The accepted wisdom at the Pentagon today is that the planning
and execution of a war would be far smoother if the military services
had compatible command-and-control systems.
The “transformation” of the military force, as envisioned
by the Bush administration, to a great extent depends on the ability
of the services to work together in a joint command-and-control
structure.
In the arcane world of battle management command and control, however,
defining interoperability is almost as tricky as describing transformation.
The basic premise of interoperability is that any military commander
or unit in the field should be able to plug in their computers and
see the same picture of the battlefield, as well as share the information.
When their systems are not compatible, the situation is akin to
Internet users surfing the Web with different browsers, none of
which shows the pictures or the script in the same way.
Having a common picture of the combat zone, officials said, would
help commanders pinpoint targets more accurately and faster than
is now possible. The services are showing improvements in their
joint efforts, but much remains to be done, experts said in recent
interviews.
According to the Pentagon’s official definition, interoperability
is the “ability of systems, units or forces to provide services
to and accept services from other systems, units or forces and to
use the services exchanged to enable them to operate effectively
together.”
The lack of interoperability is not a new problem, by any means.
But, as the services become more dependent on computers and digital
information to run their weapons systems and to execute “network-centric
warfare,” having incompatible systems creates problems for
commanders in charge of multi-service forces, operating on the ground,
in the air and at sea.
Some experts blame the lack of interoperability on inter-service
rivalries and turf-conscious weapon developers. But, for the most
part, the services designed their own “stove-piped”
command-and-control systems purposely to be as difficult as possible
to penetrate. They were not meant to facilitate information sharing.
Last October, the services received marching orders from the Pentagon
to make their systems interoperable. An October 12 memo by Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz set a 2008 deadline to make all
military C2 systems interoperable.
The Pentagon official responsible for enforcing Wolfowitz’
mandate is V. Garber, the Defense Department’s director of
interoperability. He reports to Edward “Pete” Aldridge,
the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
Garber’s office was created to “champion initiatives
that would contribute to effective joint and combined operations
for the combatant commanders,” he said. “Our task is
to provide executive level oversight.”
Ideally, the Pentagon would like for joint task force commanders
to have a single picture of the battlefield, but that is not possible
today, because they operate a cornucopia of battle management command-and-control
systems, Garber explained. Having a reliable picture, showing friendly
and hostile forces, for example, could help prevent fratricide.
One cornerstone program that Garber oversees is called the Family
of Interoperable Operational Pictures, or FIOP, which sets guidelines
for the services to make their stove-piped BMC2 systems communicate
and share data with each other.
A number of programs were started in recent years to bring about
interoperability among the services. Among them are the SIAP (single
integrated air picture), sponsored originally by the Missile Defense
Agency but then expanded to all the services. Other service-specific
interoperability programs include the Navy’s Force Net and
the Army/Marine Corps Single Integrated Ground Picture. In June,
Garber kicked off a new program, called Blue Force Tracking.
During the next five years, the services will spend at least $36
billion in various BMC2 systems, and that does not include the cost
of maintaining the current technologies, he noted. Garber wants
to ensure that the services spend those funds on technologies that
enhance interoperability. His office budgeted about $140 million
for fiscal years 2003-2008 to help fund the integration of the disparate
systems.
But Garber conceded that these funds alone won’t be enough.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff Requirements Oversight Council (JROC)
contributed $15 million a year for “initial conceptual systems
engineering work,” said Garber. Additionally, the services
are expected to help fund the FIOP effort.
The Air Force was designated “executive agent,” in
charge of managing the FIOP work, Garber said. But all services
are expected to participate. “We have agreed to a virtual
management organization, where each service has a cell.” Heading
this effort will be Air Force Lt. Gen. Leslie Kenne, the service’s
deputy chief of staff for integration.
Garber predicted that Wolfowitz’ 2008 deadline can be met,
with caveats, nonetheless. “We told the secretary that we’ll
make major progress by 2008.” Attaining this goal is tied
not just to making current systems interoperable but also to improving
operator training and to the deployment of new-generation systems—such
as the Joint Strike Fighter and the Joint Tactical Radio System—which
are software-based and thus make interoperability much easier than
older systems.
The SIAP program is showing the most promise among the current
interoperability projects, Garber said. “SIAP is leading the
way for the family of interoperable pictures.” The project
focuses on achieving “one track per target” so commanders
can figure out the exact location and identity of incoming aircraft
or missiles. “This will reduce fratricide by reducing operator
confusion,” he said.
Garber’s office is working with the Joint Staff and the assistant
secretary of defense for C3I (command, control, communications and
intelligence) on ground combat identification issues, “where
we are the weakest,” he said. The Joint Staff is preparing
a so-called “Joint Combat ID Ground Study,” with the
intent to create a systems architecture and a companion investment
strategy.
“Combat ID is like interoperability,” said Garber.
“We will always want to do better.”
In addition to Garber’s office, the Pentagon’s C3I
shop, the Joint Chiefs and the individual services, there is the
U.S. Joint Forces Command, which also plays in the interoperability
business.
“One of the things we’re tasked with in Joint Forces
Command is the interoperability piece,” said Army Gen. William
F. Kernan, commander of JFCOM.
JFCOM oversees 2,000 people who write “operational requirement
documents” for weapon systems, Kernan said during a Pentagon
news conference. These ORD writers make sure that the interoperability
needs are addressed.
“When we write the operational requirements document, [we]
make sure that the key performance parameters of interoperability
and those information exchange requirements are designated ahead
of time,” said Kernan. “We’ve trained over 2,000
people who write those operational requirements documents. ... And
we reviewed now over 800 documents to assure that, up front, those
parameters, those standards are identified and incorporated into
new systems.”
The process is not uncomplicated, he added. “We’re
still a little bit of a Mr. Fix-It.”
A case in point is the Army’s maneuver control system and
the Marine tactical control operations, which the two services use
for situational awareness, to track the location of friendly forces.
These two systems “were built almost in parallel, but weren’t
interoperable,” Kernan said. In recent months, JFCOM built
software that allows the MCS and the TCO to share information.
‘Old-Fashioned Thinking’
For all the optimism coming out of Garber’s office, there
are critics who question the wisdom of the Pentagon’s interoperability
strategy. One critic, who declined to be quoted by name, pointed
out that Garber’s office is duplicating work being done elsewhere,
and that projects such as SIAP have not produced anything other
than “lots of paper.”
This critic, who has worked for more than 20 years in military
interoperability programs, said that projects such as the FIOP are
based on “old fashioned thinking” about warfare, namely
the notion that the “operational picture” should be
divided into air, sea and ground.
That stove-piped way of thinking must change, in order to conduct
network-centric warfare, said the source. “As opposed to having
an air picture, sea picture, ground picture, we should think about
data,” he said. “Data needs to be moved, accessed as
needed by each user. If we continue segmenting these things into
individual-type pictures, we are not helping the process or moving
towards a network-centric environment.”
The key to breaking the status quo, he said, is to influence spending
decisions. “Until someone has the power and the authority
to drive the services to buy [interoperable] technology that they
all support, nothing is going to happen. ... Power comes through
budget controls.”
Garber, meanwhile, noted that the services are getting better at
working together. “We have finally gotten service buy-in,”
he said. In recent months, “the services took ownership of
FIOP.”
At the FIOP meetings, he said, there are more than 100 participating
organizations, which “have identified over 100 initiatives
in the services and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
in different stages of development.” Each organization, he
said, offers “Band-aid solutions.” The problem is that
“most of these people don’t know what the others are
doing.”
One reason that interoperability and information sharing are difficult
for the military services is their desire for tight security, said
Taylor Lawrence, vice president and general manager of Northrop
Grumman Electronic Systems.
The more fundamental technologies that will help improve interoperability
are wideband communications and data-sharing protocols that are
also secure, Taylor told reporters. The services need “technologies
that allow rapid dissemination of information with appropriate security
controls,” he said.
The reason they have stove-pipes is because they make it easier
to control the information, Lawrence said. In multi-service or multi-nation
operations, that creates problems. “Nobody else can get there,”
he added. A possible solution would be for the Defense Department
and the services to come up with new protocols that all can agree
on, and that offer both an open environment and security.
The current obstacles to interoperability, he said, are not necessarily
attributable to technology hitches, but rather to cultural and policy
issues.
The industry source who criticized the Pentagon’s interoperability
strategy also said that the 2008 deadline mandated in the Wolfowitz
memo could be achieved, “if we get focused.” Nevertheless,
he said, “It’s an artificial goal.”