NCW Roadmap

On 21st March 2007 HCS, RADM Matt Tripovich, launched the Network Centric Warfare Roadmap 2007. The updated NCW Roadmap outlines the steps by which the ADF will become further network-enabled. It is a guide to discovering and exploiting the opportunities of NCW.
This Roadmap's broad aims include:

  • informing both the public and Defence community of Defence's vision for NCW;
  • providing a status report on Defence's evolving NCW capability;
  • outlining the capability development path for Defence's NCW capability; and
  • providing an overview of the milestones that Defence views as critical to the realisation of its vision for NCW.

Copies of the Roadmap Open in new window are available from the Directorate of NCW Implementation in CDG.

In May 2003, the Minister for Defence launched Enabling Multidimensional Manoeuvre: The ADF Network Centric Warfare Concept. This discussion paper described the ADF's current ideas on NCW and how it would guide the development of the Seamless Force described in Force 2020 (2002). Further development of the discussion paper has resulted in the production of the ADF's NCW Concept.

The NCW Concept accepts that the full implications of enhanced collaboration and shared situational awareness have yet to be identified. This is particularly the case with its potential to influence the way the ADF conducts warfighting.

Defence has recognised the innovative nature of Network Centric Warfare, and the tremendous potential it holds for enhancing the ADF's warfighting effectiveness. In the past Defence has focussed primarily on the delivery of network nodes, or platforms, rather than on the provision of an underlying networking infrastructure. Many platforms have thus been ‘stand alone' in their ability to network with other force elements. This has resulted in an ADF that has a limited capacity to provide collaboration between dispersed force elements.

This NCW Roadmap Open in new window provides the direction, and initial steps, to redress this situation. It is Defence's guide to discovering and exploiting the opportunities of Network Centric Warfare. It is an aspirational document, setting the long-term goals for the ADF's warfighting capabilities through to 2020. The focus of this, the first, Roadmap is to detail the initial actions that will set the ADF on the road to an effective NCW capability. Over the next few years, updates to the Roadmap will identify actions that will lead to the improved collaboration and shared situational awareness required to achieve desired, tailored effects. This iterative approach will allow Defence to explore the potential of NCW, and how best it can be applied in the ADF's approach to warfighting.