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Bandwidth demands and the increased use of autonomous aerial and underwater vehicles are among the challenges for the nation’s aging fleet of ocean research ships. A new report predicts that the fleet will face even more demands on its time in the future.

The U.S. Navy is transitioning from network-centric to info-centric as it adjusts for the changing missions of the 21st century. The shift represents less a technology change than an organizational and operational one as the sea service faces more diverse missions with fewer assets.

The U.S. Navy will down select between the two littoral combat ship (LCS) designs it has been considering for the past several years. The service is cancelling the current LCS seaframe construction solicitation, and a new solicitation will be issued. The decision will be made in fiscal year 2010.

As the U.S. Navy continues to fine-tune its plans for the Next Generation Enterprise Network, its information technology leaders are focusing on the larger information technology picture, including who has command and control of its networks. Among their other priorities are decision superiority, cybersecurity, maritime domain awareness and training. All of these issues are being viewed through a magnifying glass of fiscal responsibility as the specter of defense budget reductions looms.

China may be building a navy that features some world-class technologies aboard new ships, but its large numbers and variety of naval and air weapons still are operated in isolated methods because of the lack of effective command, control and communications and datalinks. Of 494 Chinese navy ships, the only combatant warships with credible Level III command, control and communications are four imported Russian Sovremennyi guided missile destroyers, 11 new construction guided missile destroyers, four 054A guided missile frigates, two upgraded Luda-class destroyers and 12 submarines, including nuclear strategic ballistic missile submarines.

For centuries, navies around the world have sent sailors over the salty brine to explore and conquer. But as seafarers and their technologies have advanced, knowledge of what lies below the ocean’s surface has become more critical to success. The U.S. Navy has launched numerous projects to enhance underwater capabilities, and some of the most important will reduce the human component of vessels until people are almost absent from the equation.

An advanced satellite communications terminal is boosting the connectivity of U.S. Navy warships. Part of an effort to complement vessels’ military satellite communications capabilities, the new commercial terminals are designed to increase data transmission speeds to meet the service’s growing need for network-centric applications such as live tactical imagery.

The U.S. Navy is revamping its intelligence structure with command upgrades and a new set of priorities designed to rebuild naval intelligence. This effort includes the creation of a new maritime intelligence office that will move the Navy out of providing service-specific intelligence fully into the realm of national intelligence.

The U.S. Navy is working hard to keep humans out of minefields. The service is developing a host of autonomous and air-deployed capabilities to detect and neutralize mines at sea and in littoral zones. These systems, which are now entering service, will reduce and ultimately eliminate the need for divers to disarm and destroy mines in person.

The U.S. Navy is turning over the modernization of a shipboard network system to private industry to speed the introduction of new technologies and capabilities. The upgrades currently being introduced into the system help bring ship networks into the Web 2.0 era and provide the flexibility to accommodate more communications advances as they are incorporated into the fleet.