Over the course of his Army career, COL Ray Compton served and led in signals and system engineering capacities in Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Always remaining closely tied to the technologies arming soldiers on the ground, Compton has championed effective tools in the theater and the fight. Today, that support is executed from Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where he’s the commander of the Army Electronic Proving Ground.
As technology evolves at breakneck speed, Compton’s goal is to enhance the test and evaluation process for communications, command and control, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and for electronic warfare capabilities. A new way of evaluating high technology is a key part of effectively networking soldiers around the world.
C4ISRNET: Give us a lay of the land as you see it. What kind of challenges are you facing as commander of the Army Electronic Proving Ground?
COL RAY COMPTON: If you go back 20 years ago, if I would take a telephone, and I would test a telephone, I would be pretty happy if the telephone worked — if it rang and you were able to call out on it. Now, with C4ISR, systems are very complicated. Not only complicated, but they mutually rely on each other. So if you take for example, the mid-tier radio … that is being tested right now for [Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical], it is not that we have to test out just the mid-tier radio, but now we have to look at how does the mid-tier radio impact the current network. So it is not just test the radio, but how is the networks’ ability to absorb that radio now in the communication network or a cohesive mission network?
So when we test that one radio, we may be providing information that goes back to Army and DoD in either changes or adjustments that they need to be making to the whole system so that this new technology can be inserted in and the network is ready for that particular system. I kind of laugh — it is like having a sister and a brother. A sister and a brother may do very well in two rooms, but if I put them together — they are both great kids, but combined together you have quirks, and you need to find out how to get those quirks so that they both play well when they go to playtime. You have to look at that when you work with communication systems.
Another issue is in the past five years, as you have probably seen with systems out there, we go for the big test. We go out to an operational test, and then all of a sudden we find out that we may have missed some things. What we thought was going to happen did not happen.
C4ISRNET: So how do you try to correct that?
COMPTON: One of the concepts that we are looking at is a concept called Shift Left. What that means is how to, from early on, start evaluating a system. How do you early on start kicking the tires and putting it in some realistic environment to be able to understand the aspects of that system? That includes putting soldiers on it. That includes how it will be used tactically. It is a constant evaluation that we need to be doing that is basically test, fix and test.
If I can do these iterations or risk-reduction events, I can give very good information back to the acquisition community and to the [program manager]. We can make those initial left and right adjustments so that when he goes into that required test — that statutory or regulatory test, or an operational test — we are not only preparing him to enter the test, we are preparing him to succeed the best that he can for that test.
Look at it like you’re a high schooler. We panic about the SAT, because we realize that when we take that SAT, that is going to shape what college you get into and what money you get for scholarships. It is not different when a program goes to a test. When it goes to a test, this is the document that is going to go back to the decision-making authority. How is he going to field this system? How is he going to fund this system? So what we do in high school now is prep them for that big test, and the student knows if they need to correct a little bit in math or English, so that he becomes a more holistic student when he enters the test and he can better present himself to the world.
To do that, one of the philosophies I am pushing here is getting out of the world of calling things “test.” I really hate that. I think when we evaluate something we need to look at it holistically. So one of the concepts here is we now look at things as events. What I mean by that is if I am running a test or I run this event, within that event I am going to have some type developmental test, a risk-reduction test, or something that is required by regulations or by law in the acquisition system. But there is no reason why when we do that we cannot bring in the schoolhouses, we cannot bring in the demo folks, (and) bring in the trainers and the soldiers to help save the other parts, the support parts of a program.
One aspect that’s great about Fort Huachuca: We have the Joint Interoperability Test Center here, which is the DoD joint level. All communication systems are required to get what is called a joint-cert. Think of it as kind of like a license that says that your system is allowed to drive and be part of the Joint International Communication Network.
So what we do is, while we have this event, why can’t we have those JITC folks coming in and getting data up front to be able to get those joint-certs ready to go? What that does, in our very tight fiscal crunch, instead of having multiple tests we can have them coming to these single event. All these agencies that have their requirements, they’re starting to collect their data, and at the end of the day when you are going to field a piece of equipment, everybody else is caught up with it.
C4ISRNET: So how are you implementing Shift Left?
COMPTON: Well, I think what it starts with, in my opinion, is you almost need to have an active, running instantiation of the network somewhere — either in a lab or in an environment. Now one of the things that we have utilized is [Network Integration Evaluation] for that as we go to test, kind of looking at those systems to systems. If you are looking at a design process — let’s say for a new radio — you are looking pretty early. You need to find out very early whether or not the antenna of the frequency that it is using going to have a positive or negative effect on a network. Is it going to be so complicated that a soldier can never use it? So as early as you can get the soldier on it, and as early as you can start integrating it into the overall system to system, it’s going to make it better for it to be accepted. ■
