Engaging NSAGs
ISN Insights
Barrack Obama entered his term of the American presidency aiming to set a different tone for US foreign policy. One initiative which illustrates a change in attitude came in 2010 when the US State Department issued a Quadrennial Diplomatic and Development Review (QDDR). It was the first of its kind to be published, and emulated the long-standing Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).
This first-ever QDDR, titled “Leading through Civilian Power,” set a course for US diplomacy of “engaging beyond the state.” Crisis and conflict resolution were to be regarded as a central national security objective, so the goal articulated in the QDDR was one of broadening US diplomatic efforts to include non-state actors.
Limiting US foreign relations to state-to-state diplomacy flies in the face of recent global developments. Since 2008, conflicts between a state and one or more non-state armed groups (NSAGs) have vastly outnumbered inter-state conflicts, according to the Human Security Report 2009/2010.
But according to a report released in October 2011 by the Council on Foreign Relations and authored by Foreign Service officer Payton Knopf, "little work has been done to prepare US diplomats for analyzing and engaging with the most influential non-state actors and participants in the world’s conflicts."
"The State Department needs clear guidelines as to why, when, and how its diplomats should conduct such outreach," Knopf told ISN Insights.
One problem that impedes engaging with NSAGs is that they are often classified as terrorist organizations. The term ‘terrorist’ is however sometimes used as a politically-motivated weapon against a target NSAG.
"While all terrorist groups are by definition NSAGs, not all NSAGs are terrorist groups," Knopf acknowledged. "But the State Department has shied away from engagement with many NSAGs."
In other words, the fact that an organization is merely referred to as an NSAG may have the effect of proscribing contact with it.
The eyes have it
Tactical ISR Technology
The Counter Terrorism Airborne Analysis Center (CTAAC), a unit run jointly by the Department of Defense and interested civilian agencies, has been making use of large volumes of full motion video (FMV) of late. Captain Sam Percy, a reserve Army officer assigned to CTAAC and a solutions engineer at Overwatch Systems, works in the first phase of video analysis, which means that he monitors live video feeds streamed into the center from unmanned aerial vehicles.
“Working with video enables us to identify targets, create analysis surrounding target sets, and generate correlations among the targets from different locations,” Percy said. “It is especially useful when it comes to following and tracking individuals and personalities.”
CTAAC analysts also use video and imagery to construct route analysis for warfighters pursuing targets. “We can analyze routes from a helicopter landing zone to a target and assess enemy threats in the area,” said Percy. “At the end of the day there is a great feeling of accomplishment knowing that we equipped our troops with as much intelligence information as needed for them to complete their mission and safely return home.”
There is no question about the increased demand in the military and intelligence communities for access to and analysis and exploitation of full motion video. Experts say this is driven by the explosion in the number of available sensors and platforms that provide FMV; a few dozen assets 10 years ago have exploded to thousands today. The volume of video taken in Afghanistan and Iraq in any given year can be measured in decades.
The key added value that video brings over still imagery intelligence is the ability to observe targets over time. FMV provides a capability to understand human activity over and above the insights to be derived from still imagery.
“Military operators have become increasingly dependent on FMV for general situational awareness and target specific reconnaissance,” said David Fields, chief technology officer at Logos Technologies. “The primary development for platforms has been the advent of unmanned aircraft. The advance of this technology will continue for the foreseeable future, making airborne FMV ubiquitous.”
Storage on demand
Military Information Technology
Less than a decade ago, the proportion of IT budgets spent on storage was in the single digits. Today, it’s around 30 percent.
The reason is that military organizations, no less than their commercial counterparts, have an insatiable appetite for data. They want to slice, dice, crunch and analyze that data, and never have to discard it. In addition, data sets are growing exponentially, especially with the increased utilization of video and other imagery in military applications.
The good news is that organizations have learned to manage storage more efficiently. “The consolidation and virtualization of servers means that you don’t need as many of them,” said Mark Weber, president of the U.S. public sector division at NetApp, a storage solutions company. “But with defense budget cuts coming, it is important that the military develop ways to get even more efficient with storage.”
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) was out ahead of the storage management curve when it awarded an Enterprise Storage Services (ESS) contract to ViON Corp. in 2007. ESS provides storage capacity as a service, and was the first sizable storage project of its kind anywhere, according to John Garing, a former DISA chief information officer and now a ViON vice president.
Garing added that DISA started the concept of capacity on demand in 2001. The first competitively awarded capacity-on-demand contract was the Assured Computing Environment in 2003. DISA issued a request for information over the summer, in anticipation of recompeting ESS next year. The RFI makes clear that DISA will be continuing its “on-demand service approach.”
The ESS vendor will also be “required to provide state-of-the-art storage capacity to meet new and emerging customer requirements and have the ability to replace existing DISA storage capacity that has exceeded its technical life.”
More than just a currency game
ISN Insights
Attacking China over its trade and currency policies – in light of a US economy that refuses to produce new jobs – has become almost a cardinal principle of American politics of late. On 11 October, the US Senate passed a bill that would allow for new tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States if China continues to undervalue its currency. The bill was championed by lawmakers from manufacturing-heavy states, who are worried that cheap Chinese exports are killing American jobs. “I don’t believe you have a middle class in America without a vibrant manufacturing base,” said Republican Senator Jeff Sessions about the bill. “We’ll stand up and take our lumps and take our gains in a fair competition.”
Additionally, the Obama administration announced just last month the filing of a complaint against China with the World Trade Organization, over China's treatment of chicken imports. A press release from the US Trade Representative said the case was filed "to protect jobs in America’s poultry processing sector."
The chicken case is the just the latest in a series of complaints filed by the US against China in the WTO related to products ranging from rubber to wind power equipment to steel.
With the Republican Party’s race to choose a nominee heating up, China is emerging as a major foreign policy topic – and frontrunner Mitt Romney is leading the charge. In a televised debate earlier this month, Romney promised on “day one” of his administration to issue an “executive order identifying China as a currency manipulator," adding, "People who've looked at this in the past have been played like a fiddle by the Chinese. And the Chinese are smiling all the way to the bank, taking our currency and taking our jobs and taking a lot of our future."
In response to this kind of fierce rhetoric, one leading Washington journalist opined that "China-bashing...is likely to characterize the 2012 fight for the White House."
The Chinese government has maintained a policy since 1994 of intervening in currency markets to limit the appreciation of its currency, the renminbi (RMB), against the US dollar. Critics have charged that this policy has made Chinese exports cheaper, and US exports to China more expensive than under free market conditions. Some argue that the large annual US trade deficits with China has led to a widespread loss of US manufacturing jobs, and, conversely, that the reform of China's currency policies, would lead to higher levels of US exports, and the creation of jobs at home.
The increase and decrease
Military Logistics Forum
Life cycle management is a methodology that seeks to efficiently deliver and maintain military systems and platforms over a period that can stretch over years and decades and—especially in these times—within the constraints of tight budgets.
While life cycle management has been a recognized process within both the military and private sectors for some years, some argue that it is honored more in the breach than in the observance in military circles. One reason system and platform costs sometimes balloon out of control has been the failure to plan for life cycle costs. Operations and maintenance often consume 75 percent of the lifetime costs of military vehicles. But the planning emphasis is often on the acquisition costs, the other 25 percent.
The prospect of significant cuts to the defense budget has placed a greater emphasis on the cost control aspects of life cycle management. This process begins in the planning phases of a product with a focus on designing for affordability, rather than capabilities, and an emphasis on high reliability, which reduces the lifetime costs of a product. Recapitalization and resetting of platforms extends their useful life and reduces overall costs. Building fuel efficiency and environmental friendliness likewise reduces life cycle logistics costs.
The practice of life cycle management may ultimately be heading toward a penetrating analysis and understanding of all the costs associated with the ownership of a system. Achieving that level requires changes in how the subject is approached, perhaps even a merger of early stage processes and organizations, such as procurement and acquisition, with later stages of the life cycle such as maintenance and repairs.
Toward a ‘special relationship’?
ISN Insights
The history of 20th century American foreign policy largely surrounds efforts to thwart the designs of Germany to dominate Europe. But with a united Germany now the key player within the EU, has the time arrived for the US to forge a ‘special relationship’ with the European power?
In December 1962, President John F Kennedy declared that the US has a special relationship with two countries: Great Britain and Israel. Clearly, these relationships are not cut from the same cloth. While the relationship with the UK is based on ancestry, history and language, the one with Israel is thought to be a moral commitment.
A special relationship with Germany would be of a third variety. It would involve an acknowledgement of Germany's political, military and economic power and its willingness to play important roles in the projection of Western power in places like Afghanistan. It could also come to counterbalance the growing economic relationship between Germany and China. The New York Times reported recently that a visit to Germany by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao concluded not only with billions of euros in trade deals but also with an agreement "to establish special government consultations."
JFK famously identified with Berliners when that city was a key outpost on the frontline of the Cold War. Echoing Kennedy, Barack Obama, when he was running for president in 2008, also made a key speech with Berlin as his backdrop. But times have changed. No longer is Berlin a besieged city in need of US help. Instead, the US may be the one looking across the pond for support.
The EW world
Tactical ISR Technology
Electronic warfare (EW) used to refer to the detection and jamming of radio frequencies, making communications by an adversary difficult. No longer.
Today’s electronic warfare is focused on any weapons system or device uses or creates signals in the electromagnetic spectrum from radios and radars to controls for improvised explosive devices. Electronic warfare countermeasures also protect vehicles and aircraft by identifying and evading munitions based on their electromagnetic signature. Electronic warfare refers to the use, and the denial of use, of the electromagnetic spectrum by a broad range of electronic technologies.
One growing challenge in the electronic warfare arena involves the protection of unmanned aerial vehicles, which are increasingly being deployed to gather tactical ISR. Advances in computing, which allow UAVs to exercise greater degrees of autonomy, are helping in this area. EW applications often must detect, tune to and locate a transmission in an extremely brief period of time. Specialized antennas and tuners as well as high-speed real-time computing capabilities also help protect lives and assets by identifying threats and deploying countermeasures within very narrow time frames.
“Everyone used to think that electronic warfare was tied to the jamming of radios signals,” said Roger Nadeau, vice president for land and C4I solutions at Elbit Systems of America. “That is not true anymore.”
Electronic warfare today has moved conceptually beyond the compromise or protection of communications and other assets. “Electronic warfare in a wider sense is about creating situational awareness,” said Steve Roberts, chief technical officer for electronic warfare at Selex Galileo. “It is about collecting information that can contribute to situational awareness, not just for the platform but also for the force the platform is supporting.”
End to Mexico truck dispute: boost to logistics?
American Journal of Transportation
Earlier this month, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and U.S. President Barack Obama announced, after a meeting in Washington, the terms of a new deal that would open up the border between the two countries to commercial trucks. The transportation agreement, which would also resolve a long-standing trade dispute that involves hefty Mexican tariffs on U.S. goods shipped over the border, is expected to lower transportation costs between the two countries and enhance exports.
The agreement could also boost Mexico's ambitions to become a North American logistics center, to match its growing manufacturing sector. The government of Mexico has embarked on a multi-billion dollar program of investments in logistics infrastructure, including roads, rail, and the Lazaro Cardenas seaport, which it aims to transform into the second largest on North America's Pacific coast.
The dispute over cross-border trucking between Mexico and the United States dates back to the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1995. Under NAFTA's terms, U.S. and Mexican trucks were to be allowed to transport goods back and forth across the border at the agreement's outset, but security concerns and union pressures caused the U.S. to prohibit Mexican trucks from having full access to U.S. roads.
The ban on Mexican vehicles sparked a 15-year-long trade standoff. A pilot program was launched in 2007 to monitor the safety of Mexican trucks and gradually introduce them onto U.S. highways, but funding for the program was eventually cut. In response, Mexico imposed $2.4 billion in tariffs on U.S. goods in 2009. A year later, an additional round of tariffs ranging from 5 percent to 25 percent was introduced on a variety of American food products.
Wide open with Gorgon Stare
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
The successful recent deployment of the Gorgon Stare wide-area persistent surveillance system in Afghanistan is providing clear evidence of how advanced electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) technology is playing an increasingly important role in military ISR.
As military organizations worldwide strive to become more cost-efficient by leveraging the benefits of high-quality ISR and low-light operations, a recent report suggests, they are displaying strong interest in improved EO/IR sensors as potentially decisive force-multipliers. “For this reason electro-optical systems are increasingly being seen as an attractive additional capability enhancer across the full range of military applications,” the Visiongain report said.
In addition, there have been several recent innovations in EO/IR sensor technology that contribute to their growing deployment by military organizations, according to Mike Scholten, vice president for sensors at DRS Technologies. These innovations, which include the ability to generate smaller pixels and to operate at higher temperatures, “enhance the quality and variety of imagery becoming available,” he said.
Developed by Sierra Nevada Corp., Gorgon Stare clusters 12 EO and IR cameras on a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper unmanned air vehicle to provide wide-area ISR capabilities to the Air Force. It is designed to provide uninterrupted visible and infrared coverage of city-sized areas, giving commander access to real-time motion video.
Enhancing simulation fidelity
Military Training Technology
Judging by developments in the video gaming industry, from which military simulation training technology takes some of its inspiration, one might assume that the U.S. military would strive for the highest possible level of fidelity and realism in each of its simulation trainers.
Research conducted by the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory in the early 1980s reflects the conventional wisdom of that time. “The degree of fidelity in a simulator is closely linked to training effectiveness,” said the research report. “Since high-fidelity simulators are associated with more realistic representations of the actual task, this assumption has been the driving force behind obtaining high-fidelity simulators for training purposes.”
But nowadays, those assumptions don’t necessarily stand up to scrutiny. Recent research has shown that training effectiveness does not increase in all cases with higher levels of fidelity and realism. Instead, different training tasks and situations are associated with different levels of optimal fidelity. Since higher fidelity systems cost more to develop and run, this distinction is particularly important in an age of tight defense budgets.
Training effectiveness and cost considerations aside, user acceptance of less than high-fidelity simulations remains a thorny issue. Since today’s warfighters grew up on hyper-realistic video games, they expect the same from their military training, regardless of the supposed optimal level for training effectiveness.
Toy shippers in alliance with NVOCC
American Journal of Transportation
The Toy Shippers Association has things well in hand when it comes to importing containerloads of toys from China. The not-for-profit organization was formed in 1990 to negotiate favorable shipping rates for seven large toy manufacturers with the Asia-North America Eastbound Rate Agreement (ANERA).
Since that time ANERA disbanded but TOYSA is still going strong. It currently negotiates with 12 ocean carriers, many of them former ANERA members, on behalf of 91 members. Collectively, TOYSA members import 30,000 to 40,000 TEU per year, 90 percent of it from China.
But recently, TOYSA entered into a joint venture with an NVOCC to provide a whole new set of services to its members. The agreement with Laufer Group International, which was inaugurated last May, makes available to TOYSA members Laufer’s extensive network in China, its consolidation services for less-than-containerload shipments, as well as Laufer’s information systems, which allow users visibility into shipments down to the line-item level. The TOYSA-Laufer arrangement is also thought of as a recruitment tool for new TOYSA members.
In the palm of your hand
Tactical ISR Technology
ISR platforms are often thought of as sophisticated and expensive systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicles that feed information to command headquarters and outposts. However, there is an increasing trend toward providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data to individual dismounted units and, often, to individual warfighters.
The ability to provide real-time tactical information to the most forward deployed troops is being facilitated by a growing number of portable—and in some cases handheld—devices that allow warfighters to gather and view ISR data. Also supporting the trend are systems that allow ISR data to be transmitted to devices, such as smartphones, in the hands of warfighters.
Perhaps the classic example of a specialized, soldier-centric ISR capability involves night vision technology. Night vision encompasses two capabilities and technologies. Electro-optical cameras—the same kind used in commercial photography—utilizing image intensification technology allow warfighters to discern threats in low-light situations. Infrared cameras display images without the aid of any light at all; they pick up the heat profile emitted from the objects being viewed. The purpose of both of these capabilities is to be able to find potential threats, identify them and provide information for follow-up action.
Most night vision devices incorporated into soldier systems today are image intensifying technologies that must use some light source. However, thermal technologies are progressing to the point where they too can be incorporated into equipment toted by individual warfighters. Today’s enhanced night vision goggles used by the U.S. Army fuse data from both kinds of sensors.
Other man-portable ISR devices include digital cameras which automatically incorporate GPS and other data for downloading into mapping systems; systems that provide users with an immersive picture of the environment or which allow access to multiple views simultaneously; and those that allow operators to see behind obstructions in tactical and close-in operations.
Moving the military
Ground Combat Technology
Hybrid electric vehicles have been touted in the civilian automotive market as a solution to promote fuel efficiency and to reduce dangerous emissions and dependence on foreign sources of energy. Could the same hold true for military vehicles?
The United States military, along with its industry partners, are working on—and in some cases have implemented—innovations in drive train component technologies that have included increased reliance on electricity.
While some of these developments are directed at promoting fuel efficiency—an established goal in some military quarters— the main quest for the use of electricity is the same as it has always been for moving heavy equipment under difficult conditions: horsepower.
Some industry players are now proposing electrical drive components for major vehicle programs such as the ground combat vehicle and the joint light tactical vehicle. While the electrical aspect of these proposals comes primarily to achieve performance requirements, experts say that progress in fuel efficiency is also on the horizon.
Some companies are also working on adapting existing engines to accommodate alternative power sources, while developments in axle and suspension technologies are being designed to achieve multiple goals, from overall vehicle efficiency to occupant comfort.
Taming the heavens: the new space diplomacy
ISN Insights
In February, the government of the United States issued its first-ever National Security Space Strategy (NSSS), a document jointly produced by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The timing of the release was interesting, coming three months after the Council of the European Union released a draft Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities.
Skeptics in Washington suspected that the NSSS was a negotiating document released in response to the EU effort, and designed to lead to an accord between the US and the EU on space security. But Republicans in Congress have expressed concerns about some aspects of the EU Code, and appear to have derailed any incipient efforts to reach an agreement. As recently as 4 April, Frank Rose, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, told a United Nations conference in Geneva that the US government "hopes to make a decision in the near term as to whether the United States can sign on to this Code, including what, if any, modifications would be necessary." As a practical matter, little appears to have been achieved in this area.
The unclassified NSSS summary released to the public and the draft Code both seek to preserve the freedom of navigation in outer space for peaceful purposes, but are short on details. Speaking to the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado in April, Gregory Shulte, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy remarked that the NSSS was developed because "space is increasingly congested, competitive, and contested."
Congestion in space - there are 1,100 active systems in orbit and 21,000 pieces of debris - threatens US national security, according to Shulte, because of the possibility of collisions between space objects or interference with their transmissions. Shulte also noted that competition among nations in the realm of space technology means that "the US competitive advantage in space has decreased": eleven countries now operate 22 launch sites and 60 nations currently operate satellites. Furthermore, US adversaries such as China and Iran have developed capabilities to "disrupt and disable satellites."
Air Force at risk of missing financial audit deadline
Federal News Radio
The Air Force may not meet the 2017 deadline to have a clean financial audit.
Air Force comptroller Jamie Morin told House lawmakers Thursday the state of information technologies plays into service readiness.
"The Navy started from a fundamentally sound accounting system fielded a decade ago," he said. "The Air Force is starting with a bookkeeping system that was fielded in early 1970s."
Morin said the Air Force has made "real progress," but "the 2017 deadline will be challenging for the Air Force. We do see moderate risk but with a high level of leadership commitment we feel we are on track to make the deadline. IT systems modernization is an inescapable part of the Air Force effort."
Congress put the Defense Department on notice in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2010 when it required the Pentagon to validate its financial statements as ready for audit not later than Sept. 30, 2017.
Contracting provisions questioned
Federal News Radio
At a time of inevitable federal budget cutbacks, it is not surprising that Congress would want to grab a chunk out of the billions received by defense contractors.
It is not the principle of the cuts which contractors object to; rather what's objectionable is some of the ways in which the House and the Senate, in their separate versions of the fiscal 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, go about implementing those cuts, said the Professional Services Council in a briefing call with reporters Wednesday.
Stan Soloway, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, a trade association, characterized the approach as a hodge-podge of disparate provisions that lacked coherence.
"Cuts in service contracting will come as a matter of course as budgets and programs are reduced," he said. "The key issue is that these are disconnected initiatives. Contractors don't understand what will really happen and what they are expected to do."
Last month, both the House and the Senate Armed Services Committee passed separate versions of the bill.
PSC is concerned about similar provisions in the Senate and House versions of the authorization bill which would extend the current cap on allowable executive compensation costs to all management employees, in the case of the Senate bill, and to any individual working on a federal contract, in the case of the House bill.
PSC also opposes the Senate provision which would cap DoD spending for contract services in 2012 and 2013 at the level of the President's budget request for 2010. The provision includes a 10 percent reduction in funding for staff augmentation contracts and contracts for functions closely associated with inherently governmental functions. The provision also directs DoD to adopt a negotiation objective that holds contractor labor and overhead rates at 2010 levels.
"PSC opposes arbitrary cuts in defense spending as well as arbitrary caps and pay freezes for DoD civilian personnel," said Soloway. "If you can reduce costs that is terrific. But when you pick arbitrary numbers, the number often becomes the objective rather than better outcomes."
Graphics processing power
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
As the demand in the military and intelligence communities for access to and analysis and exploitation of imagery and video grows exponentially, providers of geospatial and imagery processing capabilities are turning to technology originally developed for the video gaming industry.
The number of available sensors and platforms that provide full motion video has exploded from a few dozen assets 10 years ago to thousands today. As a case in point, the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle has grown from a one-camera platform to a behemoth that will carry 36 cameras when its next generation is deployed. The volume of video generated annually by the U.S. military in the Southwest Asia theater can be measured in the dozens of years.
Besides the explosion of sensors and platforms, the imagery and video being collected and analyzed is dense with data. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency estimates that future U.S. platforms will collect as much as one petabyte of data—1,000 terabytes or one million gigabytes—per day by 2015. That all this requires the automation of the monitoring and analysis of content is clear, but at this level of data consumption the traditional reliance on Moore’s law to provide ever more powerful processors to handle the deluge of data has fallen short.
Enter the graphic processing unit (GPU), which was originally developed by the video gaming industry as the engine to provide realistic 3-D imagery and effects. Unlike the traditional central processing unit (CPU) that powers the typical desktop or server and can accommodate perhaps as many as half a dozen processing cores, GPUs can accommodate hundreds of such cores on a single card.
GPUs speed the processing of large data sets through software that divides processes into many small tasks, each of which is handled separately by the many processing cores—this is called parallel computing—and then later reassembles the calculations into a single result. But therein also lies the challenge of GPU computing: Applications must be rewritten to accommodate the parallel processing paradigm. That is easier said than done, but applications developers have a choice of two programming environments to help them in this effort.
In the palm of your hand
Tactical ISR Technology
ISR platforms are often thought of as sophisticated and expensive systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicles that feed information to command headquarters and outposts. However, there is an increasing trend toward providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data to individual dismounted units and, often, to individual warfighters.
The ability to provide real-time tactical information to the most forward deployed troops is being facilitated by a growing number of portable—and in some cases handheld—devices that allow warfighters to gather and view ISR data. Also supporting the trend are systems that allow ISR data to be transmitted to devices, such as smartphones, in the hands of warfighters.
Perhaps the classic example of a specialized, soldier-centric ISR capability involves night vision technology. Night vision encompasses two capabilities and technologies. Electro-optical cameras—the same kind used in commercial photography—utilizing image intensification technology allow warfighters to discern threats in low-light situations. Infrared cameras display images without the aid of any light at all; they pick up the heat profile emitted from the objects being viewed. The purpose of both of these capabilities is to be able to find potential threats, identify them and provide information for follow-up action.
Most night vision devices incorporated into soldier systems today are image intensifying technologies that must use some light source. However, thermal technologies are progressing to the point where they too can be incorporated into equipment toted by individual warfighters. Today’s enhanced night vision goggles used by the U.S. Army fuse data from both kinds of sensors.
Other man-portable ISR devices include digital cameras which automatically incorporate GPS and other data for downloading into mapping systems; systems that provide users with an immersive picture of the environment or which allow access to multiple views simultaneously; and those that allow operators to see behind obstructions in tactical and close-in operations.
Not your everyday trucks Military Logistics Forum
Mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles are most often thought of as instruments of force protection. The United States military started to acquire them during the second half of 2003, when the fast-paced, mechanized, expeditionary Iraq campaign turned into a slogging counterinsurgency operation, often staged on complex urban terrain. The MRAP’s height and weight shield the troops sequestered inside and its V-shaped undercarriage deflects the force of improvised explosive devices blast away from the underbody of the vehicle.
But MRAPs play important roles in logistics as well. The vehicle morphed into several different variants, each configured for specialized missions such as the movement of weapons and general cargo as well as the removal of casualties from the battlefield. “Many mission types require MRAP survivability protection, and that includes warfighters running vehicle recovery and support missions,” said Archie Massicotte, president, Navistar Defense.
The RG33 variant of the MRAP, built by BAE Systems, in fact was developed to specifications of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to include blast protection from nose to tail, shielding the cargo areas as well, a feature not to be found on all MRAPs. The U.S. military has also recently placed orders for recovery and ambulance MRAPs with Navistar, and has begun to take delivery of upgraded heavy-duty tactical trucks. With the anticipated drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, MRAPs have begun to be reallocated and repurposed.
Naval simulation training
Military Training Technology
Two years ago, U.S. Navy Captain Mark Woolley, writing in a U.S. Naval Institute magazine, complained, “The Army is using high-quality video games to attract recruits and train soldiers. Why can’t the Navy do the same for its sailors?”
In 2002, Woolley noted, the U.S. Army released America’s Army, a recruitment and training video game. In 2008 the Army announced plans to invest $50 million to develop video games for use in training soldiers for combat. “So where is the maritime version of America’s Army?” Woolley asked. “And why isn’t the Navy embracing off-theshelf gaming technology to train its sailors? Certainly this concept could be applied to a multitude of Navy systems, ranging from basic damage-control equipment to shipboard engineering and combat systems either in a multiplayer or individual game role.”
Much has changed since Woolley wrote those words. For one thing, Woolley himself has since retired from the Navy and took a position heading the North American office of Vstep, a simulation company based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. For another, the U.S. Navy just recently released a fleet training strategy which incorporated simulation in a big way.
Training on simulators can acclimate young officers in advance of their first ship handling experiences.
“Officers can show up to their first command seamanship skill under their belt,” said Bill Schmidt, chief executive officer of Angle Inc. “They can step onto the bridge and know how the team functions and function as member of that team in a productive manner.”
“Simulations are a viable alternative for a good part of maritime training,” said Peter van Schothorst, Vstep’s chief technology officer. “Forty percent of maritime training can now be done on simulators. It used to be only 5 or 10 percent.”
SATCOM smorgasboard
Military Information Technology
In the last few years, a well-established government contracting trend has been for program managers to include the gamut of hardware, software and services in a single contracting vehicle. In addition, the scope of these indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts, in which companies bid initially for one of several prime contracting spots and later on individual task orders, has grown more comprehensive.
Two cases in point are huge new contracts that the Army is letting for the acquisition of satellite communications hardware, software and services: the Global Tactical Advanced Communication Systems (GTACS) and the Communication and Transmission Systems (CTS) contracts. As the scopes of these contracts have grown, so have the dollar amounts at stake to potential contract awardees.
In 2006, when the Army issued a solicitation for the World-Wide Satellite Systems (WWSS), the five-year contract, designed to acquire six satellite terminal types, including hardware, software, and operation and sustainment services, contained a $5 billion spending ceiling. GTACS and CTS, with their broader scope, are expected to represent five-year contracts with spending limits of at least $10 billion each.
The programs also are of interest because they demonstrate the Army’s increased reliance on satellite technologies. CTS represents an effort to beef up the military’s capabilities with COTS equipment, as a large and growing proportion of the bandwidth used by U.S. forces come off commercial satellites. As such, it will emphasize configuration and systems integration. The GTACS contract will emphasize tactical satellite communications, and will include more engineering and prototyping of new systems and equipment.
Requests for proposals have yet to be issued for the contracts, but both are expected over the next few months. Companies with related capabilities are positioning themselves to win a portion of the business.
Army to test, fix comms tech at home, not abroad
Federal News Radio
The Army is taking a new approach in how it buys and integrates communication technologies in theater.
The Army has designated the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, First Armored Division, based in Fort Bliss, Texas, as a test bed for the evaluation of components and equipment, and their integration into the network. The team will work under the auspices of the Center for Network Integration and the Brigade Modernization Command, which also is based in Fort Bliss and commanded by Maj. Gen. Keith Walker.
The point of this effort is to let communications equipment be tested and integrated in an "operationally realistic environment," said Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army vice chief of staff, Monday during a press conference. The effort "has a two-fold intent: to provide an operational venue to replicate the downrange network in order to evaluate new technologies and emerging capabilities and ultimately to remove the integration burden from the operational unit."
Right now technical issues that emerge in theater must be fixed in theater, Chiarelli said. "We will now bear that integration burden, not our commanders and soldiers downrange," he added.
Department of Defense officials also expect the effort to rationalize and streamline acquisitions of communications technology.
The 2nd Brigade Combat Team will conduct a series of network integration evaluations, twice a year beginning next month, Chiarelli said. The Army will use the evaluations to perform network enabled training exercises and to develop doctrine and tactics with respect to the acquisition and integration of communications systems.
From brain drain to internal bleeding
ISN Insights
As the United States government tackles cutting a record budget deficit, it has begun to dawn, even on perennial hawks, that one of their sacred cows, the defense budget, cannot be granted immunity from the budget ax. Even as this realization begins to sink in, it is becoming increasingly clear that not only weapons systems, platforms and technology programs need to be cut, but that personnel numbers will have to be reduced as well.
This recognition has led to a discussion about whether a reduction in the US military's officer corps will compromise the quality of a group that is already the subject of some concern.
A 2010 report from the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College noted that retention of junior and mid-level US Army officers has been problematic since the mid-1980s. The army's retention incentives, in the form of cash payments, may have succeeded in retaining greater numbers of officers, said the report, but it has reduced the quality of the corps.
"The objective should not be merely to retain all officers, but to retain talented officers while simultaneously culling out those lacking the distributions of skills, knowledge and behaviors in demand across the force," the report said. "Retaining sufficient rather than optimally performing officers may have dire consequences for the Army's future. New officer cohorts of high potential talent may be driven away by the prospects of serving under lackluster leadership."
Telehealth services save time and money
Military Medical Technology
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs operates one of the largest home telehealth services in the world, and it has grown prodigiously in the last few years. In 2003, the program served 2,000 beneficiaries. That number has since ballooned to over 40,000.
To some extent, organizational necessity spawned the adoption of home telehealth technologies. The Veterans’ Benefits Improvement Act of 1996 dramatically expanded the Veterans Health Administration’s population of beneficiaries from the relatively small number of warfighters wounded on duty to all Americans who have worn the uniform. At the same time the VHA transitioned away from its status as a hospital-based organization, paring down its number of beds from 53,000 in 1997 to 18,300 10 years later.
“As a result, there was a tremendous movement of care from hospitals to community and outpatient settings,” said Dr. Adam Darkins, the chief consultant in the VHA Office for Telehealth Services. “This reflected the need to manage people with chronic diseases in order to reduce hospital admissions.”
The hypothesis which drove the implementation of home telehealth technologies is that they could function as an early warning system to avert hospital admissions and outpatient appointments. “There is no evidence to suggest that the best way to treat patients with chronic disease is to see them in a clinic,” said Darkins. “The patient often deteriorates two weeks before or after the clinic appointment. The point was to see if we could treat the patient at just the right time.”
In fact, one of the leading trends in telehealth today is to get technology as close as possible to the patient, according to Nancy Green, the managing principal responsible for telehealth and mobile health at Verizon Communications Inc. “Instead of clinicians having to travel to the patient’s home, telehealth technologies enable them to do their job as best as they can,” she said.
Managing GIG operations
Military Information Technology
As the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) works to complete the $4.6 billion Global Information Grid Services Management-Operations (GSM-O) contract, industry observers are debating whether the new program should focus on transformation, efficiency, or a little bit of both. GSM-O is the successor to the DISN Global Solutions (DGS) and the earlier DISN Services Support-Global (DSS-G) contracts, both of which were awarded to Science Applications International Corporation. SAIC has been the incumbent prime contractor on DGS and DSS-G for the past 17 years. The GSM program represents DISA’s strategy to continue support of the Defense Information System Network (DISN).
The transformation versus efficiency question involves, in part, how one perceives GSM-O. Is it merely a re-compete of DGS? Or does it take some new approaches? Does GSM-O heavily favor the incumbent, or will it entertain creative suggestions from new players? Does the request for proposals emphasize costcutting approaches over technological innovation?
For an observer like Ted Manakas, who once ran the capture of the DGS program at SAIC and now works at AT&T, GSM-O promises to be a transformational program. DeEtte Gray, vice president of enterprise IT solutions at Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions, a prospective bidder for the GSM-O contract, says the program is appropriately balanced between innovation and efficiency.
SAIC and Lockheed Martin are believed to be the only two companies that will be bidding for the GSM-O contract. Bids were due at the end of March, and an award is expected this summer.
Across the great divide
Goverment Health IT
Does a “digital divide” separating health IT “haves” and “have-nots” threaten potential improvements in healthcare delivery and outcomes among minority communities in the United States? The answer is: it’s too early to tell, but few organizations are going out of their way to ensure minority and majority communities become equally wired for electronic health record systems.
The term digital divide refers to disparities in the adoption of information and communications technologies generally— and broadband Internet connections specifically—among racial and ethnic groups. Surveys show that whites have adopted broadband in greater proportions than blacks and Hispanics across various geographic and economic categories.
A Department of Commerce study indicates that 69 percent of white households make use of broadband Internet access while less than 50 percent of Hispanic and black households do the same. (See sidebar.)
This digital divide is also reflected in lower adoption rates of health IT among providers that serve minority populations. Complicating the picture is that minority populations tend to be underserved by the healthcare system generally.
Outside help
Military Medical Technology
Commercial enterprises often outsource activities in order to reduce costs, streamline operations and focus on core competencies. The latter motivation is perhaps the key factor informing decisions to outsource military and veterans medical functions.
Recruiting and developing career-oriented personnel is central to the mission of the United States military, no less so for its medical branches. But when it comes to filling temporary slots for physicians, nurses and allied health professionals who have been deployed to theater, the military has found it best—especially in light of the nationwide shortage of these professionals—to rely on outsourcing companies with expertise in recruiting professionals for temporary assignments.
Some of the larger veterans hospitals have facilities for handling some medical waste. But few if any military or veterans hospital—or civilian hospital, for that matter—has the wherewithal to run a comprehensive waste disposal program. Enter medical waste specialists who perform these services on behalf of the medical facilities.
One of the core missions of the U.S. Army Medical Command HealthCare Acquisition Activity (HCAA) is to contract out those activities that have been determined to be ripe for outsourcing. From his perch as commander of HCAA, Colonel Scott Svabek oversees outsourcing contracts that range from personnel and medical waste disposal to housekeeping activities. Just about every Army hospital in the U.S. outsources its housekeeping and waste management functions; when it comes to personnel, Svabek takes a more discrete approach.
“We separate them into three basic portfolios,” said Svabek, “medical doctors, nurses, and allied health services such as lab technicians, therapists and other hospital specialties.”
Some temporary contractors are hired directly, through advertisements in newspapers or online by individual facilities. But Svabek’s group gets involved when the scope of the recruiting goes beyond that. The HCAA recently wrote contracts for nursing services at the Brooke Army and Wilford Hall Medical Centers in San Antonio, Texas. The organization also oversees standing regional and national contracts for the hiring of temporary personnel.
Putting the brain back into intelligence
ISN Security Watch
Many defense and intelligence organizations around the world collect and analyze data. One such agency, the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Bethesda, Maryland, expects to gather four petabytes of data annually in coming years. (One petabyte equals 1,000 terabytes or one-million gigabytes.) That is equivalent to the volume of data of every movie ever made since movies began on DVDs.
Every computer user knows how to extract information from large volumes of data: simply use a search engine like Google. But the service doesn't quite fit the bill for intelligence applications. The data volume is too large and yields too broad a result with a simple keyword search. Narrowing the search results doesn't work either because it takes too long. Intelligence analysts often want to scrutinize and analyze data as it arrives.
"We find a real sense of frustration across the intelligence community," Guljit Khurana, CEO of Centrifuge Systems, a technology company based in McLean, Virginia, told ISN Security Watch. "The volume and velocity of data is growing while the time frame in which to act on the data is shrinking."
The solution until now for intelligence agencies has been to develop enormously complex Boolean queries which were tested to achieve specific search results. But this approach, too, has its weaknesses. For one, it requires computing expertise to develop the queries; additionally, the queries themselves tend to remain static while the search needs of the intelligence community tend to be dynamic.
"With the technology available today, an analyst spends more time figuring out what is the right query than anything else," Brian Futchey, a solutions architect with Endeca Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told ISN Security Watch. "Queries for searching on current applications can run to three or five pages long."
"Automated applications can rapidly scan data but they can't replace the carbon-based unit in the equation when it comes to uncovering insights," added Khurana. "The single most important component remains human judgment."
Now I see
Special Operations Technology
Heads-up displays (HUDs), a major technological breakthrough when they were invented, are gaining new-generation advances that will cut costs and add many new features, including binocular views, intensified images, color displays and miniaturization to cut electrical power requirements.
The art of heads-up displays originated in aviation, in order to promote safety and efficiency in pilot operations. Pilots are able to view information with their heads up and looking forward, instead of down looking at instruments.
HUDs include any transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints. Often, the data is viewed on a translucent screen that sits in front of the aircraft window, or, in the case of a ground vehicle, the windshield.
Typical aircraft HUDs display airspeed, altitude, the horizon line, heading and turn indicators. Military applications of HUDs can also include weapons system and sensor data. The target designation indicator, target range and closing velocity, weapon and sensor lines of sight, and weapon status may all be displayed.
In recent years, HUDs have become “wearable,” meaning, typically, viewable by way of helmet or eyewear displays. Recent advances in HUDs have come to address their high cost, integration issues with host systems and performance improvement.
“Heads up displays promote situational awareness,” said Bruce Georgia, vice president for helicopter avionics at Thales Defense. “You don’t want the pilot to be looking inside the aircraft. You want him to be looking out at all times.”
Synthetic aperture workhorse
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
Synthetic aperture radar is becoming one of the workhorses of the U.S. military and intelligence communities, which in recent years have come to recognize the value of using SAR products for a variety of applications, including for tactical missions, mapping elevations, detecting terrain changes and a variety of other uses.
The myriad of potential uses for SAR is a testament to the technology’s flexibility and utility. It can be mounted on satellites or on airborne platforms. It can concentrate on a narrow ribbon of territory or take in wide swaths. It can penetrate cloud cover and is not disturbed by most weather phenomena. It doesn’t require daylight to generate useful images.
The U.S. government, since scrapping a radar satellite program a few years ago, has relied on commercial sources of data for its SAR needs. Industry has responded to this development with many recent innovations in this area, ranging from new hardware that is compatible with small UAVs to enhanced on-board processing capabilities and the development of a variety of tools designed to exploit and analyze SAR data and to integrate it into geospatial intelligence work flows.
Unlike air traffic control radar, for example, which sends out beams of energy and receives reflections of that energy that appear as blips on a screen, the antenna of an SAR system ranges for a period of time across a target area generating a two-dimensional image. “The image is derived from the long track along the flight path of a satellite to piece together points on the ground,” explained Ian McLeod, director for defense and security at MDA Geospatial Services.
New platform for battle command
Military Information Technology
A battle command system that has won widespread praise for its contributions to U.S. operations in Southwest Asia is in the process on undergoing major system redesigns. Known as Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2), the system has helped minimize battlefield confusion and fratricide by providing tactical units with blue force tracking.
FBCB2 identifies friendly forces via satellite communications, without the necessity of line-of-sight contact, in Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain. It also provides short-text messaging and replaces radio-based systems that have curtailed ranges in mountainous or other rough terrain.
Warfighters say that FBCB2 has dramatically improved situational awareness. Commanders have more efficient and effective command and control of their units, and they are able to adapt more quickly than the enemy. FBCB2 also informs “engage/don’t engage” decisions.
The redesigns FBCB2 is undergoing are taking place in two stages with two major purposes. An FBCB2 Joint Capabilities Release (JCR), which rewrites FBCB2 software and adds new capabilities, will be deployed this year, and will eventually evolve into the Joint Battle Command-Platform (JBC-P). The word “joint” in both these titles is key, as the emerging system will allow the Army and Marine Corps to converge on the same battle command platform. JBC-P will also include hardware replacements and refreshes.
Balancing the budget on DoD's back
ISN Insights
With the need for enhanced fiscal austerity gaining traction the world over, Washington, too, has begun to examine how the US federal government can balance its budget and reduce its debt. President Barack Obama assembled a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also known as the fiscal commission, to offer suggestions in this area; its final report was delivered in December.
The US federal budget deficit reached $1.3 trillion in 2010, and the national debt now exceeds $13 trillion. Projections indicate that payments on the national debt will exceed $1 trillion annually by 2020.
While some of this debt was incurred because of the stimulus spending under both the George W Bush and Obama administrations, the national debt really began to balloon when the former president charged two wars on the national credit card, committing US forces to expensive conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan without raising any revenue to pay for them.
While debt reduction could be accomplished by raising taxes, a Republican House in unlikely to approve such measures - leaving only spending cuts as a means of balancing the budget. Popular entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare (which comprise 63 percent of federal spending) are unlikely to take a hit; this leaves discretionary spending on the chopping block. The Department of Defense is by far the largest recipient of discretionary budget dollars, leading some to consider how a leaner Pentagon could help address the dismal debt picture.
Building a cyber range
Military Information Technology
Warfighters endure a battery of training and exercise experiences before being deployed to face an enemy. They need weapons ranges and training facilities to demonstrate and improve their combat skills, participate in red team/blue team exercises, and familiarize themselves with information and communications systems.
The same holds true for cyber-warriors and network defenders, who require a digital environment in which to train, evaluate and develop defensive and offensive capabilities. They want to be able to simulate attacks to assess information assurance capabilities and measure incident response procedures.
Cyber-ranges are the virtual environments that have been created for cyber-warfare training and exercises. These constructs provide critical tools for hardening the security, stability and performance of vital government, military and intelligence cyber-infrastructures.
“There are lots of similarities between kinetic and virtual ranges,” said Bob Giesler, director of cybersecurity at SAIC and former director of information operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “In their simplest forms, ranges replicate operational environments in a controlled setting so you don’t have to go into the wild. You don’t have to worry about errant shots and hurting people. In a controlled environment you can replicate results and see how consistently either a defense or a weapon performs.”
Network for a mission
Military Information Technology
Although the United States and its allies have been conducting operations in Afghanistan for nearly nine years, it has only been since this summer that all 46 nations participating in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have been linked up over the same network.
Two reasons explain the time lag. First, it wasn’t easy to make it happen technologically. Second, the counterinsurgency strategy confirmed under the Obama administration— and its information sharing requirements—provided an impetus to finally get the project off the ground.
The Afghan Mission Network (AMN), as the new system is known, provides the connective tissue between the U.S. CENTRIXS (Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System), which is the theater version of SIPRNet, and NATO’s ISAF Secret network, to which the networks of the other ISAF nations connect. By law, SIPRnet does not allow access to non-U.S. users.
Initial operating capability for the network was declared in July, signifying the availability of the network to at least 50 percent of all ISAF forces. AMN’s initial capabilities facilitate human-to-human contact that includes chat, VoIP telephone connectivity, e-mail, Web browsing, friendly force tracking exchange and video teleconferencing. Full operational capability, which is expected to be completed within a year, will see AMN positioned as ISAF’s primary communications network, with key information systems also connected to it.
“It took a lot of planning and engineering resources from all the nations to put this infrastructure in place,” said U.S. Army Colonel Pete Gallagher, chief of the ISAF CJ6 branch, at ISAF headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan. CJ6 is in charge of providing communications and information systems to ISAF.
“AMN required a breakdown of barriers,” he explained. “Some nations were overly protective of their networks. We had to work through some policy barriers to open up the networks to sharing while maintaining information assurance.” These required several planning and negotiating sessions involving the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and its NATO counterpart.
Automatic extraction
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
The availability of increasing numbers of imagery sources is making greater automation of feature extraction an approaching reality, even as the exploding volume of available multi-source imagery is making it a necessity.
Automated feature extraction is a capability that allows software to recognize certain specific objects represented in digitized imagery or other data, such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point clouds. Programming software to be on the lookout for topographical features such as hills, or man-made objects such as buildings, vehicles or power transmission lines, allows those features to be separately and distinctly portrayed in the intelligence end-products created by analysts for the benefit of planners, decision-makers, commanders and warfighters.
Fusing data from multiple sources, such as panchromatic, hyperspectral and LiDAR sensors, increases the probability that features can automatically be extracted. Such a process identifies features such as buildings, vegetation or bodies of water by using a combination of spectral and elevation characteristics. The huge volume of available imagery and data makes it impossible to exploit these in the absence of automation.
While technology providers are still at work on the algorithms and software that could make completely automated feature extraction an eventual reality, the process nowadays continues to involve a collaboration between human and machine. The eventual goal is for the machine to play a greater, and the human a smaller, role.
Intelligence integration
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
A young corporal standing on a street corner in Afghanistan uses a handheld device to take a photo of a suspicious vehicle. That image makes its way across a multi-service intelligence network known as the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), and is displayed on the desktop of a stateside analyst. Video intelligence generated by a Predator UAV is transmitted to the same analyst and then back to the theater to the same handheld device carried by the same corporal.
These are examples of how U.S. warfighters in Afghanistan are benefiting from the continued evolution of the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS). As these scenarios illustrate, DCGS facilitates the transmission of intelligence from the edge of the network to its core and back again.
The ultimate DCGS vision is to amalgamate all sources of intelligence so that everyone—from warfighters on the ground to commanders at headquarters to remote analysts and planners—has access to the same intelligence from whatever source it may have been derived. Recent developments in the evolution of the DCGS architecture are bringing that vision closer to reality.
Broken border
ISN Insights
Late this summer US President Barack Obama signed legislation that would provide an additional $600 million for a legion of new border agents, several new border stations and additional unmanned surveillance drones along the US-Mexico border. Congress returned to Washington from its August recess and rammed through the bill in little more than a week.
Congress' hurry-up play provides a clue to the motivations behind the measure. With the legislature deadlocked over a comprehensive immigration reform bill that could provide a path to citizenship for 11 million illegal aliens living in the US, Congress opted for an election-year stunt aimed at providing bragging rights but which will do little to resolve the complex problems of immigration, smuggling and crime that plague the southern border.
Congress' approach to the problem is nothing new. For 20 years, it has followed the mantra of 'securing the border first' as a way of avoiding the deeper and broader issues tied up with immigration.
But there is mounting evidence that the border-first policy has reached the point of diminishing returns. Immigration laws and policies of the past two decades have made the border less safe and have benefited the traffickers and smugglers who operate along it. A growing number of voices are clamoring for a comprehensive strategy which would reform immigration policies, while simultaneously addressing the criminal issues that are at the heart of border violence.
US Muslims under microscope
ISN Security Watch
The Muslim community in the US is concerned, and rightly so, about the perception that it is a breeding ground for home-grown terrorists.
Just last week, the Washington Post reported the story of a US-born Virginia resident and convert to Islam who was arrested in New York as he attempted to leave the country for Somalia to join the al-Qaida affiliated al-Shabbab group.
There are several other prominent examples of US Muslims adopting radical ideologies and perpetrating acts of violence. US Army Major Nidal Hasan, born in the US of Palestinian parentage, is accused in the November 2009 shootings in Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 US military personnel were killed. More recently, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized US citizen born in Pakistan, pleaded guilty to planting a bomb in Times Square. Both Hasan and Shahzad were apparently in touch with and influenced by the radical Yemen-based American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
On the other hand, it was Aliou Nasse, a Senegalese Muslim immigrant, who alerted New York police to a suspicious SUV parked near Times Square, which turned out to be Shahzad's.
All this points to a multifaceted situation, in which the mainstream US Muslim community is attempting to integrate itself into US society while a small, "but not insignificant" number, in the words of a January 2010 study funded by the US Department of Justice, are becoming radicalized and turning to violence. Worse yet for US Muslims is the perception that many of them are in league with enemies of the US, which has led, among other things, to tense relations with law enforcement agencies.
MOUT Training
Military Training Technology
The involvement of the United States in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has demonstrated the importance of training personnel to fight and conduct other operations in urban environments. The U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army have invested in physical facilities and virtual systems that prepare warfighters for military operations on urban terrain (MOUT) in highly realistic settings before they are deployed to theater.
The physical facilities are built to look like the environments were warfighters will eventually deploy. Most are instrumented with video equipment that allows for detailed after action reviews. Virtual systems develop MOUT skills on computer-based platforms. Sometimes the physical and virtual are combined with the projection of images on walls of the physical locations.
The Marine Corps has spent more than $300 million in building or acquiring three kinds of urban training venues: 36 MOUT facilities, two home station training lanes (HSTL) and three infantry immersion trainers (IITs). The MOUTs range from facilities designed to emulate larger urban areas with over 1,200 structures to those used to simulate a small village or neighborhood environments with less than 10 structures.
Uncertainty on New START
ISN Insights
The US Senate foreign relations committee's approval in September of the New START treaty came as good news to the Obama administration, which is pushing the Senate to ratify the accord with Russia before the end of this year. The committee's affirmative votes included those of three Republicans, two more than had previously announced their approval of the treaty.
The US Constitution requires that the Senate ratify treaties with a two-thirds super-majority - meaning that, assuming all Democrats in the current Senate stick together and support the treaty, the White House will need eight Republican senators to vote aye in a "lame duck" session of Congress that convenes this week. Once the 112th Congress is seated in January, Democratic losses in the recent midterm elections dictate that the administration will require the votes of 14 Republicans in the new Senate.
In normal times, attracting votes for an arms control treaty from the opposition party would not be a tall order. The Senate approved the last such agreement, the 2003 Moscow Treaty, unanimously.
But these are not normal times. By all accounts the White House is still scrambling for Republican votes to assure the treaty's passage. Ellen Tauscher, the US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, at a recent gathering at the US Institute of Peace, a government-funded think tank, said that divining the chances for passage would require the skills of "a Las Vegas bookmaker."
Tough body armor
Ground Combat Technology
The involvement of the United States in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq has profoundly influenced developments in military body armor and how it is distributed. Conducting operations against an invisible enemy has meant that all warfighters are subject to attack. When there is no front line, it has become necessary to deploy body armor to logisticians as well as to combat personnel.
At the same time, the wars in Southwest Asia have exposed opportunities to improve and enhance body armor. The enemy exposed vulnerabilities in the traditional front- and back-plate armor configuration by shooting coalition combatants in the side. Armor has been enhanced to include side plates and shoulder plates, as well as neck, throat and groin protection.
But providing warfighters with more armor has raised yet another challenge: how to make armor lighter and less burdensome to the warfighter while providing equivalent protection. Absent a breakthrough in new materials, this will likely be accomplished by modularizing body armor, allowing warfighters to be equipped with armor tailored to the threats they expect to face on a given mission.
Averting personnel injuries
Special Operations Technology
Repeated exposure to wave shocks and to the forces of the ocean can impair performance, produce discomfort, and cause acute and chronic injuries. That is why the Naval Special Warfare Command tests smaller boats for their ability to absorb shocks and protect the crew.
In the past, naval personnel often preferred standing to sitting while operating their vessels, believing that they could use their legs from a standing position to absorb impacts. While there is some truth to that belief, special operations personnel are often exposed to forces that cannot be handled merely by standing or bending the legs. Much of the activity surrounding shock mitigation involves equipping combatant craft with seats that cushion the blows to which crews are subjected.
In one case, the seats in an entire fleet of small boats were replaced with seats equipped with shock mitigation technologies. These special seats contain their own suspension systems, in the form of shock absorbers that smooth the ride for naval special warfighters. The command keeps on eye on such technologies that can improve the safety of crew members.
“Combatant craft crewmen work in an environment dictated by the mission, not at the convenience of sea-state conditions,” said Bruce Holmes, a science and technology adviser at Naval Special Warfare Command. “Boat-related musculoskeletal injuries occur as a result of the environment in which the crew and passengers are required to operate. The purpose of the seat is to shield the operator from the high shock environment generated by the sea-state and craft speed.”
Bull's eye
Military Training Technology
Simulators have been playing an increasingly important role in military training in recent years. Especially when it comes to weapons training, the armed services have benefited from advantages in cost, safety, effectiveness and efficiency by having trainees familiarize themselves with equipment in a virtual environment before heading out to the range.
It comes as no surprise, then, that the United States military has made significant investments in the acquisition of training simulators that teach marksmanship skills. The U.S. Army has two programs of record for weapons skills training: the Engagement Skills Trainer (EST) 2000, a system provided by Cubic Defense, and the Laser Marksmanship Training System (LMTS), from MPRI.
The EST 2000 is a projector system that uses weapons mock-ups and includes three modes of training: basic rifle marksmanship; teamwork at the five- to 10-person squad level; and a judgmental mode which trains in shoot/don’t shoot scenarios. Over 800 of the EST 2000s have been fielded. The Army will be acquiring a total of 1,073.
The LMTS uses real weapons to which a laser has been attached and which aims at targets that can recognize a laser hit. Over 2,000 of these systems have been deployed.
The Army has realized several benefits to using marksmanship training simulators, said Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Stein, the Army’s product manager for ground combat tactical trainers. “There is a cost to go to the range,” he explained. “You have to get a truck out of the motor pool, you have to draw ammunition from a supply point. We are setting up EST 2000s at every active duty post. The soldiers just go in, fire and leave. There is no ammunition and the costs are minimal.”
Virtual lifetime electronic hospital
Government Health IT
Oct. 1, 2010, was opening day in North Chicago, Ill. That's when, well north of Wrigley Field, the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center was inaugurated.
This first-of-its-kind partnership between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense merges systems and services from the North Chicago VA Medical Center and the Naval Health Clinic Great Lakes into a single mammoth health care facility with a joint VA and Navy mission.
The integrated facility, named in honor of Lovell, the Apollo 13 astronaut, retired U.S. Naval officer and Illinois resident, will have an annual budget of $250 million and serve a regional population of 140,000 naval personnel and veterans.
The unprecedented merger of the two facilities was the brain child of financial necessity and medical practicality. But it is also spawning innovations in medical care: DoD and VA are integrating their electronic health records in a way that is likely to serve as a model for national efforts. North Chicago is also the site where a potential merger of two departmental biosurveillance systems is being piloted.
Much like many mergers in the private sector, saving money was one impetus for the North Chicago venture. The Naval Hospital Great Lakes, a 450,000 square foot, 850-bed facility dedicated in 1960, was becoming obsolete and needed to be replaced or revamped. It is also located short mile from the VA facility.
Meanwhile, the North Chicago Veterans Administration Medical Center, established in 1926, with 1.4 million square feet and 550 beds, had excess capacity. With the Navy footing the bill for an expansion of the VA facility, DoD was able to save the $8 million it would have cost to rehabilitate the old Navy hospital and the federal government will save around $4 million annually in ongoing operating expenses.
LiDAR’s new dimension
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
Overflights the U.S. Army is conducting over Afghanistan and Iraq have raised the profile of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data, as analysts, commanders and warfighters continue to explore its utility for a variety of tasks, from mission planning to training.
LiDAR has an advantage over some other geospatial technologies in that it provides accurate elevation data. Under the right circumstances, it can also detect hidden objects. But LiDAR’s true value as a military and intelligence tool, say the experts, comes when it is used in conjunction with other sensor data to enhance the picture used by analysts, planners and commanders.
LiDAR uses 1.064-nanometer wavelength laser light pulses to gauge distances by measuring the time delay between transmission of the pulse and detection of the reflected signal. A range finder mounted in an aircraft swings back and forth collecting data on up to 150,000 points per second, capable of providing resolutions well under one meter on the ground and one point per 15 centimeters vertically. The data returned by the LiDAR sensor provides location data on an x-y-z axis, referred to as a point cloud.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. forces use BuckEye, a system developed under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which combines airborne LiDAR technology with digital color camera imagery to provide pictures to commanders and planners on the lay of the land. LiDAR elevation data supports improved battlefield visualization, line of sight analysis and urban warfare planning.
“There is always a need to get better, more accurate intelligence faster,” said Trey Howell, defense solutions manager at Merrick & Company, “whether that means gathering intelligence on what currently exists, or modeling what you think will exist.” Merrick provides LiDAR capabilities to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Naval Research Laboratory, and Army Research, Development and Engineering Command.
Enterprise email call
Military Information Technology
For more than a year, Army leaders have expressed a desire to do something about how e-mail services are provided to more than two million users, who range from warfighters in theater to uniformed and civilian personnel stationed in facilities worldwide to retirees and family members. What course the Army will pursue, however, remains under discussion at this point.
The Army’s e-mail conundrum includes a number of facets. First, it is not really an Army problem, strictly speaking, but a Department of Defense problem. The Army is merely taking the lead on a project that will eventually encompass the entire military.
Second, the Army currently operates dozens of e-mail systems on a distributed basis, many of them localized to a single base. Localization has advantages when it comes to performance, but its disadvantages are many. It is far more expensive to manage and does not provide lifetime e-mail addresses. Personnel often switch e-mail addresses when they get reassigned, and that means they are unreachable by those who have not been updated with a forwarding address.
A third problem involves the geometrically multiplying storage requirements of modern e-mail systems. Government agencies and commercial entities alike are legally required to hold onto e-mails for specific periods of time, and some specialists want to store them in perpetuity. This is placing a strain an existing data storage facilities and suggests a requirement not only for more storage facilities to be built, but also for greater storage efficiency.
Fourth is the question of collaboration. The Army has billed its e-mail revamping as an e-mail and collaborative services (EMCS) program. That appears to reflect the fact that, in many military organizations as well as in the broader business world, users have transformed e-mail into a collaborative platform through the use— and overuse—of the “reply all” button. But what role a collaboration platform might play in complementing the e-mail system is still to be determined.
On watch
Military Medical Technology
Biosurveillance is a multifaceted enterprise undertaken for multiple purposes by several United States government departments and agencies. At the national level, agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control seek to monitor potential outbreaks of diseases such as pandemic influenza in order to inform and protect the U.S. population as a whole. A more recent wrinkle to the national mission has been scouting for possible terror-related diseases such as anthrax.
The Department of Defense has its own biosurveillance programs that are related both to the national mission as well as to a more narrow departmental focus. DoD clearly has an interest in protecting the health of its millions of uniformed personnel, civilian employees and their dependents for several reasons, military readiness, efficiency and cost controls among them. Because defense employees and families are so numerous and are spread out across the country, DoD data also provides a window on public health generally.
DoD’s Military Health System operates a surveillance system that monitors medical records at some 450 non-combat military treatment facilities worldwide. The system, known as the Electronic Surveillance System for Early Notification of Communitybased Epidemics (ESSENCE), was developed by DoD in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Advanced Physics Laboratory and applies software algorithms to detect disease outbreaks. ESSENCE is a Web-based application that monitors and provides alerting for rapid or unusual increases in the occurrence of infectious diseases and biological outbreaks.
ESSENCE works by capturing the numeric diagnostic codes entered into DoD electronic health records. The software automatically collates that data among 10 categories of syndromes so ESSENCE users can look out for outbreaks of diseases like pneumonia, influenza and food-borne illnesses.
An army of apps
Military Information Technology
Military commanders, users and technology specialists often complain about how long it takes to get software applications into the hands of warfighters in the field. Now some organizations are trying to do something about it.
The Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are taking separate approaches to this problem. The Army has initiated a competition among its own people—soldiers and civilians, but not contractors—to come up with new Web and mobile applications in a program called Apps for the Army. DARPA, as part of a recently released request for information entitled Mobile Apps for the Military, is seeking commercially available mobile applications that could be adapted to warfighter handheld devices, thus broadening their functionality and making them more utilitarian.
One of the obstacles to the more widespread adoption of commercially available applications by the military is the defense acquisition system itself, analysts inside and outside the Department of Defense say. As DARPA noted in its request for information, “The military’s own acquisition process ... can take years to complete and involves an unwieldy linear process of formal requirements definition, technology development and system certification. Furthermore, there is a real risk that these very technologies will be obsolete by the time they are in the warfighter’s hands.”
Mobile Apps for the Military advocates “a transformation in technical approaches and business processes,” with the agency envisioning “the rapid development of applications that keep up with the fluid demands of warfighters on the ever-changing battlefield.” DARPA also seeks to “enable pervasive use” of the mobile apps “targeted especially among the end-users at lower levels in the military echelon.”
Some private sector firms, including current DoD contractors, point out that business and technology models already exist that enable the quick deployment of new commercial technologies to the field. But a paradigm shift in military acquisition procedures will be required for those models to be broadly adopted and make a difference in the long run.
Agricultural biotechnology and its discontents
ISN Special Reports
At first blush, the development and introduction of agricultural biotechnologies would seem a godsend for a world challenged to squeeze higher crop yields from diminishing resources of water and arable land. Under the rosiest scenarios, the application of biotechnology could enhance the prospect of food security in poorer nations and provide enhanced economic security to small landholders in developing economies.
Biotechnology, a direct descendant of pioneering 19th century work in genetics, manipulates organisms at the gene, chromosome or DNA level to improve plants for specific uses, such as achieving higher yields from a batch of seeds, developing plants that are resistant to pests, or enhancing the nutritional value of crops by boosting their content of beta carotene or iron.
But there are also risks associated with agricultural biotechnology. Local plant varieties may fall out of favor, thus narrowing genetic variation. Pest resistance may lead to the evolution of super pests, leaving local farmers without knowledge of techniques such as crop rotation to cope with the phenomenon.
Perhaps most significantly, biotechnology tends to rely on proprietary, often patented, products not always available or affordable to developing world farmers. The concentration of intellectual property among a limited number of seed purveyors can lead to monopolistic or oligopolistic market models, as well as higher prices to farmers and consumers. It can also lead to a situation where biotechnology is available only to rich farmers, leaving poor farmers behind.
Achieving intelligence dominance
ISN Security Watch
In the 2009 Academy Award-winning movie The Hurt Locker, a Baghdad butcher holds a cell phone as he stands near the site of an improvised explosive device (IED). A squad of US soldiers shouts at the Iraqi to put the phone down. He smiles and waves, reassuring the soldiers he is not a threat. Then he presses a button on the cell phone and detonates a bomb, killing one of the soldiers.
Such an incident would be rare, according to the authors of a new report from the National Strategy Information Center, a Washington-based think tank, if their recommendations were to be implemented by the US military.
The report, titled Adapting America’s Security Paradigm and Security Agenda, posits that the population-centric warfare being pursued in Afghanistan and Iraq is here to stay for decades to come, and that the US needs to adapt its military thinking and its capabilities to meet that challenge.
The risk of an incident portrayed in The Hurt Locker could have been mitigated, according to the report, by achieving intelligence dominance, a technique originally developed by the British during World War II, and since also practiced by Israelis, Australians and others.
Information dominance involves developing deep local knowledge by assigning agents or operatives to relatively small geographical areas of responsibility. The report argues that the US needs to develop this kind of capability together with its host nation partners in current and future population-centric conflicts.
Offsetting China in the Pacific
ISN Security Watch
China's People's Liberation Army is building up anti-access and area-denial capabilities with the apparent goal of extending their power to the western half of the Pacific Ocean. Chinese military and political doctrine holds that China should rule the waves out to the second island chain of the western Pacific, which extends as far as Guam and New Guinea, essentially dividing the Pacific between the US and China and ending US hegemony on that ocean.
Among the anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) capabilities being fielded by China include anti-satellite weapons; spaced-based reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition; electromagnetic weapons; advanced fighter aircraft; unmanned aerial vehicles; advanced radar systems; and ballistic and cruise missiles.
The Chinese also have an emerging and muscular deep-water navy. "The PLA navy is increasing its numbers of submarines and other ships," said Admiral Gary Roughead, chief of US naval operations, at a recent speech hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. "Navies tend to grow with economies and as trade becomes more important."
All of this has US military planners and thinkers worried. The A2AD buildup threatens the US forward presence and power projection in the region.
"Unless Beijing diverts from its current course of action, or Washington undertakes actions to offset or counterbalance the effects of the PLA’s military buildup," said a report recently released by the Washington-based Center for Budgetary and Strategic Assessments, "the cost incurred by the US military to operate in the [w]estern Pacific will likely rise sharply, perhaps to prohibitive levels, and much sooner than many expect[...].This situation creates a strategic choice for the United States, its allies and partners: acquiesce in a dramatic shift in the military balance or take steps to preserve it."
Justifying targeted killings
ISN Security Watch
When George W Bush announced his pursuit of a global war on terror, he asserted the right as commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces to target and detain anyone, anywhere he deemed to be a threat to the US. This included US citizens on US soil.
The inauguration of Barack Obama heralded the end of Bush's repudiation of international law, in words if not in deeds. When Obama accepted the Nobel peace prize in Oslo last December, he declared that "we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. Even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war."
So much for Obama's words; what of his actions? Obama has continued and escalated Bush's war in Afghanistan and has continued and expanded his predecessor's policies of targeting leaders of al-Qaida and the Taliban with air strikes, not only in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan and Yemen.
Are these targeted killings protected under the umbrella of international law?
Harold Koh, legal adviser to the US Department of State valiantly defended the legality of Obama's policies and actions at a speech in Washington in March. But it is debatable whether his analysis provided a full legal justification for Obama's policies and activities.
Virtual technology for aviation maintenance
Military Training Technology
Advanced simulators are often thought of in the context of operational training, the classic example being for aircraft flight. But the same kinds of technologies that bring a robust realism to flight training are now being leveraged to train maintainers of those same aircraft.
Aircraft such as the U.S. Navy’s F/A-18 jets, being the complex platforms that they are, require rich image and computing environments for maintenance training, no less than for flight training.
“The way I look at it, proper maintenance training solutions have to be analyzed against the task we’re trying to train,” said Greg Pryor, program manager for individual training at the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD) in Orlando. “I find the maintenance trainers to be extremely effective for cognitive skill sets and for developing overarching, top-level skills like troubleshooting.”
The best maintenance trainers are those that have analyzed how and where to best utilize the virtual environments they provide, according to Arnold van den Hoeven, director for Canadian Defense at Ngrain. Ngrain developed a series of five trainers for the Canadian Air Force Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft, including one for air conditioning and pressurization.
Condition based maintenance
Military Logistics Forum
Drivers who take good care of their automobiles usually change the oil and perform other maintenance at scheduled intervals, based upon the car manufacturer’s recommendations. That’s also the way the United States military traditionally performed maintenance on its vehicles, weapons systems, and other platforms. If a manufacturer recommended, for example, that an aircraft be brought in for maintenance after 300 hours of flight, the armed services would figure in a safety factor and maintain the platform a little bit sooner than that.
But there is a transition taking place in military maintenance strategy. Instead of performing maintenance at scheduled intervals, there is now greater emphasis on monitoring components and subsystems so that they can be maintained when they need maintenance, and not before.
A series of practices, procedures and technologies called condition based maintenance (CBM) attempt to optimize maintenance tasks, save money and improve machine operational performance. Implementation of CBM requires first of all an analysis of maintenance requirements and priorities. It also involves, especially in the iteration the Department of Defense calls CBM+, the electronic, online monitoring of key subsystems and components for signal processing, detection of incipient failures, and prediction of their remaining useful life.
There is evidence that suggests that platforms monitored through CBM+ exhibit greater reliability and readiness, which saves the armed services money. Some newer platforms have the sensors designed in from the beginning; others must be retrofitted with the technology. Budgetary considerations play a large role in determining whether platforms will be retrofitted with CBM+ technologies.
Expeditionary processing
Military Information Technology
Despite continuing efforts at rationalization and consolidation, the Army’s information technology infrastructure remains unwieldy. The service currently maintains information technology operations at 447 locations in the United States alone, supporting 19 commands and agencies, with diverse operational and management schemes.
The cost and difficulty of operating many diverse systems prompted a 2009 memo from Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, who called for evolving LandWarNet, the Army’s portion of the Department of Defense’s Global Information Grid, to a global Army information enterprise. “The Army will transform LandWarNet to a centralized, more secure, operationalized and sustainable network capable of supporting an expeditionary Army in this era of persistent conflict,” the memo said.
The Army intends to accomplish this by establishing five network service centers worldwide—two in the continental United States and one each in Southwest Asia, Europe and the Pacific—to handle networking, data processing and storage, operations, and security. At the heart of each NSC will be a consolidated data center known as an area processing center (APC).
The idea behind APCs is to consolidate identity management, e-mail, data management and storage, security services, backup and recovery services, service desk, collaboration software, knowledge management, and other applications into a set of LandWarNetaccessible enterprise services. The point of consolidation is to lower operating costs and to improve the configuration management, availability and security of the Army’s servers and applications.
New scope for NETCENTS
Military Information Technology
Air Force officials are working on a new version of the NETCENTS contracting vehicle that will be structured substantially differently from its predecessor. The upcoming NETCENTS 2 program will add more complexity to the instrument, but will also likely drive more business to NETCENTS and will especially benefit smaller businesses.
The existing program, which was to expire last year, received a one-year extension, with four three-month options, as contracting officials and senior leaders put the finishing touches on the requests for proposals.
NETCENTS supports network-centric operations through the acquisition of commercial information technologies, networking equipment and services, and voice, video and data communications hardware and software.
The $9 billion indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contact, which was initiated in 2004, has been used primarily by the Air Force, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, which together used 68 percent of the dollars spent and 84 percent of the task orders. The Army spent 11 percent of the total dollars, the Navy, 7 percent, and the Defense Information Systems Agency, 4 percent.
The new NETCENTS will include a $24 billion spending ceiling, stricter enforcement of mandatory use policies for Air Force acquisitions of networking and telecommunications equipment and services, and more complicated teaming arrangements.
Intel common ground
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
During a series of tests last summer at Empire Challenge ’09, U.S. Joint Forces Command assessed how the various flavors of the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) work together and the degree to which they could share data with command and control systems to create a common operating picture (COP). Geospatial information is the foundational layer upon which the common operating picture is based.
DCGS is a family of programs with common elements designed to meet the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance needs of each of the armed services. While DCGS includes common elements, it is not, strictly speaking, a joint program. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are each working on their own DCGS platforms.
DCGS, as it is being developed, provides an interoperable architecture for the collection, processing, exploitation, dissemination and archiving of all forms of intelligence.
DCGS does not eliminate the use of legacy systems. Instead, each service is adapting its legacy systems to the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), which provides a common operating environment for all of the DCGS programs. Systems that collect, analyze and disseminate geospatial information have become DIB enabled, and newer geospatial tools as well are being developed for use on DCGS.
“We saw a greater level of interoperability between the different programs than we had seen before,” said Chris Jackson, chief of integration at JFCOM’S Joint Intelligence Directorate, referring to Empire Challenge ’09.
The DCGS-C2 connection was “less than perfect and kind of clunky, but good,” added Frank Hunt, a project lead at JFCOM’s Joint Systems Integration Center. “Luckily, we had command and control engineers on site so they could take information back with them and try to work on it.”
The green side of war
ISN Security Watch
On Earth Day, 22 April, the US Navy conducted a test flight of an F/A-18 Super Hornet at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, run on a 50-percent mixture of a fuel refined from the crushed seeds of the flowering Camelina sativa plant. The flight of the Green Hornet, as it was called, followed an Air Force test a month earlier of an A-10C Thunderbolt II at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, fueled with a similar blend.
Both events had the purpose of testing the performance of biofuel/petroleum mixtures with an eye toward the eventual certification of the fuels for routine use. They also demonstrate the efforts of the Department of Defense to increase its use of renewable energy, not only for environmental reasons but also to protect the military from energy price fluctuations and dependence on overseas sources of petroleum.
The DoD spends $20 billion a year on energy and incurs $1.3 billion in additional costs for every $10 per barrel increase in the market price of oil, according to a report recently released by the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate. In addition to vulnerability to price fluctuations, the DoD's "reliance on fossil fuels also compromises combat effectiveness by restricting mobility, flexibility and endurance on the battlefield," said the report. "Transportation of fuel to the combat theater is a significant vulnerability as fuel convoys are targets in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The most recent Quadrennial Defense Review, released by the DoD in February 2010, recognized the interplay between climate change and the security environment. "Climate change may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict," the QDR noted, "placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world."
The Air Force was encouraged by the results of the March A-10C test, Jeff Braun, director of the Air Force Alternative Fuels Certification Office, told ISN Security Watch, and plans to switch half of its continental US jet fuel consumption to alternative fuels by 2016. The Navy's goal is to displace half of its petroleum requirement for the entire fleet by 2020. The Army believes it will be using biofuel blends exclusively in the continental US by 2025.
Politics and prosecution
ISN Security Watch
US Attorney General Eric Holder announced last November that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo detainees would stand trial in a civilian US district court in New York in connection with charges stemming from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
But Holder's decision was soon pulled back, after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who at first supported the move, claimed that the security costs to conduct a two-year trial a few blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood would be prohibitive. He was joined by a chorus of Republican members of Congress who argued that military commissions, rather than civilian courts, were the best venues for trying terrorists.
One senator, Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has offered the White House a deal under which the detainees would be tried by the military and Graham would not stand in the way of President Barrack Obama's desire to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention facility. In short, the process of deciding where to prosecute the detainees has become mired in politics.
Drawdown
Military Logistics Forum
The continuing drawdown of U.S. troops and equipment from Iraq, anticipating a withdrawal of combat elements in 2011, is providing the Army with a bumper crop of logistics challenges. The Army Materiel Command, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., has specific processes and facilities in place to smooth this transition.
The withdrawal from Iraq is, of course, taking place simultaneously with a buildup in Afghanistan. The AMC, which is the executive lead for the disposition of equipment coming out of Iraq, must first receive a determination from the U.S. Army Central Command, whether theater provided equipment being drawn down from Iraq is needed elsewhere within the area of responsibility of the U.S. Central Command.
“We are in support of U.S. forces Iraq and the Army Central Command as they conduct this responsible drawdown from Iraq,” said Lieutenant General James Pillsbury, deputy commanding general of the Army Materiel Command.
The AMC commanding general, General Ann Dunwoody, is fond of describing the equipment being withdrawn from Iraq as baseball hurtling southward, Pillsbury related. “We’re the catcher’s mitt,” he added.
Preservation for the future
Military Logistics Forum
A long-term war footing has challenged the U.S. military to transport and store large volumes of equipment in a manner that will avert potential damage from the elements. Units deployed to the Southwest Asia theater will often leave much of their equipment behind in garrison. Since it is rarely possible or practical to store a fleet of trucks, for example, in an indoor facility, these vehicles will be parked in a yard for long periods while not being used.
The transport of equipment poses similar, if not greater, challenges. Equipment that can range from training simulators to radar units to aircraft must often be transported on trucks, ships and other vehicles, and be prepared to perform to the maximum upon arrival at their destinations.
There are a variety of materials on the market that are used to cover and wrap even the most sensitive pieces of equipment to protect them from everything from water and humidity to wind, dirt and sand. Used in the commercial world to transport and store a variety of different kinds of equipment, such as boats, the same products are also available in varieties that meet military specifications.
“The armed forces has a lot of equipment that in today’s conflicts are not being used because we are not fighting a traditional style of warfare,” said Dave Hutton, director of Navy and Coast Guard sales at Shield Technologies Corporation, a company headquartered in Eagan, Minn. “They are being left in yards in garrisons and not being used while manpower is being used elsewhere. This equipment is not getting the care and maintenance they need.”
“We have seen situations where expensive equipment is coming back from theater and are parked out in fields because there is nowhere else to store it,” said Steve Hanna, president of Protective Packaging Corp. in Dallas. “We have seen radars come back to the states for maintenance. Then it takes six months to a year before they are rotated back to theater. All this raises issues of the equipment being exposed.”
To the rescue
Special Operations Technology
Potential contractors on a new Air Force platform for combat search and rescue experienced something of a shock last year when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates canceled the program after a second round of bidding had already been completed. The CSAR-X competition, as it was called, would have provided the Air Force with a new and innovative CSAR platform.
Boeing Company won the first round of bidding to provide a replacement for an aging fleet of HH-60Gs and was prepared to provide the Air Force with a variant of its MH47G when a successful bid protest sent the project back to the drawing boards. A second round of bidding ensued, a process which was aborted before a contracting decision was ever made.
The original decision to acquire a state-of-the-art CSAR air frame was made to provide the Air Force with greater range and power, as well as other benefits, and would have cost the Air Force a pretty penny. Industry sources say that Gates is more interested in looking at a tried and true platform for any future CSAR replacement.
But CSAR professionals like Major Jason Wetzel of the 306th Rescue Squadron, headquartered at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., will tell you they don’t much care what platform gets them to the rescue site; it’s their training and specialized equipment that count. The unit has been deployed all over the globe, including in southwest Asia, and will soon be departing for an assignment in the Philippines.
“Our basic mission is search and rescue, during the day or night, in any environment, friendly or not friendly, in CONUS or OCONUS,” said Wetzel. “We consider ourselves to be human based and independent of weapons systems or aircraft. We can work on any aircraft, whether U.S. or foreign military. But it doesn’t really matter to us what gets us to the rescue scene—whether it is by bicycle, horse, train, or snowmobile—whatever gets us closer to the person we need to rescue.”
Sustaining the MRAP
Military Logistics Forum
United States operations in Iraq took a 180 degree turn during the second half of 2003, when the fast paced, mechanized, expeditionary war that quickly took down Saddam Hussein’s regime turned into a slogging counterinsurgency operation, often staged on complex urban terrain.
That change in venue and operational tempo left U.S. troops, in their lightly armored vehicles, vulnerable to roadside attacks from improvised explosive devices. In 2007, IEDs accounted for two-thirds of U.S. fatalities in Iraq.
From an equipment standpoint, the answer given by the Department of Defense to these developments was to sink $25 billion to acquire mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles. Why? Because these heavy, lumbering trucks are best suited to protect troops from IEDs. Their height and weight shield the troops sequestered inside and their V-shaped undercarriage deflects the force of an IED blast away from the underbody of the vehicle.
The hurry-up acquisition of some 15,000 MRAPs has presented formidable challenges to the maintenance and sustainment of the vehicles in theater. Despite the presence of MRAPs in Southwest Asia for several years, the vehicles have not yet become part of the armed services’ force structure. Instead, they are supplied to troops in theater with little opportunity for warfighters to train in vehicle operation or maintenance at their home stations.
Easing the ride
US Coast Guard Forum
The United States Coast Guard performs many of its missions on smaller watercraft. These vessels, and the personnel inside them, can take quite a pounding, especially in severe sea states. Repeated exposure to wave shocks and to the forces of the ocean can impair performance, produce discomfort and cause acute and chronic injuries. That is why the Coast Guard has, for several years, been acquiring boats equipped with shock mitigation technologies.
“The biggest problem with Coast Guard ships is wave shock,” said Doug Taylor, CEO of Taylor Devices in North Tonawanda, N.Y. “It can cause damage to equipment and to people. A severe wave shock can knock someone out. The most important thing about any armed vessel is to optimize the blending of man and machine.”
In the past, Coast Guard and naval personnel often preferred standing to sitting while operating their vessels, according to Johan Ullman, CEO of Ullman Dynamics in Gothenburg, Sweden. “Many people believe you can use your legs from a standing position to absorb impacts,” he said.
While there is some truth to that belief, Coast Guard personnel are often exposed to forces that cannot be handled merely by standing or bending the legs. Much of the activity surrounding shock mitigation on Coast Guard vessels surrounds equipping vessels with seats that cushion the blows to which crews are subjected.
A more realistic view
Military Training Technology
The U.S. military is increasingly demanding immersive training and simulation environments to prepare warfighters for a variety of missions and tasks. These large scale training systems invariably require the use of multiple projectors to display a coordinated set of images across a set of large screens.
This approach to training systems has created a more complex technology environment and has challenged developers to deliver projectors with ever increasing levels of fidelity and resolution, as well as projection units that work as a system to provide the kind of training environments that the military demands.
Innovations in projection systems also include satisfying demand for specific mission applications, most notably for night vision. They also endeavor to enhance the efficiency of training systems by reducing the costs of operating the systems and by automating the task of calibrating the images emanating from multiple projectors.
“What we are seeing on the projector front is an increase in resolution, which allows us to configure a display system that is approaching or meets eye limiting resolution,” said Mike Raines, vice president for simulation at 3D Perception, a company that provides complete display systems. “That is no small task, especially when there is large field of view.”
SAR boosts imagery power
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
The use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery in Haitian relief efforts has underscored the growing importance of this technology for a variety of defense, intelligence and humanitarian missions.
Moving quickly to help the earthquake-devastated nation, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in January issued task orders to all three of the contractors awarded an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract for commercial satellite synthetic aperture radar (COMSAR) imagery only the month before.
“The task orders we recently issued to support operations in Haiti were focused on acquiring imagery of certain areas of the country to detect changes,” said Laura Gentry, international commercial program manager for COMSAR at NGA. “The user of the imagery wanted to see what buildings looked like before, versus after, the earthquake.”
U.S. Southern Command had requested the imagery from NGA through the Department of State, which is the lead agency coordinating relief efforts. The unusual move of awarding task orders to each of the three vendors under the COMSAR contract was to “allow us to be flexible,” said Gentry. “Our job is get data for end-users. It depends on when satellites are available. Each satellite makes only one pass per day, so with more vendors and satellites working the job, you get more access to the geography that is needed.”
The Haiti disaster relief efforts are representative of the growing demand in the use of synthetic aperture radar for intelligence imagery and mapping. The data that will be provided under the latest COMSAR contract will enable NGA to provide other government and Department of Defense agencies improved information acquisition capabilities, particularly in bad weather and low light conditions.
More lethal helicopters on the horizon
Special Operations Technology
In this day and age of constrained military budgets, a program initiated over two years ago to streamline the supply of helicopter-fired missiles appears to be particularly timely today.
The Hellfire family of missiles is performing well, but in a few years they, along with a number of other helo-launched munitions, will be replaced by the Joint Air to Ground Missile. JAGM will be replacing many in the current crop of helicopter-launches missiles, including the several variants of Hellfire used by the Army, Navy, and Marines, the Marines’ air-launched, anti-armor TOW missile, and the Maverick. The JAGM will be integrated on several fixed wing and unmanned aerial platforms as well.
The JAGM is to be integrated on six platforms initially: the Army’s Apache D, advanced reconnaissance, and extended range multipurpose utility helicopters, the Navy’s SH-60 Seahawk and MH-60 Romeo, and the Marine Corps’ AH-1Z Cobra.
JAGM came about after the termination of the Joint Common Missile program in 2007 and the Pentagon ordered a reduced-risk, three-phased approach to the development of a joint air-launched missile. Raytheon Corp. and Lockheed Martin each received 27-month contracts to develop competing JAGM designs based on common program requirements. Down-selection is expected toward the end of 2010, and an initial operational capability is slated for 2016. JAGM is an Army-led program.
“Where we are today is with the multiple variants of the Hellfire family of weapons,” said Captain Brian Corey, the Navy’s program manager for direct and time-sensitive strike. “Where we’re going in the future is with JAGM.”
Missile madness
ISN Security Watch
"Please join us for a viewing of a modern-day Reefer Madness, the Heritage Foundation's film about nuclear threats, 33 Minutes," read the invitation from the Center for American Progress (CAP), invoking the memory of a 1930s film on the descent into insanity and criminality of a group of marijuana smokers. The film became a cult classic in the 1970s.
That the liberal CAP should be promoting a conservative think tank's film is unusual, except that the point of the program was to expose inaccuracies in the film.
The film's title refers to the time it would take for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), presumably launched by a rogue state such as North Korea or Iran, to reach the continental US.
The issue pits those, like Heritage, who would like to rely on US technological prowess to defeat missile threats against those who believe such measures are futile and would rely instead on deterrence and arms reduction negotiations.
Countering the internet jihad
ISN Security Watch
Radical Islamic groups are increasingly recruiting operatives over the internet, as illustrated by several recent examples.
US Army Major Nidal Hasan - the accused in the November shootings in Fort Hood, Texas - used email to coordinate with the radical Yemen-based American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Five young American Muslims arrested in Pakistan last month and accused of seeking to join a local terrorist organization used Facebook and YouTube to connect with extremist groups in Pakistan.
"This cyber-prodding is an important aspect of jihadist internet usage," Jarrett Brachman, a professor of security studies at North Dakota State University, told ISN Security Watch.
Some experts tout the accomplishments of the Sakinah Campaign, a Saudi-based online effort to combat internet radicalization. Sakinah, which is Arabic for 'religiously inspired tranquility,' originated as an independent, volunteer organization, but has since been subsumed by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs.
Sakinah claims to have turned hundreds of extremists and potential extremists away from "deviant views." Sakinah is focused on stemming the tide of extremism in Saudi Arabia and averting terrorist attacks in that country, specifically by combating the radical Islamist concept of takfir. Takfir refers to a pronouncement that a Muslim or a group of Muslims have become apostates, thus providing a rationalization for killing them.
By all accounts, a western online response to jihadist cyber-radicalization is absent.
Charging the future
ISN Special Reports
Do government operations and the accumulation of debt go hand in hand?
David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher, thought so. Two-hundred fifty years ago he predicted that "the practice of contracting debt will almost infallibly be abused in every government." "It would scarcely be more imprudent to give a prodigal son a credit in every banker's shop in London," he mused, "than to empower a statesman to draw bills upon posterity."
Governments, like companies or households, can shoulder limited levels of debt with impunity. But the discussion around the world has now turned to whether governments' debt loads are so heavy that they could lead to economic collapse.
In the US, the federal government's tax collections are lower thanks to the recession, while its spending has spiked, with hundreds of billions of dollars going to massive stimulus and bailout programs. These factors, combined with waging two wars without raising the revenues to pay for them, have some worrying that a perfect debt storm is brewing which could, if not reversed, severely compromise the US economy and government in coming years.
The US currently owes its creditors over $12 trillion and rising. The ratio of debt to GDP has more than doubled the last two years, from 40.3 percent in September 2008 to nearly 86 percent today.
"If we fail to act soon," said Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat of North Dakota, at a recent US Senate budget committee hearing, "federal debt will overwhelm the nation’s budget and economy."
Monetary machinations
ISN Security Watch
One of the biggest international trade gripes the US has with China is its undervalued currency. A low-value renminbi, or RMB, artificially pegged to the US dollar by the People’s Bank of China, facilitates cheap Chinese exports to the US while inflating the price of US imports.
But China has its own bone to pick with the US over currency. With the US as China's chief export destination, China has accumulated $2 trillion in dollar reserves, much of it held in the form of US Treasury securities. The global financial crisis, which the Chinese blame on the US, has led to a falling dollar, leading to the prospect that the US will be repaying its debt to China with cheaper dollars.
The Chinese have been vocal in their desire to reform the international monetary system, making changes which would increase its currency's role in the global economy. The RMB could become more of an international trade transaction and settlement currency. Some Chinese banking officials have even proposed the RMB as an alternative international reserve currency to the US dollar.
CBO health-care estimates, give or take a billion
The Daily Caller
To understand the budget impact of pending legislation, Congress routinely submits proposals to its accounting arm for analysis.
In the case of the health-care bills, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came back with a $1.042 trillion price tag over 10 years for the House bill and a $848 billion cost for the original Senate bill.
Lawmakers often cite CBO figures as holy writ and use them in arguments supporting or opposing proposed measures. But can the CBO estimate costs of complex programs down to the last billion dollars? Do CBO numbers present an accurate picture to legislators and to the American people?
“Everyone should know that any number will be either too high or too low,” Donald Marron, a former CBO deputy director told The Daily Caller.
There are a number of problems associated with CBO’s estimates. Some have to do with the games Congress itself plays with numbers. In the case of highly complex programs like health care, a myriad of variables can throw estimates off. In fact, the government’s track record for estimating health-care program costs is poor.
The fog of cyberwar
ISN Special Reports
Last year, a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack was launched against government websites in Georgia, before and during the armed conflagration between that country and Russia. In 2007, a similar assault was launched against government and commercial computer networks in Estonia.
Rumors abounded in each instance that the Russian government was behind the attacks, in the case of Estonia because Russia was angered by some slight of the Estonian government. The Georgia attack defaced the presidential website and made other government websites unavailable. The Estonia attack, which primarily targeted commercial financial networks, shut down the heavily online Estonian banking system for several days.
DDOS attacks disable their targets by launching huge volumes of email or other messages, more than the target system can handle, from multiple locations. Perpetrators typically muster the capacity to direct this massive messaging activity by surreptitiously taking over hundreds or thousands of computers by embedding them with software components known as malware, transforming them into robots, or 'bots,' arraying these in decentralized networks, or 'botnets,' and then orchestrating an attack on the intended target.
Most experts doubt that either the Georgia or the Estonia examples originated with the Russian government. But the attacks underscored the need to protect systems from a military-style onslaught, perhaps also to develop the capability to counterattack.
Pentagon stuck on outdated concepts of warfare
The Daily Caller
Washington defense types are awaiting the February release of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, in a speech in New York last month, promised the report would be driven by Afghanistan and Iraq war needs, placing an emphasis on ground troops and counterinsurgency operations and less on the modernization of weapons systems.
But if history is any guide, the QDR won’t make much of a difference to defense policies and programs nor to the troops on the ground. That’s because the giant defense bureaucracy is wedded to older concepts of warfare.
The QDR was instituted in the 1990s with the admirable purpose of institutionalizing strategic thinking among Department of Defense echelons. Results have been mixed, at best.
Teleconference collaboration
Military Information Technology
The project is still on the drawing boards, but the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is planning to enhance a popular room-based video teleconferencing service by combining it with desktop-based teleconferencing and other collaboration tools.
The new program, which will be called Defense Collaboration Services, will be combining and enhancing the capabilities of DISN Video Services (DVS), a longstanding program that provides room-based teleconferencing, and Defense Connect Online (DCO), a more recent program launched in 2008. DCO provides lower-end desktop-based video together with other collaboration tools such as whiteboarding, instant messaging and chat.
“DVS is primarily a room-based service,” explained Tony Montemarano, DISA component acquisition executive. “DCO is a desktop service. We will be bringing those two together in one program in the future. We’ve listened to industry and to our customers in making the decision.
“There needs to be a more seamless solution,” he added. “The advantage is that you have the option of including people sitting in a conference room and others sitting at their desktops in the same teleconference. It makes the technology more ubiquitous, convenient and flexible.”
DISA is currently strategizing and evaluating what industry can offer to bring the two services together. “We’re honing the specifics of the acquisition,” said Montemarano. “We’re still working out how the technologies will interface with one another and with Department of Defense unique attributes,” such as the Common Access Card. “Right now we’re building the technical framework before we move forward with a request for proposals.”
Software voyage
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
The U.S. military is moving toward a model that exploits the benefits of digital navigation systems. Many platforms, including soldier systems, are benefiting from electronic systems that combine digital charts, global positioning and environmental sensors, while getting rid of reams of paper.
In May 2005, for example, the USS Cape St. George became the first Navy vessel authorized to transition to a fully digital navigation system.
In 2007, the USS Oklahoma City became the first submarine to go completely digital for navigation. The following year, the Army’s UH-60M Black Hawk was inaugurated as the newest version of that helicopter, featuring a fully digital navigation system. As is the case with many systems that benefit from automation, there has been an explosion in recent years of available geospatial and navigation data, requiring a paradigm shift. “The most important thing is how to present navigation information that is growing exponentially in an effective, actionable way, in a way that enhances safety and decision-making,” said Kris Jones, a senior manager of marketing operations at Jeppesen, a subsidiary of Boeing Commercial Aviation Services.
The Navy’s digital navigation efforts are being standardized around the Voyage Management System (VMS), which was developed by Sperry Marine, a Northrop Grumman unit.
“The Voyage Management System is a software application that, when coupled with digital hardware and nautical charts provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, provides a digital navigation capability for the Navy,” said Ray LaFreniere, navigation systems product director at the Navy Program Executive Office, Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS). “The Voyage Management System software is the only software application certified by the Navy to meet its requirements.”
Patriot Act redux
ISN Security Watch
The USA PATRIOT Act, passed in 2001 by the US Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, depending on whom you ask, is an important toolbox for US authorities to fight terrorism, or an arsenal with which they could potentially trample on American civil liberties.
While many of the law's provisions are not controversial, its enactment made headlines when it authorized US law enforcement to snoop through records of bookstores, video stores, and libraries, in an effort to discern who was reading or viewing what.
That provision, Section 216, or the so-called "business records" section, as well as two others, are set to expire at the end of this year unless Congress acts, sparking new debate over the balance between counterterrorism and civil liberties.
At the core of the debate lie differing attitudes toward US domestic intelligence activities. The Patriot Act allows intelligence agencies to borrow tools from law enforcement. "If we allow these procedures in criminal investigations," so the pro-Patriot argument goes, "why not make them available for counterterrorism activities?" Critics answer that intelligence investigations tend to be much more wide-ranging then their criminal counterparts, potentially allowing authorities to scoop up piles of private information on ordinary Americans.