The Army will be spending at least $6 billion during the next 15
to 20 years to replace its outdated communications networks that
link brigades to echelons above corps and national authorities.
The existing system—the mobile subscriber equipment tri-service
tactical (MSE-Tritac)—is not adequate to meet the Army’s
future needs, said officials, because it’s not mobile enough
and relies on antiquated information technology.
The system that will replace the 25-year-old MSE-Tritac, additionally,
will reach farther down in the chain of command, to battalion level.
That is an important capability, officials said, because the Army
wants to use communications technologies to streamline its command
structure.
Next January, the Army plans to release a request for industry
proposals for the so-called Warfighter Information Network-Tactical
(WIN-T). Two contractor teams would be selected in late 2002 to
pursue a three-year development effort. A single contractor will
be chosen in 2005 for the production of WIN-T. The Army expects
the system to be in operation by 2008.
If it stays on schedule, WIN-T would completely replace MSE by
2020. The Army fielded 4,500 MSE systems worldwide between 1987
and 1993. Its expected lifespan was 15 years.
In a nutshell, WIN-T is about “high-bandwidth communications
on the move,” said Maj. Gen. Steven W. Boutelle, the Army’s
director of programs and architecture, for command, control, communications
and computers. Previously, Boutelle was the program executive officer
for command, control and computer systems. That office is responsible
for the WIN-T program.
With MSE-Tritac, “We reached a point of diminishing returns,”
Boutelle said in an interview. Radios can be replaced, but the reality
is that, “MSE was designed for fixed operations,” Boutelle
said. “It is not mobile enough, it is too structured, does
not have the capacity for the new technologies.”
That is a problem for an Army that wants to be more mobile and
less dependent on hard wiring for battlefield communications.
With WIN-T, said Boutelle, the Army will be able to take advantage
of modern information technologies that are widely available to
civilians, such as streaming video, high-resolution graphics, overhead
imagery and web-based logistics.
The Army has been working for several years on the development
of “tactical internets” for its so-called digitized
brigades. In a tactical internet, vehicles are equipped with computers
that display a common tactical picture, and commanders can see the
location of the forces in real time. That technology, said Boutelle,
“works very well at the lowest level—in individual vehicles,
squads, platoons, companies, battalions.” It is the same technology
that allows a taxi company dispatcher to track the location of each
vehicle, so he can send the cab closest to the person requesting
one. “The dispatcher has a map just like we do,” said
Boutelle. “What we are doing has been done commercially.”
The Army’s lower tactical internet primarily is composed
of voice and data radios connected to each other. WIN-T would be
the “upper tactical internet,” a high-bandwidth mobile
system for voice, video and data exchange.
The lower-level networks do not cover enough territory, which limits
the Army’s ability to expand its area of responsibility, explained
Boutelle. “As you stress the [tactical] internet across the
surface of the earth, especially in the mountains,” communications
signals get fractured. In mountainous areas, such as the Balkans,
the only way to get around that problem is to install relay packages
on mountaintops, unmanned aircraft or satellites. With WIN-T, he
said, those systems would be tied together and connected to the
brigade, division, the joint commanders and the national authorities.
That requires communications systems with much longer range, most
likely a combination of satellite and terrestrial technologies,
said Boutelle.
The area of responsibility for an Army division is 120x200 km.
By comparison, during the Civil War, the Army would put a brigade’s
worth of soldiers in an area 200 meters long.
At the National Training Center today, said Boutelle, a brigade
covers an area that a division covered five years ago.
Unlike most other Army acquisition programs, WIN-T will be based
on commercial technologies. Contractors will be asked to design
the system and propose commercially-based architectures for command,
control, communications and data processing. “We are asking
them to address battalion communications all the way to echelons
above corps,” said Boutelle. The networks will have to operate
while the battalions are on the move, in environments where there
is no line of sight. The key to the success of this program, he
said, is to “buy systems—in an architecture—that
don’t get obsolete by the time you deliver them.”
In WIN-T, he said, “everything that gets off the ground should
be considered a relay.” That includes unmanned aircraft, aerostat
balloons, other air-breathing platforms, lower orbit, medium and
geo-stationary satellites. “Industry should recommend the
optimum solution,” said Boutelle. “It needs to be a
mix.”
As WIN-T comes along, he added, “we will see ABCS evolve.”
The Army Battle Command Systems (ABCS) is a collection of command-and-control
software programs that provide mission planners access to sources
of battlefield information, including, maneuver, logistics, fire
support, combat services support, air defense, intelligence, electronic
warfare, terrain and weather.
“ABCS has moved from heavy workstations to light workstations,
to commercial notebook computers,” said Boutelle. “It
will continue to get smaller and faster.”
The technologies in WIN-T are “key for transformation,”
said Boutelle. Transformation for the Army means being able to deploy
quickly and to communicate seamlessly with the other services. “WIN-T
is the Army component of the global information grid,” he
said.
Satellite Communications
One of the most challenging technologies that the Army wants in
WIN-T is mobile satellite-communications systems.
“We don’t have wireless on the move at high data rate,”
said Louis Marquet, director of the Army’s Research, Development
and Engineering Center, at Fort Monmouth, N.J.
The Army has large satellite terminals, fixed installations that
provide wideband capabilities. There are also local fiber-optic
networks. “The challenge we have is the 200 km connection
between the fiber and the deployed force,” Marquet said in
an interview. In the future, he said, “our force must be mobile
and the information [must] flow on the move, without having to stop
to set up antennas.”
Like Boutelle, Marquet promotes the concept of a ground network
that includes airborne communications relays, such as unmanned aircraft.
Satellites alone are not the answer, he explained, because they
have a limited capability and are vulnerable to jamming and anti-satellite
attacks. “The answer is a network of communication relays,
based on UAVs.”
The tactical internet that the Army has in place today is a network
of radios and computers mounted on ground vehicles. It does not
include UAVs. To get around elevated hills, the Army has to install
relay stations on mountaintops. The upshot, said Marquet, is that
“you may not own the mountaintops. ... To be movable, you
don’t want to have to set up an installation on the side of
the mountain.”
Marquet would like to see the WIN-T program push the development
of electronic steerable antennas, a technology that the Army does
not have, because it’s too expensive. “We need steerable
antennas that are dynamically, rapidly controlled, to direct the
energy in a given direction,” said Marquet.
His office currently oversees a program to develop Internet protocols
for moving networks. Such protocols, said Marquet, “will be
necessary for WIN-T.” Protocols address, for example, user
authentication, data rates and network security.
The program is called Mosaic (multifunctional on-the-move secure
adaptive integrated communications). In 2004, the program will seek
to demonstrate a mobile network with quality of service.
Internet protocol quality-of-service mechanisms help overcome problems
such as jamming and network mobility, said Ken A. Peterman, marketing
director at Rockwell Collins Government Systems. The company received
a contract under the Mosaic program to work on these technologies.
ITT Industries’ communications division also is working on
an “advanced network test bed” for the Mosaic program,
said Stan Griswold Jr., from ITT. “We demonstrated a network
of 10,000 nodes,” he told National Defense.
Both the WIN-T and the Mosaic programs will contribute to the development
of the Army’s Future Combat System (FCS), said Marquet. This
next-generation vehicle has not been designed yet, but the Army
already has said it wants every platform to be part of a high-bandwidth
digital network.
“There is going to be an interesting interface between WIN-T
and FCS,” Marquet said. The battalion is likely to become
the basic maneuver unit for the FCS, so WIN-T will be the communications
network.
So far, three prime contractors have emerged as strong players
in the WIN-T competition. TRW Inc. leads a team of companies that
includes ITT Industries, L-3 Communications, Qualcomm and Raytheon.
Another competitor will be Lockheed Martin Mission Systems, which
has been working on a WIN-T proposal for several months, said Ed
Shanahan, the company’s director of Army communications.
The Army, said Shanahan, “has gone a long way in allowing
industry to shape what this thing is going to look like. They have
not been very prescriptive.” Lockheed Martin still is in negotiations
with potential partners. One of the technologies that the company
has been promoting for WIN-T is a so-called electronic tactical
operations center (E-TOC), a piece of software that provides access
to the ABCS from small PCs or handheld computers. “We need
to get information to the soldier level,” said Shanahan.
Competing as a WIN-T prime contractor against TRW and Lockheed
will be General Dynamics Communications Systems. A company spokeswoman
declined to provide details on subcontractor or teaming arrangements.
Other companies that could join the fray—but have not announced
their plans—are Boeing Government Information and Communications
Systems and Northrop Grumman’s Electronic Systems sector.
There could be significant realignment of industry teams between
now and the January RFP, said Peterman, from Rockwell Collins. “As
the teams reform, we expect to be a strong participant,” he
said.
Thales Communications, Inc. also expects to be involved in WIN-T,
said Felix J. Boccadoro, the company’s director of business
development. WIN-T, he said, will require a handheld radio with
top-secret encryption. “This is our specialty, so you will
most likely see us on one or more of the teams for WIN-T.”