MIT 16-11 (Dec. 2012)

The Voice of Military Communications and Computing

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Military Information Technology

December 2012 Volume 16 • Issue 11

Features

Cover / Q&A Evolving Eye on Network Security Security information and event management systems seek new ways to track new threats and vulnerabilities.

By Peter Buxbaum

4 New Look at Military SATCOM The Air Force has launched a two-year study to determine how some commercial satellite services can be brought to the high levels of reliability provided by the MILSATCOM constellation.

By Karen E. Thuermer

8

16 Knowing the Spectrum

12

As the booming popularity of wireless systems collides with the limitations of the radio spectrum, the U.S. military and industry are moving ahead with cognitive radio technology designed to search out the best bands for communicating on the crowded airwaves.

By Adam Baddeley

Army Rolls Out New Network Approach The Army’s new tactical communications network will reduce reliance on fixed infrastructure, extend the range of communications and improve battlefield awareness at the lowest levels.

By Claire Heininger

19 Command by Conference Call The challenges of Voice over Internet Protocol cannot be ignored, and militant attention must be paid to the quality and efficiency of every call.

By Sanjay Castelino

Rear Admiral Jerry K. Burroughs Program Executive Officer for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence U.S. Navy

Departments 2

Editor’s Perspective

3

Program Notes/People

14

Data Bytes

26

COTSacopia

27

Resource Center

20 Test Command Meets Cyber-Era Cybersecurity issues, mobile devices and DoD shift to IP based systems pose new challenges, Army Colonel Douglas J. Orsi, commander of the Joint Interoperability Test Command, said in a recent interview.

Industry Interview

23

28 Dinah Gueldenpfennig Weisberg Executive Vice President and Vice President of Planning and Government Program Administration REDCOM Laboratories

Military Information Technology Volume 16, Issue 11 • December 2012

The Voice of Military Communications and Computing Editorial Managing Editor Harrison Donnelly harrisond@kmimediagroup.com Online Editorial Manager Laura Davis laurad@kmimediagroup.com Correspondents Adam Baddeley • Peter Buxbaum Cheryl Gerber • Karen E. Thuermer

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EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE For all the concern about the cyber-threat and a possible “cyber Pearl Harbor,” there are still a lot of unanswered questions about what a cyber-war would be and how it would be fought. In order to fight and win the cyber-wars of the future, however, the U.S. military needs to develop a comprehensive, end-to-end system that will enable it to understand, plan and manage such a conflict in a large and dynamic network environment.

That argument is the rationale for a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project known as Foundational Cyberwarfare (Plan X), which is looking for innovative research proposals aimed at developing fundamental strategies for dominating the cyber battlespace. Harrison Donnelly The recently announced initiative will not only be asking some interesting Editor questions, but also using some creative approaches to try to answer them.

The DARPA announcement raises a fundamental issue about the current approach to understanding the cyber-domain—a largely “manual” strategy dependent on the number and skill of cyber-experts available. But since an opponent could try to match such a force, the U.S. would be forced to train more and more experts to stay ahead, without achieving the kind of technology development that can provide superior war-fighting capability.

Moreover, the expert approach is not able to keep up with the blazing speed of cyberspace, and offers commanders little help in understanding the potential effects of an operational plan before deciding to act, the announcement contends.

But, the agency goes on, “If the process can be technologically optimized and the time-intensive requirements minimized, commanders will be able to leverage cyber-capabilities in a more flexible manner” to achieve desired cyber-effects.

DARPA is seeking research partners in five technical areas—system architecture, cyber battlespace analytics, mission construction, mission execution and intuitive interfaces. Those selected will be asked to do much of their work at an on-site collaborative research space, which among other things will include regular interaction with military personnel using the system.

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PROGRAM NOTES

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Army Enhances Resource and Readiness Information Seeking improved efficiency at a time of fiscal constraints, the Army has released enhancements to a system designed to give service leaders and planners easy access to information about unit readiness and resourcing from a variety of sources.

Fully operational for the past two years, the Army Enterprise Management Decision Support automatically collects data from roughly two dozen data sources on unit readiness, personnel, equipment, training and information resources, in order to help guide decision making on deployments and other topics.

The version released earlier this fall by the EMDS G-3/5/7 Program Office delivers new capabilities that include: • •

Advanced search, filter and data exploration tools, making finding accurate data easy and fast Intuitive screens, key words and bookmarking capabilities

• •

Ability to share information across the enterprise via integrated email Accurate and timely Army Enterprise Reports are accessible with one click of the mouse to review and determine unit readiness, personnel, equipment, training and information resources.

In December, the program office released additional capabilities, providing increased visibility of key timeline-to-deployment and equipment information.

Lieutenant Colonel Bobby Saxon, division chief and program manager for the EMDS system, explained that the new version offers more detailed information on readiness. For example, it goes beyond resource information such as number of trucks assigned to a unit to include data on the repair status of the vehicles, which would affect their readiness for deployment.

“Resource information counts people and equipment, but readiness data looks more deeply

into the details, for example to see if personnel or the unit is currently deployable. You may need to find 100 infantrymen for a mission, but if some of them are not fully trained, they are not available,” he noted.

In making the readiness enhancements, Saxon’s office worked closely with the Army’s Operations Directorate to find new sources of information and ensure that they are being correctly integrated into the information being given to users.

Even before the enhancements, use of the SIPRNet-based system was growing, Saxon reported, as senior leaders look for help in making the tough calls required by tight budgets. “As we move to a smaller, more readily deployable force, it helps to be able to visualize the readiness picture,” said Saxon.

Looking ahead, the office is working on full implementation of resource and readiness dashboards, which will provide a quick visual picture of status at a glance.

PEOPLE Randall G. Conway has been appointed to the Senior Executive Service and is assigned as principal director for command, control, communications and computers, and information infrastructure, Office of the DoD Chief Information Officer.

Navy Rear Admiral (lower half) Sean R. Filipowski will be assigned as director of intelligence, J2, U.S. Cyber Command.

Filipowski is currently serving as deputy director of operations, J3, U.S. Cyber Command.

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Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Navy Captain Robert V. Hoppa, who has been selected for promotion to rear admiral (lower half), will be assigned as deputy director of operations, J3, U.S. Cyber Command.

Hoppa is currently serving as director, National Maritime Intelligence Center.

Brian S. Teeple has been appointed to the Senior Executive Service and is assigned as principal director for the deputy chief information officer for command, control, communications and computers, and information infrastructure capabilities, Office of the DoD Chief Information Officer, Pentagon. Teeple

previously served as technical director, Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate, National Reconnaissance Office.

of Defense and system integrators. Montgomery’s resume includes experience at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where she served as principal media spokesperson for the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, and at the Department of State.

president, responsible for key strategic relationships and deal planning.

James D. Morris

Cherreka Montgomery

SAP National Security Services has hired Cherreka Montgomery as national vice president for corporate development, where she will work with the intelligence community, Department

Jim Davidson has been named as sales leader at ViON Corp., responsible for sales in all aspects of ViON’s endeavors, including those in the federal, public sector and commercial markets.

Douglas Moore, ViON’s former sales leader, will remain in an active role as executive vice

Harris has named James D. Morris group president of the company’s Integrated Network Solutions business, which includes Harris CapRock Communications, Harris Healthcare Solutions and Harris IT Services.

MIT 16.11 | 3

Security information and event management systems

seek new ways to track new threats and vulnerabilities.

By Peter Buxbaum, MIT Correspondent

Detractors argue that SIEM has devolved into an compliance Much has changed in the last few years to undermine nettool that is no longer effective in preventing new-age work security postures. Run-of-the-mill hacking has network attacks. They advocate for a more compregiven way to organized criminal activity, and many hensive intelligence solution: one that collects a varigovernment agencies and corporations have been ety of different kinds of data, including new types of victimized by stealthy attacks that have exploited information such as that derived from social media, vulnerabilities, disrupted operations, and stolen and exploits new big-data and analytic computational information. abilities to create a next-generation network security Perimeter-based security has become virtually system. obsolete, some analysts contend, in the face of a Advocates of SIEM acknowledge that the time has usage model in which employees, partners and come to adapt it to cloud computing environments. contractors access systems across the Internet, One thing is certain: SIEM, as it has been known and while criminals seek kinds of attacks to exploit that Kevin Nikkhoo understood for the last few years, is on the move. model. Even state-of-the-art detection and preven“SIEM represents an advancement beyond tration systems have failed to identify or stop attacks ditional security tools,” said Kevin Nikkhoo, chief on vulnerable networks. Security teams have come executive officer of Cloud Access, which provides to realize that their IT environments are subject to cloud-based SIEM services. “It can collect event periodic compromise. data from virtually any network device and bring In response, a methodology called security those logs into a centralized dashboard to generate information and event management (SIEM) was real-time security alerts and alarms. It is also useful developed to help organizations get a handle on because it can mitigate the risk of false positives that network security. But even SIEM is rapidly evolvyou have with so many security tools.” ing—or, some would say, being supplanted—by new “Log management tools centralize and autotechnologies and process models that seek to bring mate the query process, but lack the flexibility and networks to new levels of security in light of new Eddie Schwartz sophisticated correlation and analysis capabilities threats and vulnerabilities. of SIEM, and ultimately security intelligence,” said SIEM has traditionally collected log and event Eddie Schwartz, chief information security officer at data produced by security devices, network devices, RSA. systems, and applications, and aggregated and ana“Some first-generation SIEMs provide behavioral lyzed that data in an effort to report on vulneranalysis, but it is most often against a silo of data abilities to known attacks. SIEM has also played an rather than the universe of enterprise activity data,” emerging and important role in enabling organizasaid Dave Pack, director of LogRhythm Labs. “IT tions to meet compliance requirements, such as and security personnel remain blind to much of the those contained in the Federal Information Systems behavior of today’s hackers because the evidence of Management Act (FISMA), applicable to the govtheir activities is buried among massive volumes of ernment and government contracting sectors, and false-positive security events, or they’re miscategoSarbanes-Oxley, applicable to publicly traded comDave Pack rized altogether as benign or normal activities.” panies in the private sector.

4 | MIT 16.11

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Further increasing the crippling volume of false positive events in first generation SIEMs is the inherent lack of data corroboration in these tools, added Pack. “Traditional uses of behavioral and correlative analysis are handled by separate technologies that don’t integrate.”

Security Intelligence

responsibilities from their customers’ shoulders. “We provide 24/7 monitoring, and we have security analysts working 24/7,” said Nikkhoo. “Based on our customers’ business and security policies, we escalate security issues as we see them. We get to learn security abnormalities in our customers’ environments, so we play the role of proactive security partner for our customers.”

In many cases, according to Nikkhoo, the total costs for a cloud-based system are less than the maintenance costs of on-premise solutions because, as is usually the case with cloudbased solutions, the customer pays on the basis of usage. “You can also start off small and add network devices as you go along,” said Nikkhoo, adding that the Cloud Access solution can be deployed in public, private, and hybrid clouds, as well as behind an organization’s firewall.

Q1 Lab’s recent release of its QRadar Security Intelligence Platform 7.1 also includes cloud deployment capabilities through a feature called an event collector. “Event collectors provide continuous event-logging capabilities,” said Poulin. “The event logs are forwarded to an event processor or appliance for correlation, analysis and long-term storage. Event collectors are well-suited for collecting logs in distributed locations.”

The new Q1 release provides a complement of virtual appliances that can also be mixed and matched with hardware appliances and software form factors to meet specific needs. “These innovations are making it easier for users to leverage cloud investments, simplify management, collect and manage data more flexibly, and replicate or extend QRadar deployments,” said Poulin.

The effort to go beyond SIEM to characterize and analyze normative network activity and to generate a holistic view of system security has been dubbed by some “security intelligence.” Security intelligence moves beyond SIEM’s monitoring for and reporting on known threats, to finding abnormal activity patterns in massive amounts of otherwise normal data.

The point of security intelligence is to include a much broader range of data than SIEM, leveraging the full context in which systems are operating. That context includes security and network device logs, vulnerabilities, configuration data, network traffic telemetry, application events and activities, user identities, assets, geo-location and application content.

“The concept of security intelligence is partially realized with SIEM tools,” said Schwartz. “SIEM evolved to improve the signal-to-noise ratio among security tools and to improve general security hygiene. With the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley and FISMA, SIEM’s focus has largely moved toward a compliance reporting and evaluation tool rather than something that would prevent advanced attacks.”

“Security intelligence is an evolutionary development of SIEM,” opined Chris Poulin, chief security officer, Q1 labs, an IBM company. “SIEM originally Normal Data focused on firewalls and intrusion detection and prevention systems. But that is ineffective when Developing and deploying security intelligence you have the famous incident involving WikiLeaks can be boiled down to two issues. First, the massive and Private Manning. There you had an actor volumes of log, flow and machine data generated by obtaining sensitive materials within his authonetwork devices, applications and human users crerized privileges. Chances are any given security ate the perennial big-data problem, with its implimechanism would fail to detect this kind of action, cations for computing, storage and bandwidth. The but analysis of correlated data, applying contexts second and related challenge is to properly apply from multiple sources, may have stopped the leak analytics to all of this data.

Mark Seward before it could cause damage.”

So-called normal IT data, which security intelli“Security intelligence is the process of colgence solutions endeavor to make sense of, reflects mseward@splunk.com lecting information and applying the knowledge, human-to-machine and machine-to-machine intercreativity, and skill of the security team,” said Mark Seward, direcactions and activities that occur every minute of every day. tor of security and compliance solutions at Splunk. “Organizations “Normal activities include badging into the building, surfing the have to be concerned about known threats reported by signatureweb, getting an IP address from a DHCP server, using DNS, using and rule-based systems such as SIEM, as well as unknown threats, a VPN, using email, and accessing enterprise applications and which comprise abnormal patterns in normal IT data.” company information,” explained Seward. “It is in these normal “The current stage of evolution is analogous to signals intelactivities where attackers want to hide their activities.” ligence in military parlance,” added Poulin. “The next of evolution “It’s not just logs, it’s full packet data” that must be collected, will be to incorporate the equivalent of human intelligence.” correlated and analyzed, said Schwartz. “It’s data from business In today’s environment, traditional SIEM capabilities also are systems, mission critical systems, human resources, asset mangetting refreshed by moving them to the cloud. “SIEM has tradiagement, and more. It’s like developing situational awareness on tionally been an on-premise solution,” said Nikkhoo. “It has been the battlefield. To develop an effective intelligence picture, you very expensive because it involves hardware, software, administrawant to gather data from internal and external sources, classified tion, and integration costs, and has a huge footprint. We provide and open sources. In order to bring in all this data, you have to SIEM as a cloud-based service. It’s security as a service.” take advantage of new technologies like full context searching Cloud Access’ service reduces the costs associated with to supercharge the back end and create good analytics on the installed systems and removes administration and integration front end.”

6 | MIT 16.11

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“Big-data problems boils down to the three Vs: volume, velocity and variety,” said Poulin. “In the case of security intelligence, the variety of data presents the biggest challenge.”

One of the areas being tackled by security intelligence with big-data capabilities is detecting anomalies in user behavior. “It is possible to baseline normal activity for network traffic and to create an analytic profile,” said Poulin. “For example, most activity will probably take place during regular business hours and will follow consistent volume patterns. If there is sudden activity during off hours or a spike during regular hours, that could constitute an anomaly to be investigated. Analytics can be fine-tuned to watch for the potential exfiltration of even small amounts of sensitive data.”

“Taking a big-data approach toward IT security allows you to form hypotheses around risk problems, and to work toward figuring out what kinds signals indicate potential problems. That is completely different from the traditional SIEM approach of providing answers based on a set of rules,” said Seward.

A security intelligence system might look for incidents of network users repeatedly trying to access unauthorized areas. Or it might calculate the differential between the time it takes humans and software to log into a network or application, which could indicate a malicious actor at work. Alternatively, the system might be devised to detect incidents where a user is entered in an active directory but there is there is no corresponding badge access or entry onto a virtual private network. That could mean that a machine has been compromised or that someone is sharing credentials.

“These kinds of situations can’t be accounted for by perimeter defense systems,” said Seward.

LogRhythm recently introduced an enhancement to its SIEM 2.0 big-data security analytics platform with a capability it calls multi-dimensional behavioral analytics. “With this innovation, LogRhythm is enabling organizations to baseline normal, day-today activity across multiple dimensions of the enterprise,” said Pack. “The system then analyzes against that baseline the massive volume of log, flow, and machine data generated every second to discover anomalies in real time. By doing so, LogRhythm is enabling IT administrators and security professionals alike to detect and respond to even the most sophisticated threats and breaches.”

There are a number of ways to baseline system activity, noted Pack. “You can pick a select server and only model its activities,” he explained. “You can monitor the number of users of systems over time and create rolling averages to model the expected numbers of users logged into a system at any given point. Then you create parameters of what constitutes normal and abnormal usage, so that when activity deviates from the normal, an alert can be generated and further investigation instigated.”

Splunk’s security intelligence release can detect patterns of human activity and be set to monitor that for thresholds and outliers that can reveal stealthy malware activities. “Splunk’s analytics language supports threat scenario-based thinking that allows the security professional to ask any question of the data, ultimately searching for unknown threats,” said Seward.

Index Management But with such massive data volumes come management challenges. In response, Q1 developed new index management capabilities in its latest release.

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“QRadar’s default search indexes provide indexing for the most commonly used properties,” said Poulin. “Now we’re taking indexing a step further, enabling customization and fine-tuning. Users have control over the creation of search indexes that enable querying. We have also added the ability to customize indexing for the event and flow database, so that users can create new indexes to optimize the system for their specific needs. Additionally, we have released more than a dozen new product integrations that enable users to normalize and analyze even more types of security telemetry. Our customers have been using QRadar to correlate as many as one million events per second in real-time.”

RSA has released a product, currently being tested by customers, that tackles the back-end problem of organizing full-packet log data from hundreds of hosts and devices and creating normalized views into all types of data. “It also brings together lots of different analytics capabilities in a single user interface,” said Schwartz. “The capability will include correlation of vast amounts of full-packet and log data, and will solve performance problems related to data correlation.”

For Nikkhoo, the distributed nature of today’s computing and the movement of applications and systems to the cloud go hand in hand with a new approach toward network security. “We have developed a patent-pending product that provides an identity management system allowing users to be provisioned and de-provisioned to access applications and data, and with all of that information integrated into a single SIEM dashboard.”

A cloud-based solution becomes necessary as organizations move applications to the cloud. “The question becomes how to provision users into cloud applications,” said Nikkhoo. “It’s not just devices that need to be made secure. You also need to know who is accessing or trying to access applications and data. We call this universal security.”

Eventually, the cyber-equivalent of human intelligence will be incorporated into SIEM, according to Poulin. “Activity on social networks can provide a lot of relevant information,” he said. “Much of this is unstructured data, so we need to make more progress to allow system to understand natural language.”

For a start, social networks provide information on who is associated with whom and what people are up to. “For example,” Poulin explained, “we may find that Joe is logging into a system from Russia, when his social network activity shows he is hanging out in a bar in Boston. Security intelligence can incorporate information that is truly human.”

“The key thing is agility in response to adversaries,” said Schwartz. “That is why we are looking at data structures other than traditional SIEM. We are looking at open architectures that allow for plugging in analytics of any kind, not just our own. All these capabilities are important as we think about what we need for the computer network defense of the future.”

“People’s mindsets are changing,” added Seward. “Security professionals understand that attackers are getting more creative. In that world, providing SIEM data on a platter isn’t good enough anymore. Security professionals themselves have to get more creative about how they use data and what data they go after. Creativity is paramount when dealing with creative attackers.” O For more information, contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.mit-kmi.com.

MIT 16.11 | 7

As the military struggles with the dilemmas of cost and security in satellite communications, the Air Force has launched a two-year study, involving more than a dozen companies, that seeks to determine how some commercial satellite services can be brought to the high levels of reliability provided by the military SATCOM constellation.

The study comes at a time when, spurred by UAV video feeds and other data intensive applications, the military’s need for SATCOM has remained strong even as conflicts in Southwest Asia wind down. Meanwhile, budget restraints are pressing the case for cost savings while reducing support for expensive new programs.

Designed to survive the harshest conditions of conflict and disaster, the nation’s protected MILSATCOM constellation provides communications “when it absolutely, positively has to be there,” to borrow a phrase from an overnight delivery company’s advertising pitch of some years ago. The Milstar program, for example, provides the president, secretary of defense and military leaders with assured, survivable SATCOM with low probability of interception and detection.

Designed to overcome enemy jamming and nuclear effects, Milstar is the most robust and reliable SATCOM system currently employed by the Department of Defense.

But MILSATCOM programs offer only a small fraction of the capacity needed by the military. They are expensive, moreover, and, in the eyes of critics, take too long to develop and deploy.

Commercial SATCOM providers have filled the gap, opening a huge market and supplying the vast majority of capacity for forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the best efforts of providers, however, these commercial services are just not designed to provide superhardened links, especially in the face of determined attacks by a nationstate adversary.

8 | MIT 16.11

“As our dependence on these systems has grown, especially over the past two decades, adversaries are increasing their efforts to disrupt, deny access to, and intercept our communications,” noted Al Tadros, vice president, civil and DoD business, Space Systems/Loral (SS/L).

For that reason, the Air Force recently embarked on a major contracting initiative to develop protected MILSATCOM, under the leadership of the Military Satellite Communications Systems Directorate (MSCD), which is one of several units that make up Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC).

The initiative is intended “to demonstrate and determine the feasibility and affordability of using existing and/or narrowly modified commercial protected satellite communication systems to support future protected MILSATCOM needs in the FY20+ timeframe,” according to the command.

“The current approach to MILSATCOM systems is recognized by DoD as unaffordable for the future,” Tadros remarked.

SMC solicited proposals to architect, prototype and demonstrate specific elements of such protected MILSATCOM design concepts focused on improved life-cycle affordability.

The goal of these contracts is to enable a next generation protected tactical system by using an unclassified waveform that jointly meets the needs of multiple services across the DoD while also identifying more affordable design concepts. These needs include remote piloted aircraft support for the Air Force, protected communication on the move for the Army, and tactical maritime operations for the Navy.

MSCD consists of five divisions and one branch. The Protected SATCOM Division provides survivable, global, secure, protected, jamresistant communications for high priority military ground, sea, and air assets, while the Enhanced Polar Division is the next-generation www.MIT-kmi.com

Air Force studies how some commercial satellite services can be brought to the high levels of reliability provided by the MILSATCOM constellation.

By Karen E. Thuermer MIT Correspondent

SATCOM system that will replace the current Interim Polar System and serve as a polar adjunct to the Advanced EHF system. The Wideband SATCOM Division provides worldwide, high-volume, voice and data communications to the warfighter.

In addition, the Advanced Concepts Division is responsible for defining next generation SATCOM capabilities to meet war fighting needs for the Joint Space Communications Layer, and the Space and Nuclear Networks Division develops, acquires and operationally deploys communication terminals synchronized to support satellite weapon system operations and provides support for 16,000 aircraft, transportable and fixed site terminals. The MILSATCOM Command and Control Branch directs the Command and Control SystemConsolidated program and is responsible for satellite command and control system development for all MILSATCOM systems.

Contract Details Analysts describe the recent contract awardees as including multiple small businesses that enhance affordability, commercial contractors who provide new insight, and traditional MILSATCOM system design contractors. Those contractors that received awards on the low end (about $150,000) will participate in a working group, while those on the high end (roughly $10 million) will build hardware and perform demonstrations and testing.

The study, which kicked off in October 2012, will last approximately 24 months. At the study’s end, some companies will deliver hardware and/or software, while others will perform product demonstrations at a federal research facility or “in-house.” www.MIT-kmi.com

These awards will also improve the government’s understanding of cost, development schedule, and performance profiles of candidate component technologies and the respective building blocks that address future protected tactical communications.

To meet requirements, the government identified elements of space, ground and terminal segments for risk reduction and demonstration activities during the BAA. These include examining best placement of processing functions between the space, terminal, and/or ground segments relative to current traditional highly protected MILSATCOM system designs. To study the various aspects noted above, each selected contractor will bring a unique idea and capability to the study. Furthermore, each company will present architecture solutions unique to its strengths.

For example, protected, strategic MILSATCOM must be able to provide low probability of interception/detection/exploitation (LPI/ LPD/LPE), survivable, anti-scintillation and anti-jam communications, as well as nuclear command and control services in all operational environments: nuclear, contested and benign. Protected, tactical MILSATCOM must be able to provide anti-jam and LPI/LPD/ LPE communications in both contested and benign operational environments.

Milstar and Advanced EHF One company playing a major role in the MILSATCOM study is Northrop Grumman Systems, which won an $11 million contract for protected MILSATCOM waveform specification development, affordable protected space/ground segment design and demonstration, and affordable mission planning and management demonstration.

MIT 16.11 | 9

Companies in MILSATCOM Study The Space and Missile Systems Center in September awarded 17 contracts totaling $84.3 million as a result of the broad agency announcement (BAA) for the “Protected Military Satellite Communications Design for Affordability Risk Reduction Demonstration.”

Consequently, the following companies will participate in multiple areas of focus across the BAA: • Waveform specification development: Boeing, Space and Intelligence Systems; Northrop Grumman Systems; Space Systems Loral; Raytheon; L-3 Communications, Communications Systems West; Hughes Network Systems; ViaSat, Comsat Laboratories; L-3 Communications, Communications Systems East; Orbital Sciences; General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems; Space Micro; Lockheed Martin, Space Systems Company; Harris, Government Communications Systems; Hughes Design Group; Arkham Technology Limited; and General Dynamics C4 Systems.

• Affordable protected space/ground segment design and demonstration: Boeing, Space and Intelligence Systems; Northrop Grumman Systems; and Space Systems Loral.

• Affordable gateway risk reduction and demonstration: Lockheed Martin, Information Systems and Global Solutions; and Northrop Grumman Systems.

• Affordable mission planning and management demonstration: Boeing, Space and Intelligence Systems; and Hughes Network Systems.

• Affordable terminal design and demonstration: Raytheon; and L-3 Communications, Communications Systems West.

• Affordable terminal cryptographic component development and demonstration: ViaSat, Comsat Laboratories; and L-3 Communications, Communications Systems East.

The reliance of the nation’s senior leadership on Milstar was demonstrated following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Milstar was used for relaying secure communications to President Bush, giving him the flexibility to move around for security reasons. Although safety concerns prevented his return to Washington that day, Bush was able to talk with key members of his administration and DoD while flying aboard Air Force One. “The modern warrior depends on the advantages supplied by information-centric operations,” commented Linsky. “With an array of aerial vehicles packed with rich sensors, and a global information grid at their fingertips, military troops need to send and receive lifesaving information with the confidence it will get through without interruption.”

Linsky sees this as being the benefit of protected SATCOM. “It’s immune from interference, and cannot be detected by adversaries,” he stated. “Therefore, it won’t give away the positions of fighting forces like most other kinds of military SATCOM in use today.”

Because of heavy demand, however, most military satellite communications traffic is transmitted on vulnerable commercial SATCOM channels that comprise the bulk of space-based communications.

Only about 1 percent of defense SATCOM communications is secure and protected against intercept and jamming threats.

While this is an acceptable solution for many noncritical functions, the pervasive use of unprotected satellite communications could leave the U.S. and its allies highly vulnerable to adversaries that are increasingly seeking to deny us the information advantage we currently have.

In addition, the Milstar and AEHF architecture includes significant protections from physical attacks to vulnerable ground-based gateways and stations. Milstar and AEHF utilize payload crosslinks that transmit communications through space from satellite to satellite, out of reach of adversaries who could take advantage of ground stations as vulnerable, weak links.

“Our military services and Congress have documented the substantial investments that potential adversaries are making in antisatellite systems based on cyber-attacks, jamming, spoofing, ground and space kinetic kill, and even less sophisticated ways of disrupting service,” reported Linsky. “The country’s dependence on unprotected SATCOM is a potential Achilles heel.”

Focus on Affordability

Given that DoD recognizes that the current approach to MISATCOM systems is unaffordable for the future, SS/L officials say they are For nearly 30 years, Northrop Grumman has provided sophisfocusing its contract award on the development of affordable protected ticated and robust protected satellite communications payloads to tactical communication (PTC) systems.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems as its principal subcontractor for the SS/L, a leading provider of commercial satellites, won a $10.1 Milstar and Advanced Extremely High Frequency (EHF) assured, antimillion contract for protected MILSATCOM wavejam satellite systems. form specification development, affordable protected In addition, Northrop Grumman has provided two space/ground segment design and demonstration, and protected EHF payloads for the Enhanced Polar Sysaffordable mission planning and management demontem, providing protected communications for the Navy stration. in the Arctic regions. These two payloads will be hosted Given SS/L’s position as a prime contractor leading on satellite systems being launched into highly elliptical several protected communications system and techorbit in fiscal year 2015 and FY17. nology domain expert companies, officials say it is posi“Milstar and Advanced EHF are the commutioned to provide solutions with shorter schedules and nications systems the president and U.S. military lower, better controlled cost, to defend against growing commanders use for the most strategic and critical and changing intentional jamming and cyber threats, exchange of military information worldwide,” said StuStuart Linsky and to deliver advanced communications capability to art Linsky, vice president, Communications Systems, the warfighter.

Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems.

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unacceptable proposition and the reason why the Air Force has made protected SATCOM a top priority.”

As the name of these contracts—“protected military satellite communications design for affordability risk reduction demonstration”—indicates, the remaining obstacle to making protected SATCOM widely available among all military services is its cost.

Northrop Grumman’s goal is to help the Air Force meet affordability and resiliency goals for protected military communication satellite capabilities. “The progress we have made on the Enhanced Polar System hosted payloads demonstrates that Northrop Grumman’s protected SATCOM technologies are scalable,” Linsky emphasized.

“These technologies are proven and on orbit aboard two An industry team has developed Low Cost Terminals for Protected Satellite Communications on the Move (P-COTM) that operational Advanced EHF satellites. The Low Cost Tercost one-tenth as much as currently fielded terminals with similar capabilities. The team consists of Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and TeleCommunication Systems. Show here is the P-COTM terminal mounted on a test vehicle. [Photo minals we have developed in conjunction with industry courtesy of Northrop Grumman] teammates Lockheed Martin and TeleCommunication Systems show our commitment to driving down the cost of protected SATCOM as an important component of an evolved For the SMC’s protected MILSATCOM program, SS/L is involved space architecture for this critical capability for strategic and tactical in helping remedy existing gaps in the space communications layer fighting forces.” O and demonstrate specific design concepts focused on improved lifecycle affordability that will meet the warfighter needs far into the future.

For more information, contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly PTC will integrate multiple technologies to provide robust and at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives resilient mobile networks for future U.S. warfighters and coalition for related stories at www.mit-kmi.com. partners.

“Affordability is the primary challenge for future PTC, and our effort will be focused on developing affordable alternatives to the systems being implemented today,” Tadros said.

Many effective technological solutions exist that can provide protected communications, but too often these technologies and approaches come with prohibitive costs. If future solutions can leverage the current commercial wireless standards and approaches, the government will be able to expand the industry supplier base and increase competition, yielding more affordable PTC, he suggested.

SS/L’s current PTC effort with the Air Force spans multiple risk CSSS.NET helps our federal clients reduce total cost of reduction phases and demonstrations over the next couple years. ownership and free up budget for new priorities. Celebrating “After these risk reduction demonstrations, we envision flight demon15 years serving our federal clients, we offer proven solutions to critical challenges for a variety of military, intelligence and strations with a potential operational system or systems in the latter civilian agencies nationwide. We provide: half of this decade,” Tadros emphasized.

Mission Requirements Mission Solutions

CSSS.NET Delivers

Nuclear Survivability One issue concerning the MILSATCOM contract is technological advances that make it possible for satellite communications to be tough enough to continue working through a nuclear war.

Two protected communications satellite constellations currently on orbit are nuclear survivable and are capable of surviving an electromagnetic pulse and capable of quickly regaining communications in the scintillation or scrambling that occurs to non-EHF radio frequencies following a nuclear detonation.

A Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman industry team pioneered protected SATCOM capabilities, matured them and continues to refine them as necessary, Linsky said, adding, “But no new capabilities or technologies are needed at this point.

“The overwhelming reason nuclear survivability is essential— along with anti-jam capabilities—is that without them, adversaries could deny the president and military leaders command and control of their own military forces,” Linsky continued. “That’s a completely www.MIT-kmi.com

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MIT 16.11 | 11

Cognitive radios tackle spectrum crunch with technology designed to search out the best bands for communicating on the crowded airwaves.

By Adam Baddeley, MIT Correspondent As the booming popularity of wireless systems collides with the limitations of the radio spectrum, the U.S. military and industry are moving ahead with cognitive radio technology designed to search out the best bands for communicating on the crowded airwaves.

Cognitive radio is essentially a type of software-defined radio technology that gives the devices the smarts to think for themselves, choosing the frequency, protocols and waveform best suited for the type of communication needed, overcoming jamming, terrain and other obstacles without the need for operator intervention.

Along with improving transmission capacity and reducing interference, a cognitive radio’s software defined architecture allows it to fulfill other functions, enabling the radios’ RF hardware to be used for signals intelligence or jamming IEDs. In effect, the cognitive radio becomes a converged device for soldier and vehicle on the battlefield, shrinking the carried or on-board footprint and saving weight and power.

After more than a decade of research and development of the cognitive radio concept, with money invested in this area by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and industry, cognitive capabilities are on the cusp of being fielded.

“Simply from its title, a cognitive radio is cognizant of its environment and can dynamically change its operation based on learning about its environment, constrained by both policy and etiquette,” explained Byron Tarver, director of technology for secure communications and computing technology for General Dynamics C4 Systems.

Policy is the hard and fast rules, Tarver explained, giving the example of usage parameters for the 121 and 143MHz Guard Channel, while etiquette would be the way users in a network establish their own, sometimes ad hoc, rules governing usage. Both examples use the spectral environment, with cognitive radio being closely associated with the management of operational spectrum usage.

Precursors to cognitive ability have been fielded for decades, although users may not see them as such. Tarver gave the example of automatic link establishment used in high frequency communications, by which both radios can signal back and forth, sounding 12 | MIT 16.11

channels to establish the best configuration in terms of frequency and adapting the modem accordingly.

Other cognitive capabilities we already use in our day-to-day life without realizing it, he said. “Cookies on your computer are a mechanism by which vendors can understand individual users and their buying patterns, and adjust marketing on an individual basis.

That is a cognitive type of functional understanding of users and their needs, and then reacting to specifically advertise to that user.”

Accommodating Upgrades Spectrum utilization is only one, albeit a very important, part of the rationale for cognitive radio. For the Department of Defense, as opposed to commercial users, cognitive technology must have a wider remit while remaining tied to the same basic principles.

“The Army is still looking at what cognitive radio means to them and to how do they do business in the future,” Tarver noted. “For our part, we present them with an array of capabilities that are available on how we are going to utilize those and what also makes sense because, even though you can do lots of things, there are concerns about overwhelming the soldier.

“On the DoD side, we are still dealing with individuals. As we amass tremendous amounts of data, how do we tailor that to specific commanders without overwhelming them with data? A commander is still an individual and individuals assimilate information differently. How does a commander think? One may want to see things graphically but another individual may want to see the raw data from the source to make a decision,” he continued.

Tarver outlined the strategic intent underpinning General Dynamics C4 Systems’ approach to software and hardware regarding cognitive radios, ensuring that investments today, which will be fielded for years to come, can accommodate cognitive upgrades in the future.

“We want to make sure that as we roll these radios out, they are capable of doing those kind of functions. These radios will be deployed very widely on the battlefield, so turning an individual www.MIT-kmi.com

soldier into a sensor is now a reality. Applications on that soldier radio can be used to understand or scan their environment and report back, and that data then be fused for a total operational picture,” he said. “We are looking at using the existing communication channels that are being put in place as the bearer for the traffic and bringing all the information back. It is still going to take some more time to understand the precedence of operations: who sets the policy for precedence and how does that take place, so that when a soldier needs to make an emergency voice call that takes precedence over sensor information that is being sent. A lot of that still needs to be worked out.”

General Dynamics C4 Systems splits its work on cognitive radio between internal development and contract work, illustrated by its partnership with DARPA on the latter’s Next Generation (XG) radio program.

“Right now DARPA is doing a lot of work at the algorithm level looking at specific capabilities,” said Tarver. “We are looking at being able to host these capabilities on a platform. All of the cognitive capabilities we have tested have been on our existing platforms without hardware modernization.”

Local Spectrum Sensing While spectrum is important, it’s just one part of a bigger puzzle in defining cognitive radio, said Eric Whitehall, chief engineer at ITT Exelis.

“My definition is that it learns about its environment and makes the best decision in a distributed manner to maximize the performance of the network in given area. It listens and communicates with everyone else and it figures out what is best for the group,” he said.

Whitehall breaks the cognitive radio concept down into several building blocks of capability. The first is local spectrum sensing, which is a focused effort designed to establish the best frequency for two radios to communicate. Moving out, the next step would be spectrum sensing on a networkwide scale over many radios.

Adaptive transmit power algorithms would then be included to set power levels only to the level required for that signal, similar to a cellular picocell or femtocell approach, rather than clutter the frequency with overly powerful signals. This would be followed by an adaptive antenna solution such as beam forming and multiple input/ multiple output (MiMo) for further efficiency. Adaptive networking algorithms would further improve the system by converging traffic along the best path.

The final aspect in Whitehall’s list is parallel applications. “The idea is changing your voice codec depending in what your channel capacity and capabilities are: higher quality voice, lower quality voice or last-ditch voice. One of the techniques I saw at least over a decade year ago was the ability to digitize the voice capability and convert it into text, append it to the end of the message so that if you got the bits through you could undo that voice in a text-to-speech conversion. This is an example of the ability to adapt applications to meet the overall needs of the network. A solution that takes into account all layers of the protocol stack is where cognitive radio needs to end up. This is the end goal.”

ITT Exelis’ work on cognitive radios has focused on spectrum sensing and measurement. “We are doing some of the decision making process; detecting frequencies, adjusting data rates, modulation and adaptive power and data rates while listening,” Whitehall said. www.MIT-kmi.com

There is going to have to be quite bit of technical and cultural change to make cognitive radio happen and implemented in current infrastructures, said Whitehall, who outlined one such scenario: “If you create a subnet of cognitive radios, the cognitive radio will figure out you have a SINCGARS here and an SRW running there and say, ‘Let’s use 630Mhz to do MiMo for high capacity without interfering with the detected networks.’ However, getting a cognitive radio to cooperate with a legacy SINCGARS or SRW waveform with radios that don’t understand cognitive techniques is going to be difficult.”

Backfilling in-service and SDRs shortly to enter service is possible, but it will depend how much sensing capability manufacturers have placed in the RF front end. Adding additional hardware to enable a future capability creates an additional cost, and unless that additional capability is required for the initial contract it may be uncompetitive to provide that future capability.

As it stands, the additional capabilities required to support cognitive capabilities may lend themselves on cost and technical ground to larger vehicle mounted systems rather than lower unit cost, power efficient dismounted sets.

Digital Signal Processing “All of the Joint Tactical Radio System radios have general purpose programming (GPP) and digital signal processing (DSP), and they all have various numbers of these, each manufacturer being a little different,” Whitehall said. “If you put a lot of this capability into your radio system for the higher complexity, more intensive waveforms, you can add cognitive capabilities later. If you try to minimize power and cost on your solution, then maybe you have less processing capability in your solution and you are going to be challenged to operate these new cognitive capabilities where you don’t have lot of spare capacity.

“With SINCGARS and HAVE QUICK, which are two examples of lower data rate waveforms, the processors are probably twiddling their thumbs with lots of capacity sitting idle. With the higher throughput waveforms, the DSP and FPGAs and GPP are getting tasked with all of the processing required for SCA 2.2. compliance and CORBA exchanges. This may cause a radio design to run out of processing power. Almost everything is software, with the exception of the RF hardware listening pieces. For a cognitive capability, you have to have the sensor piece correct right at the start. I do not know for sure if the SDRs today have the listening piece done well enough,” he continued.

“It just takes time to get it working properly operational, and I think cognitive radio is going to go through the same thing. I think we are a decade away. I think you are going to see little improvement here and there but you are not going to see a ‘Joe Mitola’ vision of cognitive radio for about a decade or so,” he said, referring to the engineer who first proposed the cognitive radio concept.

To do this, he said, there has to be a high degree of cooperation in industry. “Each of the companies involved in cognitive radio have their little pieces, and trying to put together those solutions is essential. Companies either have to invest in everything or they have to partner and acquire those techniques.” O

For more information, contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.mit-kmi.com.

MIT 16.11 | 13

DATA BYTES Air Force Orders Friend-or-Foe Interrogators of AWACS Aircraft Telephonics Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Griffon Corp., has been awarded a $60 million multi-year contract from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. Under the contract, Telephonics will supply the AN/UPX-40 Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) Interrogator for integration on to the Air Force E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control (AWACS) aircraft, including installation kits, installation, and sustainment support. The Telephonics family of interrogators includes the only IFF interrogators to achieve Department of Defense AIMS certification in all modes, including MARK XII, Mode 5, Mode S and Multi-channel ADS-B. The AN/UPX-40 provides the AWACS aircraft with an unprecedented air surveillance capability in support of the integrated command and control battle management capability. The real-time air surveillance picture provides situational awareness of friendly, neutral and hostile activity, command and control of an area of responsibility, battle management of theater forces, all-altitude and all-weather surveillance of the battlespace, and early warning of enemy actions during joint, allied and coalition operations.

New Contract Supports Advanced Tactical Comms The Army has awarded a new contract to enable the acquisition of hardware, software, services and data in support of the Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T) mission over a five-year ordering period. The Global Tactical Advanced Communication Systems (GTACS) contract is one of the largest contracts the Department of Defense plans to issue within the next few years. By utilizing the GTACS contract and its group of 20 defense contractors, it is expected that the government will realize significant cost savings, while enabling industry to quickly fill needed mission requirements with innovative solutions. The companies selected were CACI Technologies, D & S Consultants, DRS Technical Services, Envistacom, General Dynamics One, Globecomm Systems, Harris, ITT Exelis, L-3 Services, Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, Morgan Franklin, Nexagen Networks, Northrop Grumman Systems, Raytheon, Rockwell Collins Satellite Communications Systems, Science Applications International Corp., Scientific Research Corp., Telecommunications Systems, Trace Systems and Viasat.

The GTACS contract will be managed by PdM SATCOM under Project Manager Warfighter Information NetworkTactical, which is assigned to PEO C3T.

Mobile Device Security Service Protects Mobile Devices

Contract Funds New Aerostat Radio Relay Products Syntonics, a provider of advanced technology RF-over-fiber products, has received an additional $8.6 million contract from the Army for its FORAX-HARC (high antennas for radio communications) aerostat radio relay products. This is a Small Business Innovation Research Phase III contract. Key technologies were developed under an earlier effort funded by the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare System Command to develop prototype HARC systems for the Wideband Network Waveform (WNW). Those prototype HARC-WNW systems participated successfully in the Army’s Network Integration Evaluation 12.1 and were recommended for fielding.

HARC systems are now available for all tactical communications waveforms used by the Army, including the Advanced Networking Wideband Waveform, the new Soldier Radio Waveform, the new WNW, and the SINCGARS and EPLRS waveforms.

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Blue Coat Systems has introduced the Blue Coat Mobile Device Security (MDS) service, enabling businesses to extend the boundaries of the security perimeter to iOS devices in any location, on any network. The new securityas-a-service closes the security gap that leaves businesses without a control point over mobile browser applications and exposed to Web-based threats. The Blue Coat MDS service operates at the network level, versus the device level, to extend the same protection and control that is available in headquarters to mobile devices in any location. This approach allows organizations to embrace mobile devices by delivering advanced defenses, granular application and operation controls, and contextual policies to balance the demand for network access from employees with the security needs of the business. The MDS service is newest component of the Blue Coat Unified Security solution, which delivers global threat protection, universal policies and unified reporting to all users on devices across the organization.

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Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Army Selects Wireless Network After Next Radios The Army has selected the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Wireless Network after Next (WNaN) radios to support the Network Integration Evaluation 13.1 experiment. The WNaN team consists of DARPA; Raytheon BBN Technologies, which provides the applications, networking and integration capabilities for this next generation platform; and Cobham Sensor Systems, which provides hardware. BBN Technologies is a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon. The WNaN radio provides a robust mobile ad hoc network with dynamic spectrum access, disruption tolerant networking, and multiple cooperative transceivers on a compact, handheld platform. These innovative networking technologies allow WNaN radios to operate in dense signal environments without dropping calls, facilitate mission command through the ability to easily set up as many as 128 call groups, and maintain situational awareness even when communications are interrupted. Because the WNaN software is delivered on low cost, commercially available components, WNaN radios can enable soldiers at every operational level to have a reliable communications device.

Serial-to-Packet Solutions Support Everything-Over-IP Efforts Cornet Technology’s IPGate-AC and IPGate-AC HD serial-to-packet transport and migration solutions have been tested and certified by the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) for both system interoperability and information assurance. They are now on the Defense Switched Network approved products list under the fixed network element category. IPGate-AC solutions are designed to simplify the Department of Defense “everything over IP” effort by easing the migration of legacy serial- and circuit-based network applications to packet-based IP networks. By passing JITC testing, the IPGate serial-to-packet solutions offer industry technologically advanced appliances that provide greater functionality than the competition. These appliances use the latest emulation technology to encapsulate the TDM traffic into packets as it enters the network and restoring them at the exit point. This technology provides a single device platform to develop a unified communications’ solution.

Big-Data Bundle Offers Real-Time Insights SAP has announced integration of Apache Hadoop into real-time data warehousing environments with a new big-data bundle and go-to-market strategy with Cloudera, Hitachi Data Systems, Hortonworks, HP and IBM. The offering is based on the flagship SAP HANA platform and combines the SAP Sybase IQ server, SAP Data Integrator software and SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence solutions. It provides a comprehensive data warehousing solution for real-time insights across massive data sets from various sources. Where traditional databases once dominated enterprise data warehousing strategies, Hadoop is gaining traction among organizations looking for an efficient and affordable way to store and process ever-increasing data volumes.

However, companies struggle to integrate Hadoop with their business analytics environments and refined data warehousing practices. Together, the big-data bundle from SAP and go-to-market partnerships with Hadoop vendors enable SAP to offer its customers a complete real-time data warehousing strategy that harnesses Hadoop’s potential with the speed of in-memory computing and columnar databases. Bringing together the speed, scale, flexibility and affordability needed to fully tap the potential of big data, SAP is offering the following Hadoop-integrated solutions in a single bundle, as well as individually: SAP HANA database; SAP Sybase IQ, a columnar database and enterprise data warehouse database; SAP Data Integrator; and SAP BusinessObjects BI suite.

Rugged Firewall Detects and Prevents Cyber-Attacks The new Stonesoft MIL-320 Next Generation Firewall/VPN appliance provides military-grade network security in a rugged go-anywhere unit.

Today’s information security is often deployed outside controlled datacenters and other stable environments, but needs to function in extreme conditions. The MIL-320 utilizes Stonesoft’s thorough data stream-based normalization and deep inspection across all protocols and network layers to detect and prevent cyber-attacks, including those delivered by advanced evasion techniques (AET). The MIL-320 appliance packs AET-resistant, high-performance network security into a tough and compact form, certified for highperformance operations in extreme temperatures, wet, mud and dust. Each unit is small, heavy duty, resistant to bumps and shocks, and available in black or military green. The MIL-320 is highly portable, quick to configure, and ready for planned or www.MIT-kmi.com

rapid deployments. MIL-320 offers industry-leading protection against sophisticated attacks and includes a WLAN and ad-hoc mesh network support for resilient, strongly encrypted local communication links and data transfer between deployed units.

MIT 16.11 | 15

C4I Commander

Q& A

Delivering IT to the Fleet to Enable Information Dominance Rear Admiral Jerry K. Burroughs Program Executive Officer for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence Rear Admiral Jerry K. Burroughs is a 1981 graduate of North Carolina State University with a degree in mechanical engineering. He received his commission from Officer Candidate School in 1982. Additionally, Burroughs received a Master of Science degree in national resource strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at National Defense University.

Prior to command, Burroughs served at sea aboard USS Nathan Hale, USS Honolulu and USS Finback, deploying to the Western Pacific and Mediterranean, as well as conducting four strategic deterrent patrols. Ashore he served at the Nuclear Power Training Unit, Ballston Spa, N.Y., CINCLANTFLT Nuclear Propulsion Examining Board in Norfolk, Va., and on the staff of the assistant secretary of the Navy for financial management and comptroller in Washington, D.C. Burroughs assumed command of USS Albuquerque in December 1999, where he served until June 2002. In command, he deployed to the South Atlantic and conducted a major shipyard maintenance period.

Burroughs’ acquisition assignments include assistant program manager for unmanned undersea vehicles, program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and major program manager for the SOF Undersea Mobility Program. He served as chief engineer for the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command from August 2008 until March 2010.

Burroughs also leads the Navy Program Executive Office Space Systems, reporting directly to the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition.

Burroughs was interviewed by MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly.

Q: To start off, can you give readers an overview of your commands, their mission and organization?

A: At PEO C4I and PEO Space Systems, we’re responsible for delivering information technology to the fleet, to enable the Navy’s information dominance vision. We’re delivering networking, communications, command and control and intelligence-type systems and applications to the fleet. I have 11 major program managers working for me to develop and integrate that capability.

Q: What is your command doing to prepare for fiscal uncertainty and the prospect of budget austerity in the future?

A: Well, we have an ingrained culture of efficiency and looking for ways to do things more effectively and efficiently, so that will serve us well.

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We have a whole team that is chartered to look at continuous process improvement and how we can be more effective in how we do our job.

So we’re just going to keep our eye on the ball, making sure we’re spending and allocating our dollars in an effective and efficient manner, and we’ll respond to the challenge.

Q: The PEO C4I recently issued its strategic plan for 2013. How would you describe your goals for the year?

A: We have three main goals. The first is to minimize costs while delivering integrated C4I capability, and that’s really looking at total ownership costs of all the systems that we deliver. The second is to rapidly deliver capability to the warfighter. In the IT world, things change very quickly, and so we’re very challenged to make sure we’re delivering capability that stays relevant. Working within the acquisition framework, we’re always looking for ways that we can be more responsive and deliver capability faster to the warfighter. The last one is to make sure that we continue developing our workforce to respond to the challenges of today and achieve excellence in acquisition.

Q: What types of changes in the Navy’s IT acquisition process could contribute to your efforts to minimize costs while delivering integrated capabilities? www.MIT-kmi.com

A: Our acquisition system goes back a long way, and it’s primarily been developed for large platforms—ships, aircraft, and others that take a long time to develop and build, and stay around for 30 or 40 years. We’re dealing with systems that are generally COTS technology that we’re integrating together and developing applications. That’s something that changes very rapidly. So we have to adapt to that paradigm. There is a realization across the Department of Defense that the traditional system doesn’t work that well for C4I, and there have been a lot of initiatives undertaken to try to adapt to that. The Rapid IT Acquisition initiative enables us to waive some of the requirements that really don’t produce good results for an IT system, and that allows us to move faster. So whenever we can, we try to do that, and we’ve had some good success.

Q: What is your command’s role in the Consolidated Afloat Network Enterprise Services [CANES] program, and where does that stand today?

A: CANES is more than a system, it is also a new business model for delivering capability to the fleet. It takes four legacy networks and combines them into one network, allowing us to streamline the support, training and operating procedures. It will also enable us to be more responsive. For example, today where we’re fielding systems with hardware, in the future that capability will just be an application that rides on CANES. It’s much faster and cheaper to develop and field applications when the operating environment is already in place.

Rear Admiral Burroughs is the Navy’s program executive officer for both C4I and Space Systems. [Photo by Rick Fortunately, we’re there, and the future is now. The pro- Naystatt, audiovisual production specialist, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command] gram is just coming up on Milestone C, which we hope to get more troublesome systems from a sustainability perspective. So it’s a approved soon, and we have our first installation starting in the middle large improvement from the sustainment perspective and it also gives of December, on the USS Milius. That installation will take several the fleet a lot more capability in the area of protected communicamonths, and we’ll begin operational testing at sea late next year. tions and improved bandwidth. So, not only from a capability, but There are other significant advantages that I’d like to mention. also from an operations and sustainment perspective, NMT is a very One is that over time, it will allow us to get all the ships on one stanimportant program. dard architecture. Today, we have many different variants of networks The CBSP is a very successful program as well. The big thing out there that present significant supportability and information about it is that, as we’ve developed the terminal, we’ve also been able assurance challenges. The other is that CANES has significant IA to work on how we lease the commercial satellite capacity. We were capability built into it that we’ve never had before. A third is that able to negotiate a more favorable contract that allows us to buy that CANES is included with a resourced and planned modernization and capacity much more cheaply than we did in the past. That’s really the technical refresh strategy. We looked at that up-front, asked what it big news about CBSP, it’s a great augmenter for the MILSATCOM, and takes to sustain and keep these networks viable, and built that into the very important for the fleet. program. It’s funded as a part of the program, and that’s a huge step forward for the Navy.

Q: What are some of the key initiatives of your command in the area of information assurance and cybersecurity?

Q: What benefits and challenges do you see in the Navy’s efforts to consolidate five SATCOM programs into the Commercial Broadband A: It’s tough to pick up a newspaper these days without reading Satellite Program [CBSP] and Navy Multiband Terminal [NMT] something new in the area of IA and cybersecurity. About three years programs? ago, realizing how big that issue is becoming, we stood up a separate program office, PMW130, which is the Information Assurance and A: NMT is a very important program for us. It’s been in development Cybersecurity Program Office, to help us deal more effectively with for the last several years, and we recently got a full deployment decithose issues. They are entirely focused on IA and crypto systems, and sion to move forward on it. We’re moving out with installations as are at the pointy end of the spear for us in attacking those issues. quickly as we can. The program has done very well, and it’s a good It is an area that is rapidly evolving and ramping up in threat level news story for the Navy because it consolidates many of the legacy and complexity. It is a challenge for not just my programs, but for systems into one terminal. Some of those programs, such as the every program in the Navy and DoD, to keep up with that threat.

Super High Frequency satellite terminals, are some of our older and www.MIT-kmi.com

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We’re focused on it, and we’re trying to work with all of our stakeholders to be more agile and try to stay ahead of the threat. It’s a big resource challenge as well, because many of these threats didn’t even exist a couple of years ago, and we budget many years out. So it’s a tough problem to forecast what the threat is going to be and program the resources needed to respond.

Q: What is the current state of progress on the Mobile User Objective System [MUOS] program?

A: For the last year and a half, I’ve been dualhatted as PEO Space Systems. The Navy is the DoD executive agent for narrowband satellite communications, which is UHF, and the future capability in UHF is MUOS. The system has been under development for quite a few years, but we’re now building the capability.

It’s made up of five satellites and four ground stations. The first satellite was launched last February, and is on orbit. Each satellite has both a MUOS capability payload and a legacy UHF payload. That satellite is today providing legacy UHF capability, and we are on Rear Admiral Burroughs with one of the newly received CANES modules currently undergoing operational testing at SPAWAR prior to schedule to launch our next satellite, MUOS 2, ship installation. [Photo by Rick Naystatt, audiovisual production specialist, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command] next July. Once we get two satellites and our common, integrated C4I build to every ship that we modernize. It ground stations up, that is when we can start fielding and testing the will take time to get there, but over time we’re going to start necking MUOS capability. After the second satellite goes up in July, we’ll start down the variance and get it to a manageable number. That will pay getting into operational testing of the capability late next year. dividends for us in many areas. Not only will it be easier to train sailI would add that the program is the satellites and ground stations, ors on how to operate it, but it also will be easier for them to go from but it’s also the terminals, or radios, with the MUOS waveform. That one platform to another, because those C4I suites will look largely the waveform was developed under what was formerly the Joint Program same. Our logistics footprint will be significantly reduced, so when Executive Office-Joint Tactical Radio System, so we have to work we talk about real total ownership cost reduction. If you combine very closely with them and the radio developers, which is currently CANES, NMT and the Automated Digital Networking System [ADNS], residing under an Army program. MUOS is a very complex system which is our system for access to the Global Information Grid, those involving a lot of different stakeholders, and the Navy now is in charge form the core of those capability builds. Not only do you get the of the end-to-end capability. We’re working very closely with all stakeimproved functionality of the network and the applications that holders to make sure that we deliver that capability on time and on ride on it, but the combination of NMT and ADNS gives you greatly budget. I’m happy to say that the program is progressing well, and improved bandwidth and protected communications capability.

I look forward to getting the next satellite up and starting testing.

Q: What do you see as the most innovative current programs in the area of shipboard applications?

A: CANES is certainly the enabler for everything we’re trying to do, because as I mentioned, it provides not only the network capability for routine uses for the ship, but also the platform for many of the applications that we’re fielding, such as command and control and intelligence analysis applications. It’s really a different paradigm for us, to stop fielding hardware and just start building software applications that ride on CANES. That is a significant advance for us.

One of our largest problems here and throughout the fleet is excessive variance or lack of commonality in C4I suites. If you look across the cruiser fleet, for example, there are 22 cruisers with 18 significantly different C4I suites on them. One of our big initiatives is to start building and fielding C4I capability builds that provide a 18 | MIT 16.11

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?

A: It’s a very challenging environment from many perspectives, from information assurance to executing our programs in an uncertain fiscal environment. We’re very focused on keeping our eye on the ball, delivering the maximum capability to the warfighter that we can, and doing so as efficiently as possible.

Not only from a C4I, but also from a PEO Space Systems perspective, that’s what we concentrate on every day.

I also want to emphasize that the best thing about my job is the people who work for me. They are all extremely dedicated and professional, and they wake up every day wanting to do great things for the Navy and Marine Corps, and they do that. I’m very proud to lead each and every one of them, and they deserve all the credit for the success that we’ve had. O www.MIT-kmi.com

Army Rolls Out New Network Approach Tactical network will reduce reliance on fixed infrastructure, extend communications and improve battlefield awareness.

By Claire Heininger Commanders on patrol will no longer have to drive back to a forward operating base for an update. Soldiers on foot will more quickly find their friends and enemies.

Through mobile communications technology that connects all echelons of a brigade combat team down to the dismounted soldier, the Army’s new tactical communications network will reduce units’ reliance on fixed infrastructure, extend the range of communications and improve battlefield awareness at the lowest levels.

“This capability changes the equation, and gives us situational awareness where we need to have it and turn it against the enemy,” said Colonel Walter E. Piatt, deputy commanding general for support of the 10th Mountain Division.

Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) at Fort Drum, N.Y., and 4th BCT at Fort Polk, La., were the first to receive the new gear, known as Capability Set (CS) 13, which began fielding in October. The 4th BCT, 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo., will be the next to get CS 13, starting early in 2013.

This capability set is the first fielded as part of the Army’s new Agile Capabilities Life Cycle Process. Rather than develop network systems independently and on their own timelines, the Army is integrating capabilities up front in government-owned laboratories, having soldiers test-drive them at Network Integration Evaluations (NIEs) and delivering complete capability sets aligned with the Army Force Generation cycle. As one capability set is fielded, the Army, through the NIE, is developing and evaluating the next capability set.

“This is our first attempt at capability set integration, and every set will get better as we go forward,” said Colonel Rob Carpenter, Army director of system of systems integration. “The key is to make sure this equipment is useable, trainable, supportable and sustainable.”

Fielding multiple systems as an integrated communications package that spans the BCT formation has required a new, highly synchronized approach to production, deliveries and training of CS 13 equipment. Both 10th Mountain Division brigades are in the midst of several months of rigorous training, including classroom courses and hands-on experience with the systems. The new equipment training for individual systems will build to collective training with the entire capability set. Classes have been synchronized with the units’ other pre-deployment requirements and exercises, which will begin in spring 2013.

“It’s a challenge, because the network is changing drastically with all the on-the-move capability,” said Mike Valdez, who is overseeing fielding and training for the mobile network backbone, Warfighter Information Network-Tactical Increment 2. “They have to learn to fight the network.”

CS 13 is reaching the field at a critical time. As U.S. forces continue to draw down in Afghanistan, they will turn over many of their forward operating bases and other infrastructure to the local forces, www.MIT-kmi.com

thus gradually losing fixed network locations. Capability Set 13 systems provide mobile satellite and robust radio capability for commanders and soldiers to take the network with them in vehicles and while dismounted as they conduct security assistance and some combat missions.

“This capability will allow us to remain mobile and will not tie us to fixed facilities,” Piatt said. “Think about what that does operationally and tactically. It doesn’t make you predictable. So now you’re not always driving back to the base at night or a given time.”

At lower echelons, the package includes software-defined networking radios and smartphone-like Nett Warrior devices that allow dismounted leaders to exchange messages and digitally track one another’s locations—the kind of information that previously was only available inside vehicles or command posts.

“When I was a battalion commander in Iraq back in 2009, the capabilities I had in my battalion tactical operations center, we now are putting down at the soldier level, and I think that’s extremely powerful,” said Colonel Sam Whitehurst, 3rd BCT commander.

Capability Set 13 was validated through the NIEs, semi-annual field exercises in which an operational BCT evaluates network systems by executing realistic mission threads in the punishing terrain of White Sands Missile Range, N.M. NIEs have not only allowed for soldier-driven evaluations and assessments of network technologies, they have also aided the Army in development of tactics, techniques and procedures for using Capability Set 13 as a holistic network.

Training best practices for CS 13 systems, both individually and as an integrated set, were also developed through the NIE. The training is designed not just to make soldiers proficient on the systems within their individual specialties, but also to understand how those systems fit in with the rest of the brigade network structure.

That is a change from the last decade of war, when the Army provided network capabilities in response to urgent needs, but did not always have the infrastructure and processes in place to support them. That left soldiers to figure out how they worked and how they integrated with the rest of their equipment. The NIE is designed to perform the integration and establish proper training up front. Many of the training personnel involved in the NIEs, who are now familiar with how to build training for a collective package of systems, are now training units on CS 13.

“We’re not just throwing individual good ideas at units,” Piatt said.

“So this is the right approach.” O Claire Heininger is a staff writer for Symbolic Systems, supporting the Army.

For more information, contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.mit-kmi.com.

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VoIP’s challenges cannot be ignored, and militant attention must be paid to the quality and efficiency of every call.

By Sanjay Castelino The Project Manager for WIN-T aimed to provide Army As the only truly global armed force on the planet, capable of units with pre-built, seamless communications technolprojecting force to the farthest reaches of the planet in a matter ogy and services. Essentially, PM WIN-T was of hours, the U.S. military occupies a unique to provide pre-packaged information technology position. This reach, however, comes with the delivered in a way that a warfighter unit could necessity of maintaining operational bases and easily communicate with other units and higher military installations across an international echelons without needing complicated infrastrucplane, both in and out of combat theater. ture for both voice and data. This mission effectively This far-flung nature also means that more positioned the WIN-T program as the Army’s inthan ever, effective, clear communications are theater communications service provider. vital to the continuance of operations. Orders One of the key services PM WIN-T provides to may originate from the United States, meaning warfighter units is voice-over-IP (VoIP), a protocol in the case of the Army that lines must be kept that transmits voice communications over IP data open between units in theater and Army Forces lines as opposed to analog, copper cables. VoIP is Central Command (ARCENT).

Sanjay Castelino stateless, making it highly effective for units deep In 2002, with U.S. action in Afghanistan pickwithin rough terrain, where finding access to a wired connection ing up pace, the Army needed an updated means of transmission is all but impossible. for both data and voice communications, ultimately choosing to Being “stateless,” however, also means that call quality can employ fully “unified communications” for tactical units, meaning be quite poor if network issues occur during the call. If VoIP that both data and voice would share the same network infrastrucpackets are lost, they are not re-sent (like e-mail), but rather ture. Thus, work started on the Warfighter Information Networklost forever, with the listener not hearing the full transmission.

Tactical (WIN-T) project.

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If enough packets are lost, the human listener will perceive the call quality as very poor, with the call itself being nothing more than static.

Nearly every phone call made in theater by Army units is conducted via a VoIP phone line through PM WIN-T, including high command meetings, situation reports, logistics coordination and tactical updates, which highlights the technology’s importance to continued operations. In fact, this reliance on VoIP (of which the Army was an early adopter, with 2002 being the early days of the service) has led to many network enhancements and improvements by the Army, from network hardening to virtualization, all to improve quality of phone calls.

With all this in mind, VoIP is still an imperfect animal at best. While the flexibility and scalability it provides to the Army is unmatched by other forms of communication, hiccups are still common, especially when it comes to quality. Poor VoIP quality could mean stuttering, echoes or static, and can lead to misunderstood orders or lost tactical information, which in-theater can mean the lives of warfighters and civilians are at stake.

These problems are exacerbated by the massive demand for data by today’s military operations. As VoIP shares the same “pipe” as data transfers, file transmissions can greatly impact VoIP quality and even remove the capability to make a VoIP call in the first place, especially when looking at the network www.MIT-kmi.com

constraints of deployed warfighter units. This is especially important for the most forward deployed units, as they generally rely more on relatively slow satellite uplink/downlink technology.

For example, a unit in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, is preparing for a conference call with ARCENT and attempts to send through a large PowerPoint presentation right before the call. While innocuous enough stateside, this file transmission (which is likely several megabytes) could dramatically impact the quality of the ensuing conference call, primarily because while even remote warfighter units are “networked,” their actual connectivity is quite low, sometimes barely more than a 56k modem provides.

This limited bandwidth means that IT priorities need to be set. But does this mean that VoIP and file transfers cannot live side-by-side?

The Tactical Solution The answer to ensuring high VoIP quality in-theater already exists, although in an underutilized fashion. Internet Protocol has a built-in “preference” standard—essentially a flag that, when activated, determines what packets of information need to be transmitted before anything else. It’s these packets of information, or rather their loss, that cause jittery and static-filled MIT 16.11 | 21

VoIP calls. Lost packets mean seconds-long delays or even dropped calls in the world of VoIP. To ensure that these packets are not lost and are received in the proper order with minimal delay, Quality of Service (QoS) protocols need to be implemented and observed. QoS simply ensures that high-priority packets are transferred over a network connection first.

Voice packets are considered high priority, as lost/late packets can greatly affect service quality, while email and file transfers are lower priority, as a lost/late packet is easily rectified automatically by the “stateful” TCP protocol.

Activating QoS is a twostep process at minimum: Two monitors sit in the 2nd Marine Logistics Group (Forward) conference room, where Staff Sgt. Derek A. Smoak, a tactical vehicle license examiner, was First, it’s essentially a soft- promoted Feb. 1, 2012, aboard Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan. The monitors along with a web camera were used to allow his wife, Michelle L. Smoak, to switch or option that needs witness her husband’s promotion and award ceremony through a teleconference call. to be turned in most networking equipment, primarily routers that link directly to the validate that the VoIP packets are “marked” with the appropriate slowest (usually satellite) links. Secondly, the VoIP packets thempriority level, and that other less sensitive application packets are selves need to be specially marked to have higher priority. marked with the appropriate QoS level.

For warfighter units in the field, this means that networking Beyond just helping with call quality, monitoring VoIP can also gear being used at critical bandwidth bottlenecks must have this help pick up wider-ranging network problems, which can be a way option activated to ensure that VoIP packets stay in the proper to avoid major challenges for last-mile deployments to in-theater sequence with minimal delay for reception. While emails and units. For example, if VoIP calls are experiencing serious latency file transfers will be delayed when there is congestion, VoIP calls or jitter, it could be indicative of failing equipment or a bad satelshould be crystal clear—at least in theory, assuming that all conlite relay. IT administrators can then take this information and use gested links are configured properly and all the VoIP UDP packets other tools to drill down deeper to find the real problem, allowing are marked with the appropriate priority VoIP to act almost as a “canary in the coal mine” when it comes In truth, deployed units should do more than simply flip a to network problems. switch on their networking gear. To truly ensure that VoIP probFor the foreseeable future, VoIP will remain the communicalems never become detrimental to the mission, a VoIP monitoring tions protocol of choice for the Army, not to mention the other system needs to be implemented. This can take many forms, from branches of the military. The flexibility it provides through simplisolutions included with networking equipment (like that provided fied equipment and a single pipe for data and voice means that

by Cisco) to third-party technologies that are essentially “hardin-theater units will need far less training and equipment when it ware agnostic.” comes to establishing a comms infrastructure.

Regardless of the actual solution, all of these monitoring But VoIP’s challenges cannot be ignored, and militant attentechnologies should be able to track VoIP calls made and allow IT tion must be paid to the quality and efficiency of every call. Failing teams, whether on the warfighter side or for PM WIN-T analysis to spot a pattern of call trouble could not only lead to an annoyed after the fact, to determine the quality of each call. The right tool high command, but also potentially misunderstood orders: a danwill let IT administrators see packet loss and latency numbers and gerous result for deployed forces in today’s world. O pinpoint which calls may have had problems during the exchange.

With these numbers in hand, military IT teams can then troubleSanjay Castelino is vice president of SolarWinds. shoot to determine why a call went bad or where “clusters” of poor quality VoIP calls are happening In addition, VoIP monitoring should include automated periodic validating that the QoS settings on the critical routers are For more information, contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives configured properly, as well as automatic notification if they are for related stories at www.mit-kmi.com. changed from the proper settings. The final monitoring should 22 | MIT 16.11

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Test Command Meets Cyber-Era Cybersecurity issues, mobile devices and DoD shift to IP-based systems pose new challenges, says JITC commander.

(Editor’s Note: The mission of the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC), an arm of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), is to professionally test, operationally evaluate and certify information technology capabilities for joint interoperability. During an installation ceremony last summer for Army Colonel Douglas J. Orsi, who became the 10th commander of JITC since its founding in 1989, DISA Director Lieutenant General Ronnie D. Hawkins Jr. underscored the important role that JITC must assume as the Department of Defense embraces cyberspace. “Cyberspace has now become that next final frontier,” said Hawkins. “The organization that is going to make sure we bring together all of our capabilities and we’re able to Col. Douglas J. Orsi

operate in a cogent fashion, it’s JITC.” In a recent interview, Orsi reflected on the changing role of JITC. Following are his remarks.)

How do you see JITC’s role changing in the era of cyberspace?

I see JITC’s role expanding to provide more support to the Global Information Grid [GIG] and Joint Information Environment [JIE]. DISA has an urgent and continuing requirement to field cyberspace defense systems and capabilities to ensure they protect, detect, diagnose, react and recover capabilities to ensure our war fighting mission. As such, it is integral to DISA’s mission to create a cyberspace test and evaluation capability that will become the standard for testing the resiliency of cyberspace defense programs’ response to hostile action and serve as a crucial part of the risk management process to improve the GIG and JIE. Our JITC team is currently working on a cyberspace test and evaluation [T&E] methodology that will lead the way into this new era.

What are the biggest challenges facing JITC as DoD shifts from proprietary programs of record to IP-based technology from the commercial world?

We see the two biggest challenges for JITC as establishing a comprehensive test and evaluation strategy that addresses the www.MIT-kmi.com

security requirements of operating in an IP-based transport architecture, and maintaining the availability and assured service requirements of the traditional programs of record that we all were used to in the past. Proprietary or legacy systems were point to point, and easier to control, secure and manage. Under a pure IP construct, where everything is essentially connected to everything, the requirements of the DoD security architecture are sometimes challenging for the commercial vendors and the test community.

The move to IP-based transport also introduces some significant availability issues, in particular for applications or capabilities that require real-time or near-real-time delivery. We’re used to push-to-talk: You squeeze the handset, and your message is getting through. Now, when it’s over IP, you’re competing with other packets on the network. By the nature of IP networks, delivering high quality voice, video and data across a heterogeneous network, owned and managed by various services and agencies, is very challenging. That makes our efforts under the DoD CIO’s Unified Capability [UC] program that much more critical. The UC program established the appropriate requirements and standards for commercial products that provide assured services, and ensure that those products meet the information assurance and interoperability MIT 16.11 | 23

requirements of DoD before being available for procurement through the UC Approved Product List. We definitely see this as an area that is challenging, and we’re going to meet that challenge with our team of professionals.

What are some of the unique issues involved in testing and evaluating mobile devices, and how are you addressing them?

Mobility devices and services are a very high priority for DISA and DoD. If you look around, every service and combatant command has a mobility pilot, because everyone is interested in mobility. We have to be able to capitalize on the capability and flexibility of operating in a mobile environment, and make that available to the warfighter and the institutional user. Mobile technology is a huge game-changer for DoD. The issue we face as a test community is to understand the functional requirements of the end-user and ensure that those capabilities are still available after the appropriate security measures are implemented. The risk of having government data on mobile devices brings up security issues that aren’t addressed in the commercial world. The mobile device is really an extension of the DISN network, and therefore inherits all the security requirements of data-at-rest, desktop management, user authentication and other issues that traditional PCs have to meet today when we log on a machine on a DoD network.

As test professionals, JITC needs to understand the functional requirements and appropriate use cases and develop an overarching strategy that validates that the mobile services provided by DoD are meeting those needs of the user. JITC is working with the DISA mobility program manager, the DoD CIO and the different services and agencies to understand their device requirements, the required support architecture, the applications and the enterprise services that are expected by the community. We definitely realize that we’re moving in this direction, and JITC is getting out in front of mobility to make sure we have a good strategy to test and evaluate these products.

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What role do security and IA capabilities play in your testing and evaluation programs?

We’re involved with security and IA in all our testing, and security and IA capabilities play a significant role in JITC’s mission. It’s imperative that IA and computer network defense are addressed early and adequately through the system development cycle in testing, to ensure that our warfighters can fight and win in a contest cyberspace domain. All DoD systems and programs that depend on external information sources, or that provide information to other DoD systems, are assessed in a representative contested environment that reflects the real world threat, to ensure we field capabilities to our warfighters that enables them to achieve and maintain dominance in cyberspace. JITC’s current operational test and evaluation process includes systems and network operated by representative users, operators and systems and network administrators to ensure that we test all systems in regards to IA and security.

Are there any new testing and evaluation technologies or methodologies that are changing how JITC does business?

We are constantly evaluating how we do business, and how we get in front of new technologies to make sure we’re testing and evaluating them correctly. As I mentioned, our JITC team is currently developing a cyberspace T&E methodology that will lead the way in supporting the GIG and JIE. JITC has identified challenges to the implementation and assessment framework and assessment capabilities in that area. Our cyberspace T&E methodology will address test and evaluation at all layers. Currently, T&E methods are effective at assessing a specific system and its functionality. But the cyber methods are less mature, and our enhancement is being developed to increase effectiveness as we move up the layered stack to evaluate higher order capabilities such as effectiveness and suitability in situational awareness and critical information requirements.

The areas that we are addressing are process, people, technology and infrastructure. The goal of the cyberspace T&E methodology

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is to develop a test framework and action plan that addresses the previously mentioned challenges in cyberspace testing and assessment. The methodology and resulting T&E capability that we’re focusing on will address critical operational issues associated with cyberspace. In the area of cyber or mobility, we need to make sure we understand the battlefield environment and come up with a methodology that fits and is useful when we conduct test and evaluation.

How do you see your mission and resources changing as operations in Afghanistan wind down and budgets tighten?

In regards to our mission, I see expansion of our role in supporting coalition interoperability. One of the results stemming from operations in Afghanistan over the last 10-plus years has been our work on the Afghan Mission Network in support of USCENTCOM. Interoperability with partner nations has been critical in fighting a war in a coalition environment. The interoperability test and evaluation work by our Coalition Interoperability Assurance and Validation team has taught us a great deal, and we’re using that knowledge and expertise to support the next effort to develop T&E strategies and tools to support development of a Future Mission Network, which will be the follow-on coalition command and control framework after our mission in Afghanistan is done.

In regards to your question about the tightening of budgets, we’re focused at JITC on being good stewards of our resources, and continue to focus on leveraging new technologies and techniques to make testing more efficient and less costly. We’re always looking for more effective ways of testing, including automated testing, which speeds up certifications and evaluations and is more cost effective for our customers. A good example of this is our recent work with USTRANSCOM, in supporting testing and certification of their Agile Transportation for the 21st Century program. By getting involved early in the planning cycle and having good communications and teamwork with them, we’re able to create an agile process with USTRANSCOM, speeding up interoperability certification and ultimately saving the program more than $3 million, which is our goal. We want to get involved early, make testing quicker, and ultimately save the program money.

What changes would you like to see in JITC’s relationship with industry? How do you respond to those who say the cost and time involved in testing is burdensome for companies, especially those that are small or new?

JITC works very closely with commercial vendors, especially those that participate in the Unified Capabilities certification efforts.

We’ve seen demonstrated successes as we’ve worked as partners in delivering products to the warfighter. There is a clear understanding and commitment for delivering commercial capabilities and quality products to the end customer, from both the vendor and test community. The bottom line is that a substandard product or an extremely lengthy testing process serve no one, and are ultimately a disservice to the warfighter who needs that capability now, not six months from now. JITC wants to continue our partnership in the UC environment and extend that to other areas in our mission space.

The vendor relationship is critical in establishing our trust in the product and the trust in the testing process that certifies it.

In response to the time and cost of testing, I’d ask vendors, especially small and new companies, to engage JITC and establish www.MIT-kmi.com

Senior leaders from U.S., Australian, British and Canadian defense organizations receive a briefing at the ground terminal station of the Distributed Common Ground Systems-Army, during the Joint Interoperability Test Command-sponsored visitor day at the Enterprise Challenge 2012 exercise held in August at the JITC test site. [Photo courtesy of DoD]

a relationship. Engaging earlier in testing and understanding the requirements of the process ultimately helps the warfighter. The process doesn’t have to be long and costly if there’s a demonstrated need, the expectations and requirements are understood, and the products are ready to meet the established IA and interoperability requirements. IT and national security systems need to be interoperable, and if you involve testers early in the process, you’ll improve a program’s cost, schedule and performance in the long run.

Are there any other initiatives and programs underway at JITC that you’d like readers to be more aware of?

We’ve been talking about the JIE, so I’d like to add more about that. We’re working closely with DISA’s Joint Information Environment Technical Synchronization Office [JTSO], an effort led by Brigadier General Frederick A. Henry, the DISA chief of staff. We’re providing our T&E expertise to help develop a JTSO test and evaluation strategy in support of the JIE. This is another area where our focus is on creating an overarching T&E approach where we’ll address a broad range of measures that help assess security, performance and operational effectiveness of the JIE, including baselining existing architectures and approaches. That’s important, because JIE is a DoD effort, and DISA is a key player. O For more information, contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.mit-kmi.com.

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COTSACOPIA

Commercial Off - the - Shelf Technology

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Multi-Platform Computer Tackles Demanding Applications Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions has begun shipping an enhanced version of its MPMC9335 multi-platform mission computer (MPMC). The MPMC-9335 is the latest member of Curtiss-Wright’s extensive family of fully integrated COTS, highly rugged, fully integrated and qualified MPMC subsystems. With its latest generation quad-core Intel Core i7 single board computer and 240-core NVIDIA Fermi GPGPU, the rugged MPMC-9335 is especially well-suited for demanding compute intensive applications such as image, data and radar processing. The enhanced MPMC-9335 3-slot rugged VPX system now supports an extended operating temperature range, with intermittent operation rated at up to 71 C and continuous operation at 65 C baseplate temperatures. This MPMC is designed to be easily and quickly configured to meet the demanding requirements of defense, aerospace and law enforcement applications. The compact and lightweight small form factor subsystem is ideal for space/ weight/power-constrained platforms such as UAVs and ground vehicles.

Backpack Cellular Solution Enables Smart Apps at the Edge Harris has introduced a backpack version of its KnightHawk mobile tactical cellular network solution that provides warfighters with highbandwidth connectivity and enables the use of smart apps at the tactical edge of the battlefield. The KnightLite system is built upon Universal Mobile Telecommunications System technology, which leverages mature cellular technology and helps ensure cost-effective deployment. In addition to voice, high-speed data, video and SMS messaging, the KnightLite system supports High-Speed Packet Access, which allows for dynamic allocation of data resources to mobile devices and efficiently utilizes bandwidth to allow more devices to access the network simultaneously. It is compatible with COTS smartphones and tablets. KnightLite can operate autonomously or as a scalable network for increased coverage. The combination of inexpensive COTS smartphones and tablets along with simultaneous high-bandwidth access for multiple users helps keep warfighters safe and on-task, minimizes loss of life, and enhances mission effectiveness and success.

Portfolio Helps Configure and Deploy Big-Data Systems To address the need for configuring and deploying big-data systems, HP has expanded its HP AppSystems portfolio to offer improved customer choice and expanded capabilities of HP Converged Infrastructure with Apache Hadoop, HP Vertica Analytics Platform and Autonomy eDiscovery environments. Elements of the portfolio include HP Proactive Care for SAP, which optimizes an infrastructure running SAP solutions, enabling faster analysis of large amounts of data; the newly enhanced HP Converged Storage portfolio, which eliminates administrative complexity, reduces costs and accelerates information insight in virtualized, cloud and big-data environments; and the HP Vertica Analytics Platform 6.1, a next-generation analytics platform, purpose built to optimize big data, which enables enterprises to optimize and monetize big data with analytics packs, performance enhancements, enhanced integration with Hadoop and simplified Amazon EC2 cloud deployments—all at hyperspeed and massive scale.

Rugged Notebook Offers Improved CPU Performance Getac has upgraded its B300 rugged notebook computer with faster processors, improved graphics and increased storage.

Beginning with speed and performance, Getac offers a third generation 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5-3320M (MAX 3.3) or 2.9 GHz Core i7-3520M (MAX 3.6) processor to improve CPU performance by up to 67 percent and nearly double the graphic performance. In addition, the B300 now comes standard with a 500GB hard drive and offers solid-state drive storage up to 256GB. For field workers and military personnel, this translates into greater productivity with a system designed to work in the most extreme working conditions.

26 | MIT 16.11

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MIT RESOURCE CENTER Advertisers Index Adobe/Carahsoft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C4 http://events.carahsoft.com/event-detail/2131/MIT/ CSSS.net. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 www.csss.net

LogRhythm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 www.logrhythm.com/federal University of Maryland University College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2 http://military.umuc.edu/servesyou

Calendar January 29-31, 2013 AFCEA West San Diego, Calif. www.afcea.org

February 20-22, 2013 AUSA Winter Symposium Fort Lauderdale, Fla. www.ausa.orga

March 4-7, 2013 Joint Interoperability Conference Tucson, Ariz. www.afcea-southaz.org

April 8-10, 2012 Sea-Air-Space Expo National Harbor, Md. www.seaairspace.org

February 5-7, 2013 Cyberspace 2013 Colorado Springs, Colo. www.afceacyberspace.com

February 25-March 1, 2013 RSA Conference San Francisco, Calif. www.rsaconference.com

March 18-21, 2013 Satellite 2013 Washington, D.C. www.satellitetoday.com

May 14-16, 2013 FOSE Washington, D.C. www.fose.com

www.MIT-kmi.com

MIT 16.11 | 27

INDUSTRY INTERVIEW Military Information Technology Dinah Gueldenpfennig Weisberg Executive Vice President and Vice President of Planning and Government Program Administration REDCOM Laboratories Dinah Gueldenpfennig Weisberg holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Buffalo, a master’s degree in software development and management and an Executive MBA from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

to be something the government will be looking at very closely.

Q: What types of products and services are you offering to military and other government customers?

A: REDCOM systems provide core voice communications capability for the Air Force TDC ICAP program, the Marine JECCS, DTC and TSM communications systems, and many other communications programs. REDCOM systems provide secure conferencing systems and networks, and act as secure gateways between nonsecure systems, such as the DSN, and secure networks, including strategic and deployed radio networks. These radio nets may be tactical ground radio, single channel SATCOM, HF nets, land mobile radio and many more. Virtually all military and commercial voice capable radios can be connected to REDCOM systems. REDCOM systems are frequently used in high profile black-ops networks, and are often referred to as the “glue that binds other networks together.”

A: REDCOM Laboratories Inc. has been in business for nearly 35 years as a manufacturer of flexible, interoperable, ruggedized communications equipment. We offer several products on a few core platforms, which are designed to allow the customer to customize and evolve the switches over a period of time as their needs change. Our fully interoperable systems based on the TRANSIP technology enable migration from legacy protocols to full Assured ServicesSIP [AS-SIP] communication, interoperable with radio protocols as well as unique secure conferencing capabilities.

Q: What unique benefits does your company provide its customers in comparison with other companies in your field?

A: REDCOM’s philosophy is unique in that we strive to prevent product obsolescence whenever possible. This means there is no mandated software upgrade [outside of any Department of Defense requirements] that must be enabled for continued customer support. We have switches in commercial applications [which also happen to be installed in environmentally hostile locations] that have been in service for over 25 years, and we still support them. The aim is for reliability, then the flexibility to grow the system and upgrade when desired, but not force the customer to do so.

An HDX-based military installation can have been preliminarily configured with legacy protocol interfaces, and as DoD mandates that the users must migrate to the latest Unified Communications-compliant technology such as AS-SIP, that can be done with the 28 | MIT 16.11

Q: What are some of the most significant programs your company is currently working on with the military?

addition of some interfaces and additional software. But it does not require a complete system replacement, or a “rip and replace.”

This means the government’s investment in the communications for either strategic or tactical applications is protected.

Another key point is that we do not require the payment of ongoing licensing fees, nor do we require maintenance contracts. The customer always has the option of structuring purchases in that manner, but it is up to them to decide how to allocate expenditures between capital and operational expenditures.

Say, for example, that a DoD agency wishes to purchase switches such as our SLICE 2100 with 1,000 IP subscribers and several additional interfaces for interoperability. The IP subscribers are a one-time purchase. There is no annual or ongoing licensing fee required to be able to continue using them, and there is no requirement for them to upgrade every two years to be able to receive continued support. Our hardware platforms have a long lifespan in terms of being able to support software upgrades, so it is unlikely that a software version upgrade would require a completely new hardware platform, unless it is the rollout of a completely new product Moreover, because the product platforms are so stable, and due to the size and flexibility of the organization, REDCOM can respond quickly to develop additional features without detriment to the existing features and functions.

We believe these are the attributes that make our products extremely beneficial to the customer in terms of total cost of ownership. In this day of cost-cutting, this is going

Q: How are you working to strengthen the security of your solutions?

A: Every version we bring out, whether it is a feature enhancement or an upgrade to meet new requirements, must go through the Joint Interoperability Test Command for interoperability and information assurance validation. Because of the nature of our internal software, it has never been compromised. We intend to keep it that way.

Q: Are you currently developing new products and services relevant to military and government customers that you hope to bring to the market in the future?

A: We are constantly looking ahead to prepare to meet upcoming requirements, whether they be a Defense Information Systems Agency mandate or a customer’s desired feature. O www.MIT-kmi.com

NEXTISSUE

February 2013 Volume 17, Issue 1

Cover and In-Depth Interview with:

Vice Adm. Michael S. Rogers Commander, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command Commander, U.S. 10th Fleet

Features: Mobile Device Management As military users eagerly adopt mobile technology, the Department of Defense is seeking mobile device management software and an enterprise mobile application store capable of supporting more than a quarter-million devices.

Data Center Consolidation As the military moves ahead with mandated data center consolidation, industry is offering a host of products and services to help it do so.

Enterprise Email On the eve of completion of the Army’s migration to DoD Enterprise Email, Defense Information Systems Agency officials are looking ahead to expansion to other users and enhancement of services.

Army For Capability more information, Sets contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly attraining harrisond@kmimediagroup.com After extensive and testing exercises this fall, Army officials or search our online archives for related stories at and industry www.mit-kmi.com. are examining the performance of new and future communications and networking packages known as capability sets.

DoD Timekeeper The precise time and time interval information provided by the U.S. Naval Observatory plays a critical role in DoD information technology, geospatial and other programs.

Bonus Distribution: Cyberspace Conference 2013 Colorado Springs, Colo.

February 5-7, 2013

Insertion Order Deadline: January 15, 2013 | Ad Materials Deadline: January 22, 2013

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