US Navy demonstrates NITROS

The US Navy's Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (PEO C4I) demonstrated the Naval Integrated Tactical-Cloud Reference for Operational Superiority (NITROS) as part of the Trident Warrior annual sea exercise, it announced on 18 July.

NITROS is an automated data analytics capability designed to support faster and more comprehensive tactical analysis of data for planning and operational decision making purposes.

The demonstration examined the challenges of analysing information across multiple programmes and fusing data from different sources, in a communications-challenged environment. 

According to the navy, engineers on board USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, achieved all of their goals with the system, including showcasing increased data sharing among disparate C4I systems. The activity included ingesting meteorological and oceanographic data into intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance processes; performing predictive analysis, alerting and sharing processed data; and ingesting command and control processes.

Other goals of the demonstration included exploring approaches for data synchronisation and analysis in a constrained communications environment; and delivering automated data gathering and dissemination afloat. 

Alphonso Wilcox, NITROS lead at PEO C4I, said: 'NITROS was a great success. We met our objectives, successfully reducing risk for PEO C4I programmes and proving the power and viability of automation and improved operator usability across systems. We're excited to see how this informs programmes or projects going forward to improve the navy's information warfare posture.'