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A NEW NAME FOR AN OLD MISSION?
When compared with the openocean environment, the littoral battlespace exhibits greater variability in terms of physical, biological, and geospatial parameters. Naval forces operating in those regions must understand and adapt to this specific battlespace environment to maximise the performance of platforms, sensors, weapons, and personnel. Naval thinking believes that the future littoral battlespace will have a joint nature. This will be typified by a rapid dissemination of tactical information from the multiplicity of platforms and sensors to the shooters to that extent that they will increasingly replace human decision-making.
CLOSE TO THE SHORELINE
To more effectively operate in the littoral environment, maritime forces are actively modernising or replacing near-obsolescent surface assets. Besides the number of weapons, sensors, and maritime aircraft upgrades coming on stream in the next couple of years, there are numerous new-construction programmes to include mine warfare vessels, auxiliaries, amphibious warfare ships, diesel-electric and hybrid diesel-electric/fuel-cell submarines, and affordable, general-purpose surface combatants like frigates, corvettes, and OPVs/Offshore Patrol Vessels (seefigure 1). Innovative hullforms, as best represented by the SWATH technology or specifically designed rigid-sidewall surface effect ships (SES), are seen by some naval fleets to be able to provide for better sea-keeping capabilities in extreme environmental conditions as often present in the littorals. Two other significant trends which can be observed when addressing naval operations in littoral waters are the evolution of the fast attack craft (FAC) or fast patrol boat (FPB) into the multi-role corvette, and the evolving multipurpose, multirole littoral warfare combatant. Such an example is the European Multi-Mission Frigate (FREMM/ Frégates Européenne Multi-Missions/Fregata Europea Multi Missione) programme which is a joint programme between France and Italy. It will be dissimilar to the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) programme, but heavily based on mission modules/mission packages to effectively function in joint/combined warfare operations close to the shoreline.
The great challenge is to also deploy these smart warships within in a dedicated network environment as represented by the French Navy's SIC21 and RIFAN netted concepts (see figure 2), to enable longer range around-theclock surveillance coverage, tracking of multiple targets, and engagement of a multiplicity of targets in the air, at sea, and on land. But any of these tasks will also increasingly involve...