ARTICLE

June 2002

Security Vehicle Links First Responders With State, Feds

by Sandra I. Erwin

A Hummer truck equipped with state-of-the-art communications technology served as a command and control hub for U.S. government agencies responsible for security operations at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Although many vehicles in the marketplace today advertise high-tech communications features, this particular truck is touted as the only one that “integrates” all the technologies needed for local first-responders to remain connected to state and federal agencies when the conventional communications infrastructure is destroyed in a terrorist attack.

The vehicle, called the InfraLynx, was designed by engineers at the Naval Research Laboratory, in Washington, D.C. There are currently only two InfraLynx trucks, but NRL expects to receive funding from federal agencies to build up to 12 vehicles, said C. Chris Herndon, head of the tactical technology development office at NRL.

The truck has a rigid shelter, with a satellite dish mounted on top. The idea is to be able to “land the satellite signal right into the hot zone,” Herndon said.

“We can provide 96 phone lines, multiple simultaneous cellular calls, radio channels from high-frequency (2 Mhz) through 800 Mhz,” he said. “We typically put one radio operator in the vehicle and the first responders in tents or temporary shelters.”

Multiple vehicles can be linked to expand the capacity, he added. The main satellite link supplies global coverage. Radio communications are limited by the line of sight—approximately five to 10 miles around the vehicle, depending on the frequency. “First responders can have telephone, fax, land mobile radios, within 100 feet [of the scene], as opposed to blocks or miles away, as it’s done today,” said Herndon. There is also a video-teleconferencing system.

The InfraLynx program was kicked off after September 11, he said. Its original purpose was to provide a communications unit so police, firefighters, medical technicians and other authorities—which typically talk on multiple radio frequencies—could have a consolidated command and control center. According to NRL briefing charts, six vehicles would cost about $10 million.

The funds for the first two vehicles came from a supplemental appropriation Congress approved for Defense Department antiterrorism programs.

Herndon recognized that many companies today are offering similar “homeland security” vehicles. “We don’t want to look like we are competing with industry,” he said. In his opinion, the NRL system stands apart from others, because so many different technologies are integrated into the vehicle. “The NRL niche is ‘integration,’ which makes the InfraLynx unique, compared to other vehicles now marketed by private firms.

“If you took certain portions of the vehicle, I could tell you that there are about 10 guys who are doing that,” Herndon said. However, “We have not found anyone across the entire spectrum that is doing the whole package.”

At the Olympics, InfraLynx was used to augment the existing communications infrastructure.

Immediately after the Olympics, the vehicles were dispatched to participate in the Defense Department’s Homeland Security Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD). One went to a fire station in Chesapeake, Va., and one to a HAZMAT facility in Holden, La.

During the ACTD last April, the vehicles were “doing the same thing as we did at the Olympics,” Herndon said. But some new features were added, such as wireless video cameras linked to several sites around the country. The InfraLynx also was equipped with new vehicle/personnel location monitoring services.

The Homeland Security ACTD is one of 15 projects selected in fiscal year 2002 by the Defense Department. The budget for this particular ACTD is $53.8 million, including nearly $4 million from the Defense Department. Eleven of the 15 ACTDs focus on counter-terrorism.

The purpose of the Homeland Security ACTD is to test a coordinated response to a terrorist attack by city, county, state and federal governments. “We need to neutralize these threats and we need to recover from attacks rapidly,” said Sue Payton, deputy undersecretary of defense for advanced systems and concepts. For that reason, she said, “We need to have a command and control system, if you will, so that all parties and first responders can talk to each other.”

Payton noted that after the 9/11 attacks, “When you bring together your city firefighters and your county and state police and then the Defense Department, they can’t all communicate on the same frequencies with their radios.

“As you know, cell phones didn’t work very well after the attack on September 11. So we are developing for our first responders capabilities to be able to communicate. ... It’s a matter of getting the networks together, the data, and then software to allow people to understand what’s really going on.”

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