The U.S. Navy is poised to decide in March whether it is ready to link dozens of ships and shore sites in an intelligence network that would be plugged into the national network the Pentagon has struggled to deploy fully in the years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The decision whether to install the new computers and software services will be up to Vice Adm. Jack Dorsett, the Navy’s deputy chief of operations for information dominance. He runs a new Navy headquarters organization called N2/N6 that is in charge of naval intelligence systems. If he gives the go-ahead based on the results of a recent evaluation, the Navy and its contractors will have the job of making up for lost time.

Twice, early versions of the Distributed Common Ground/Surface System-Navy (DCGS-N) failed tests during the U.S. Empire Challenge intelligence-sharing demonstrations. During Empire Challenge, the services collect video and other intelligence and attempt to disseminate it to far-flung sites. The Navy came up red on the official score card in 2008 because DCGS users outside the Navy could not get enough Navy intelligence to come up on their computers. The service also came up red in 2007.

A Navy manager expressed confidence that a total reworking of the program has overcome those problems. He predicts the Navy soon will be ready to join the overarching Distributed Common Ground/Surface network, which includes Army and Air Force versions, and eventually will include Special Operations Command and U.S. intelligence agencies. Intelligence officials want to ensure commanders can share tactical information, while analysts at the spy agencies watch for evidence of planned terror attacks.

The Navy’s new plan is a challenging one. Between 2010 and 2013, Navy engineers and a team of contractors to-be-decided must install DCGS systems at nine ground sites and on 21 large-deck ships — nine aircraft carriers, two amphibious command ships and 10 amphibious attack ships. That is the first planned increment. Destroyers and cruisers would be equipped in Increment 2 in 2013 and 2014.

“We are a very schedule-risk-centric program because of time lost as a result of the business model and schedule the previous program was using,” said the Navy’s Robert Poor, assistant manager for the first increment. ”As we get into more of a production mode in this program, I see this shifting from a schedule-centric-risk to more of a cost-centric-risk” program.

The Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) began reworking the program after the first Empire Challenge failure in 2007, devising a new schedule and budget.

BAE Systems led the DCGS installations on the first three ships and three ground stations used in the evaluation, but the Navy put out a request for proposals in November for the installation work on the remaining 30 ships and shore sites.

Poor was upbeat about recent developments. In July, the Navy earned a green mark at Empire Challenge 2009, and in September, it completed the operational evaluation trials aboard the aircraft carrier Truman at its home port in Norfolk, Va., and two other ships. The formal test report by the Navy’s Operational Test Evaluation Force was still being completed last month, but officials at PMW-120, the branch of SPAWAR responsible for developing things such as DCGS, were given a peek at the draft. All systems are go, Poor said.

The Navy has launched an information-dominance initiative led by Dorsett’s N2/N6 organization. Because of that work, additional functions will be added to the DCGS system in the future, but specifics have yet to be defined, Poor said. “In terms of capabilities, we’re being proactive,” he said.

The Navy has lagged behind the Air Force and Army in developing and deploying its DCGS system, said officials at the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, which is coordinating deployment of the DCGS systems across the military.

While the current Navy system under the formal DCGS moniker has been in development only since 2004, U.S. forces started to see the need for a multiservice intelligence network during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. As Iraqi soldiers began firing Scud missiles into Israel and Kuwait from trucks, hunting those mobile launchers created the need for a network for sharing intelligence across the services, a Navy official said. The widespread use of unmanned aircraft and ground vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased that demand as well. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Defense Department and intelligence community accelerated efforts to tie the various networks operated by the services and intelligence agencies into a seamless web. Forces would have better tactical intelligence in the field, and U.S. intelligence analysts would be better positioned to spot evidence of planning for new terrorist attacks. Intelligence analysts no longer would have to rely on friendships, e-mails and luck to share information.

Those in charge of the overarching network have based the computer interface on the Apple App Store, which provides applications for iPhone users. The apps in the case of DCGS are packets of intelligence grouped by categories, whether that is regional, subject matter or type of intelligence. One application will give all available data gathered by the intelligence community regarding a subject.

“Frankly there is more than one app out there that can do the same thing, but there are proprietary issues. Sometimes it can be a package deal where if you get A, you get B as well. It’s a matter of telling engineers: This is what I need.” said Col. Kevin Wooton, a military assistant with the intelligence office.

For the Navy, the operational evaluation was the breakthrough it had been waiting for, Poor said. “First was being able to share data within the skin of the ship and across the command and control center, combat center and other centers,” he said. “Part of the testing needed to show the system’s ability to share info provided by the Navy with the broader joint intelligence community.”

The Navy demonstrated the ability to share intelligence among the ships and to a group of computer servers in Suitland, Md., called a DCGS-N Enterprise Node. The Navy plans to deploy similar nodes at numerous shore-based headquarters around the country to form a network of gateways through which Navy intelligence would be shared with the broader intelligence community

In addition to the first six DCGS nodes, PMW-120 plans to install DCGS systems onboard 10 ships in 2010, after awarding a contract to an industry partner in March 2010 to help with the work. First in line are the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis and amphibious command ship Blue Ridge.

In keeping to the tight timeline, PMW-120 put out a request for proposals for installation work Nov. 4; responses were due back 30 days later. That way, it would be ready to award a contract if Dorsett approves the deployment decision, as Poor and others anticipate he will. That contract would include a minor update to the baseline called the Early Adopter Engineering Change Proposal. The goal there is to get the DCGS-N applications integrated with the upgraded computers the Navy plans to install on ships under a separate program, the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program.

“We want our DCGS-N to run in that so we won’t have to buy as much hardware or buy as many software licenses,” Poor said. The first of the DCGS engineering change installations would be on the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard in late 2010.

BAE Systems has formed a team of industry and academia to bid for the contract for the upgrade and installation work. Joining BAE’s existing team of Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Lab and Athena Consulting Sun Microsystems are General Dynamics, California-based computer tools builder MTCSC and InVisM, a Denver gaming company that specializes in military training systems. Engineers with SPAWAR and the BAE team face their own challenges. Because the equipment would be installed on ships, engineers are unable to borrow hardware from Air Force and Army systems and must build it from the ground up.

Then there is the bandwidth issue. A typical destroyer has about a megabyte of bandwidth shared by about 350 people, whereas the typical cable Internet service in a home offers about 3.5 megabytes for two computers. When the ship’s bandwidth is divided up, each sailor is left with nearly the same bandwidth as a cell phone. Compounding this difficulty, the typical shipboard communications system is connected to the outside world by a 3-foot wide satellite dish that sweeps back and forth. Sometimes the signal’s on and sometimes it isn’t.

To combat the bandwidth issue, the Navy is developing CANES, and PMW-120 is working to integrate its intelligence-sharing applications into the CANES computers.

“We need to be able to leverage this emerging network infrastructure that’s heading toward CANES. ... So we’re coming in with DCGS-N heal-to-toe after the current networking folks do their own program upgrades,” Poor said. “Ultimately the intent is that the actual hardware footprint for C4ISR capabilities is reduced and the actual number of lines of code is reduced because we’re leveraging [other ISR systems]. From the sailor’s prospective, it should make their jobs easier in terms of number of steps to move information between these systems and to simplify maintenance and systems integration.”

Physical constraints on ships are also a considerable concern. Currently, the DCGS system on the Truman operates on three racks of computers. PMW-120 is hoping to get that down to a single rack when DCGS Increment 2 is rolled out in the 2013-2014 time frame.

The system to be installed on Stennis and Blue Ridge will already be reduced to a two-rack system.

Unlike the Air Force and Army networks, SPAWAR engineers also face the challenge of catching the ships while they’re at port. Since ships can be out to sea for 18 months at a time, and a have limited time in port, engineers must work quickly to get the systems installed.

Installation work on the Blue Ridge would test the ability of Navy and industry engineers to install the systems while away from home port. The ship is on deployment in the Indian Ocean and is scheduled to dock in Bahrain while engineers install its DCGS system.

The DCGS installations, if they are approved, could amount to something of a test for Dorsett’s new N2/N6 organization. “As we go forward, quick sharing of info up and down the chain of command and across the battlespace is what information dominance of the Chief of Naval Operation and N2/N6 is all about,” Poor said. ”I see as we go to the future being a tactical gateway to share unique Navy information up the chain of command and across the joined battlespace.”