may help to

advance standardization. When operating in very competitive markets — especially in the civil

sector— our products, based on NCOIC patterns, should give us some competitive advantage.”

Allen Jones: “Patterns can enable the information technology market to achieve its full

capability potential for interoperable systems. Boeing’s intent is to develop this market through

our contributions so as to gain a reasonable share of a larger market that might otherwise be

smaller and dominated by one or two companies.”

Claude Roche: “Products that are based on patterns will sell better. For instance, a telephone

that is based on standards and patterns is a product that will be useful to more customers, sell

better and cost less.”

Transformation:

Riccardo Massimelli: “Finmeccanica lives in the aerospace and defence sector, so net-centricity

is a transformational requirement and is the trend of all its active business. For this reason, we

consider NCOIC the right forum in which net-centric models can grow successfully and mature.

The creation and development of patterns is one of those models.

Francois-Xavier Lebas: “Providing patterns will support business, military and civil-military

transformation since all three will improve interoperability performance and shorten time-to-

market. We plan to release several more patterns and provide the support that will make them

more effective from a business transformation point of view.”

Overcoming semantic barriers:

Allen Jones: “Alignment of terms between industry and government will prevent

misunderstanding of requirements and subsequent need to implement change remedies.”

About the companies and their contributions to NCOIC:

The Boeing Company:

Boeing has a long tradition of aerospace leadership and innovation. Its broad range of

capabilities includes creating new, more efficient commercial airplanes; integrating military

platforms, defense systems and the warfighter through network-centric operations (NCO); e-

enabling airplanes and providing connectivity on moving platforms.

“We have developed a number of middleware objects and have demonstrated them to

customers,” says Allen Jones. “These go a long way to incorporating various levels of

interoperability. At the lowest level, this includes the transmission of text (HTML)—at the

higher levels, it includes Web applications and services.”

• Instant Messaging pattern - begun by Rockwell Collins, completed by Boeing and submitted as a protocol function collection.

• Web services pattern • Integrated Middleware pattern - in development. • Legacy services design pattern - describes six methods of incorporating existing

software configuration items into a net-centric environment. Offers interim steps and options for interoperability that developers might not have considered.

Boeing and SAAB collaborated on NCOIC’s Net-centric Service Framework, a document that

provides overall guidance for developers of net-centric patterns.

EADS:

EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. The Group includes Airbus,

Eurocopter and EADS Astrium. Its Defence & Security Division provides comprehensive

systems solutions and makes EADS the major partner in the Eurofighter consortium as well as a

stakeholder in the missile systems provider MBDA.

“When a company submits its patterns to NCOIC, they generally correspond to products the

companies have developed or intend to develop, observes Claude Roche. “EADS has submitted,

or will submit, patterns that relate to friendly force tracking, mobile networks, secure gateways,

message handling, situation awareness, common operational picture and aviation

interoperability.”

• Space Air Ground Maritime (SAGM) Mobile Networking (MN) Operational pattern- addresses the transmission of information from a mobile source to a remote location in a wireless environment composed of one or more heterogeneous sources of wireless coverage.

• Secure Message Handling System Technical pattern - insures intercommunication of military, naval and civilian response units via a network, regardless of its type.

• Friendly Force Tracking Interoperability WG (FFTI) – a large pattern divided into six smaller ones that addresses the first priority for civil, military and security operations, so that participants are able to share their own situation

• Common Operational Picture - expanded FFTI includes “gray force” tracking of sensitive assets and takes a broader look at the operation field.

• NextGen and Sesar aviation interoperability. Nextgen and Sesar are the ongoing new U.S. and E.U. Air Trafic Management systems studies. Obviously, it is mandatory that planes crossing the Atlantic should not be modified while crossing in order to cope with the other side system! So both systems have to start from the same patterns when corresponding functions deal with the plane.

Finmeccanica:

Finmeccanica is the main Italian industrial group operating globally in the aerospace, defence

and security sectors, and is one of the world's leading groups in the fields of helicopters and

defence electronics. It is also the European leader for satellite and space services as well as

having considerable know-how and production capacity in the energy and transport fields.

“Finmecannica’s proposed patterns are mostly capability patterns,” says Riccardo Massimelli.

“They aim to directly address a customer’s interests by helping designers to use a structured

approach to deal with interoperability from the system, to the system-of systems definition.”

• Integrated Measures Against Piracy pattern - increases the resilience of commercial ships by including them in a network-centric system based on shore-based and onboard sensors.

• Integrated Extended Coastal Surveillance pattern – a system able to offer awareness over an area extending well beyond territorial waters, and not covered by existing systems.

• Open Sea Situation Awareness pattern - coherent integration of long-range detection systems including satellite technology, over-the-horizon HF radar and other long-range techniques.

• Modeling and Simulation Operational Needs Identification in Net-centric Environment- analyzes which additional characteristics are required in a net-centric environment.

• Modeling and Simulation Capabilities to Support Activities With a Distributed Architecture – describes capabilities, starting from main operational needs, to be achieved by an M&S centre necessary to support the foreseen activities.

• Satellite Navigation Systems in ATM pattern - defines a technological/ architectural roadmap for integrating satellite navigation into the ATM domain.

• ATM Environmental pattern - analyze and investigate how innovative ATM/CNS systems can contribute to overall environmental performances in a net-centric airport

• ATM Security pattern - investigates security requirements and technological impact on current ATM architectures, data integrity, disaster recovery issues, remote access, cyber security, communications security, etc.

• Net-centric Airport pattern - enables the main stakeholders working in the airport domain to be part of a net-centric airport (related to SWIM pattern, SESAR, etc.)

• Analytical Models and Methodologies for Logistic Contract Cost Evaluation pattern - new model evaluates the cost of a logistics contract. Could become a reference for the customer and for the company.

• System Functionality Sensing pattern - defines basic rules of monitoring system functionality and improve reference platform for the logistic command and control room.

Thales:

Building on proven capabilities in large and complex systems, THALES steps up to its

customers’ security challenges in an increasingly interconnected, technology-driven moving

world. Civil and military systems benefit from many of the same technologies and innovations.

As a dual technology developer, THALES plays a pivotal role in making the world a safer place.

THALES has already submitted several patterns, addressing secure communications and service

infrastructure distributed civil and military enterprises:

• The Secured Shared Core Network pattern is a high level pattern that can provide enterprises with a virtual private moveable network operating over a common shared network infrastructure (e.g: over Internet).

• The Tactical Service Oriented pattern is another high level pattern to provide a trusted service infrastructure over a secure mobile network.

The company intends to develop other patterns and has published a candidates list. Those

patterns will support technical and operational capabilities for Air, Navy, Land and Joint areas.

Their thoughts about NCOIC and its role in promoting the use of patterns Claude Roche: “We believe that NCOIC can and should leverage the use of net-centric patterns

throughout the western world. Everyone—not just EADS—can use them to improve

interoperability, and products that are based on patterns will sell better.”

Allen Jones: By classifying patterns into three types, Operational, Capability, and Technical,

one sees a natural progression from the operators to the producers to technology. This follows

the time tested Systems Engineering Process in place at many companies today. In this way, the

patterns can be integrated into the normal business flow.

Riccardo Massimelli: “All the main global aerospace and defence companies are involved in

NCOIC. NCOIC itself is a net-centric web of the main stakeholders in which all can rely on the

vital existence of the net-NCOIC.”

Francois-Xavier Lebas: “Patterns are not just about building future advanced systems, Patterns

are also about making average systems better, faster and with lesser risks. We have no concern

about making our patterns available to all members, otherwise we won’t play in the ‘open game’

of NCOIC.”

Contributors:

• Dr. Allen Jones - System Architect, The Boeing Company

• Dr. Claude Roche - Adviser and former Vice President of Advanced Concepts, EADS

Defence & Security

• Dr. Riccardo Massimelli - Senior Technical Manager, Finmeccanica

• Francois-Xavier Lebas - Network Centric Systems Architect, Thales