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such as reliable tactical communications for expeditionary forces, cyber defense and electronic maneuvers

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become more important as adversaries look to deny capabilities, Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) aims to provide war fighters with the tools they need to succeed on the battlefield.

C4ISRNET Reporter Mark Pomerleau caught up with John Willison, director of the space terrestrial communications directorate at CERDEC, to discuss his office’s role in combating advanced threats and ensuring technical success.

C4ISRNET: Can you provide a brief overview of what your office is working on to help the war fighter?

Willison:

We’re a research, development and engineering organization. We’re currently at about 400 government engineers and scientists and another equal number of on-site contractors that augment our staff. Our mission is twofold: One [part] is we do research and development. The other is we provide engineering support into program executive offices and program management offices. That engineering support, while it’s not our core mission group, presents between two-thirds and three quarters of what we do on a year-to-year basis.

From a science and technology (S&T) or a research and development (R&D) perspective our R&D budget is typically somewhere between $50 and $60 million a year, and we break that R&D work into four specific areas.

The first one is cyber and our emphasis within cyber is cyber defense, cyber situational awareness – one of our sister organizations does the offensive cyber portion. Within that space we worry about cyber defense tools, network analysis tools for if an intruder in the network, how do we alert people to what’s going on within the network so that the network can be as well defended as possible when someone does get in, [and] what tools do we have to figure out what to do about that.

The second space is uninterrupted communications. Between cyber and uninterrupted, it’s really kind of two parts of the same problem. From a cyber [perspective] we’re worried about cyber threats. From an uninterrupted communications we’re worried about either electronic warfare threats or limitations caused by the environment.

So the way we break that down is we’re worried about contested environments – and that’s an EW threat to our environment from an enemy, it is congested environments and so that can be just how do we more effectively and efficiently use the spectrum that we have access to? And it’s degraded environments where we could be somewhere where communications and networks propagation is challenged by the environment. So between those two, that’s the bulk of our S&T investments right now.

The third part of our portfolio is expeditionary networking, and here we’re heavily leveraging commercial technologies and adapting them to the Army-unique space. So we get into things like how do you apply cellular on a battlefield, how do we apply broadband or ultralight band to allow soldiers to have less wires on them and be more wireless, unique networking or routing protocol or cognitive networking to really get after that first 40 hours from an early entry operations, or from an expeditionary maneuver operation before an infrastructure is laid in from an Army perspective. How do you enable folks to do what they need to do in that first 40 hours?

The final space – and it’s a small space for us but it’s an important space – is model and simulation, other capabilities that are enabling for infrastructure, test capabilities to enable the other three.

C4ISRNET: What are the threats the Army is facing in this space?

Willison:

Cyber is a lot harder to pin down the threat, but we have categories of threats. The insider threat is one category we’re worried about. Cyberattacks are obviously another category that we’re worried about. And depending on which category of threats we’re worried about to the network and depending on where we’re operating, we then look at different technologies or employing different tools to help the network operators, to help network defenders within that space.

The uninterrupted is a little different. The threat doesn’t necessarily evolve as quickly, so EW threats don’t change as quickly as the cyber threats change, so we get an opportunity to do a more deliberate engineering assessment of what the threats are. But it’s still a relatively complex space because you’ve got to worry about all the variables of what we’ve deployed into what regions, what capabilities does an enemy have that we understand and how have they deployed them in different regions and that’s going to differ region to region, that’s going to differ type of conflict by type of conflict, and that’s going to differ from what forces of ours have we deployed and what forces have they deployed.

C4ISRNET: Everyone thinks of Russia as the top threat in EMS and EW. Who are some of the other threat actors in this space with significant capabilities?

Willison:

From our perspective we think about threats in a couple of different ways. One is when you say Russia is a threat, really what we’re talking about is a couple of things. One is their technical capabilities and then the way they fight. Their technical capabilities aren’t limited to them because they’ll sell those technical capabilities to someone else as will China as will other folks. We’ve got to factor that in that those capabilities won’t be limited.

Now the way they fight is a different perspective and the theater is a different perspective as well. And so we’ve looked at this as kind of multidimensional whether it’s Pacific, Pacific in general  and what are the capabilities that exist out there from a technical system and then how do they fight or how are they deployed, and then from Europe. So it’s more from our perspective kind of regional as opposed to picking that country, that adversary, because there’s a lot that comes with it – to include on our side coalition. And how we think about, you know, we never anywhere alone. So what is the threat environment?

When a lot of people talk about threats they talk about box on box – we’ve got a box and they’ve got a box; good starting point. How are those boxes deployed, what’s the quantity, what other things do they work with? And then the third part we’ve layered in is what do we do with that? So instead of just saying my radio doesn’t work, we can say ,well I can’t do a medevac call. That’s more significant now than the folks that make the trade space, so we’ve broadened it to try and look at just not one theater, obviously that one theater is getting a lot of press, a lot of attention.

C4ISRNET: While most people talk about how the threat is multi-domain, it seems, especially the way Russia is employing capabilities, that the land domain is the big focus in terms of where the threat actually is.

Willison:

From an Army perspective, land – Pacific, now you’re talking about a different threat and a different construct from an Army – you start talking about A2/AD.

C4ISRNET: With your engineering, S&T and R&D mission set, how do you work to transition the tools and capabilities within the three areas mentioned above – cyber, uninterrupted communications and expeditionary networking – into programs of record and tools that the war fighter can actually use in theater?

Willison:

With our S&T investments we typically take a three-step approach. We start where we can with model and simulation activity, so that allows us before we invest very heavily into building capabilities within S&T that we’ve based that on our modeling and simulation work, and importantly that it’s not modeling and simulating, only one specific capability. It’s embedding that in our ability to model and simulate the overall network environment.

So [almost] every capability we’re introducing into the Army … has an effect on the network. You’re falling in on a network that already has other people on that network competing for network capability, competing for spectrum usage. So importantly when we look at individual capabilities, we look at individual capabilities as modeled within the broader overall Army, joint or coalition environment.

From modeling and simulation, we then move into doing S&T once we get a prototype capability. The second step is going into lab-based risk reduction. So we bring that into our own federated network of labs so that we can take the capability that we’ve prototyped and embed that, integrate that into the overall environments so that gives us some sense of is it meeting the performance requirements that we’ve outlined? Are those performance requirements we’ve outlined then yielding the operational capability that we’re interested in?

Once that gets sufficiently mature, the last step is we go into field-based production. For us, CERDEC overall, we’ve got two specific field-based risk reduction venues – both are up in New Jersey. Both are at Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst. What we’ve got there is the ability to take our technology up to those different ranges. Those ranges are in turn networked back to our labs here, and so we’re able to then try out the technology within those different operational environments, preferably exposing the capability to soldiers who are going to use them to give us feedback … so that once we’ve done the modeling and simulation, once we’ve done the lab-based risk reduction, then we ultimately do field-based risk reduction, we’re able to mature the capability sufficiently enough then we’ve brought down the risk of transitioning it to a program of record.

C4ISRNET: What are the biggest tactical and strategic challenges you and your staff are facing right now?

Willison:

Look at our three different portfolios. It really reflects what we believe are the three different, most significant operational challenges.

With expeditionary and early entry operations, given contested environments in contested regions, the ability to get expeditionary [capabilities] without compromising too much of the network capability we have is a huge challenge. Obviously some of the things we’re looking at there are wireless command post, wireless soldiers, the ability to share data locally. The quicker you can get in with the least amount of setup and the least amount of infrastructure, then that’s a huge challenge from an Army perspective.

Uninterrupted communications: So this is an area we’ve shifted more investment into to reflect a greater appreciation for the EW threats that exist. So countering those EW threats is first understanding what threats we’re encountering, then being able to manage the network given those threats, and then hopefully being able to maneuver around within the network given those threats is another significant operational challenge for us.

The third one, of course, is cyber. With everything that is going on relative to cyber and everyone trying to use that as they – both operational advantage and an operational entry point, that will continue to be a significant challenge.

There, the additional challenges, the relative immaturity of that space and so it’s not only what technical challenges are there, but how do we bring the operators up to speed, how do we hone new skill sets for new operators to be able to operate effectively in that cyberspace?

The research pods join NGA’s renewed relationship with In-Q-Tel, its Pathfinder unclassified data program and its new NGA Outpost Valley office as examples of how the agency is transforming its approach to future technologies. As the nature of combat changes and increasingly relies on intelligence in warfare, NGA too is morphing how it supports the missions of today and tomorrow.

At the GEOINT Symposium in Orlando, Florida, on May 17, Highnam sat down with C4ISR & Networks Senior Reporter Amber Corrin to talk about the changes he’s leading, how the agency is pushing the cutting edge and a new link to Silicon Valley and beyond.

C4ISRNET: Director Robert Cardillo has talked up the efforts you’re putting into transforming research and development (R&D) at NGA. Give us a general idea of what you’re working on at NGA right now.

PETER HIGHNAM: I came over from [Office of the Director of National Intelligence], and my job is to make two changes. One is at the corporate level to get R&D recognized as a strategic priority, and that was achieved back in February. Along with that was the permission to go ahead and make the changes in the old internal R&D group, which is really some research but much more applied development and advanced development work, and change that to a research operation. It was also very inward-focused — and I came from the [advanced research projects agencies at the Defense Department and in the intelligence community], and at DARPA or IARPA you don’t do any research in-house, you fund others. So here’s an organization where we have a mix; some things we’ll do in-house, and we have a lot of very good people and other things we’ll go outside or work with the ARPAs too, using their work. So it’s a different way of thinking.

Another distinction I make is that the ARPAs don’t have an operational mission: They exist to create technology, get the science done, prove things work and then transition those results to a place like NGA. So we get to catch those results, then turn around and add the other things we need to do and get it across into the mission. Again, outward-focused. And DARPA’s public budget is $2.8 billion, so that’s real money.

The research directorate is now up, with the research structured into the seven areas or pods. I wanted to change the structure; I wanted someone to lead a pod who’s going to be a mentor, who is technical or was technical, who isn’t going to be competing with people in the pod. The job is to mentor, help get resources, be the shill — get out there and make the connections to make things happen.

C4ISRN: “Pods” must be a new concept for most people. Can you explain how they work and what’s happening there?

HIGHNAM: Each of the pods represents a cluster of different types of things. There were some national academy reports on geoint R&D and also internally we asked bottom up, inside NGA: What ideas do we have and what hard problems should we be working on? What kind of research attacks do we have on those things? So bring those together with the [intelligence community, or IC] R&D commission, other inputs from around the IC, and we distilled those into the seven areas.

If you look at them, radar and spectral are the two more traditional things you’d expect. Automation is a recognition that the only way we’re going to deal with the volume of data that we’re already receiving — not just from above but from all sources. Automation is the only way we can manage that. Some things are in place; there are things on the exhibit floor [at the GEOINT Symposium] that you can go and see, but we still have to get them into practice and we still have to add value to them. One of the things I’ve been saying is those [commercial] tools are available to anybody in the world to buy. So part of the strategic research we have going on is to allow for differentiation from others. Some things we will do first, or we will know how well something works before other people do to ensure we have an edge. In some cases the way the ARPAs work actually is they apply money and focus and they drive the technical field in a new direction to achieve some results agencies can then buy as products or services.

Automation is clearly front and center for the agency, and we have to be helping to support that. In terms of high-performance computing…look outside at the Facebooks and the Googles, at how much computing power they apply to things and the storage. It dwarfs us. My personal background is in high-performance computing, and I want to step up what we do there and see what new things we can achieve.

C4ISRN: And in terms of achieving new things, what are some of your goals?

HIGHNAM: NGA has a strategy, so we’re aligned with that. There are things coming that we can see — this volume issue, of the variety of data or the veracity of the data. Those are things we need to go after so that by the time the development teams start to think about the engineering activity, we’ve already shaped what needs to be done. The goal is to be ahead of it.

It gets complicated because, for example, IARPA has a number of technologies directly relevant to us. If I want to bring that technology across and maybe add some things or work with it a bit, and then get it across into the mission inside NGA, that’s an example where we’re not doing or commissioning the research. We’re a transitioning partner to take something across and develop somewhere else. Other times research will be done in-house for specific areas.

I like to use the quote from Bill Joy from Sun Microsystems: “It doesn’t matter where you work, the smart people work elsewhere.” True, right? So we have mission areas where we have great technical bench strength so we should be the leaders and we expect things to be in-house. But the ARPAs are a good source. [Commercial industry] is a great source.

The only way I’ve seen technology transition to practice reliably, repeatedly, is where you move people with the technology. So we’re going to be giving resources — people, funds — to technologies and having those people move to be the champions of that technology somewhere else at NGA and to take it into practice. We’re not going to do development work inside the pods. We have so many places at NGA that are good at development.

C4ISRN: You’re heading up the NGA Valley Outpost, sort of the IC version of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental. What’s job No. 1 in getting that rolling?

HIGHNAM: As an R&D guy I have the easy part of innovation because it’s coming up with and producing technology and science. The hard part of innovation is making a place for it to land, and innovation is more often about tradecraft and culture change than it is about a specific technology.

When you’re working on new things, working with companies or schools that don’t normally work with the government, it’s personal relationships. So the idea is to get a footprint out there in Silicon Valley and to get to know people. It’ll be a small staff for us, no physical footprint…we’ll be working with DIUx and other places out there too. And we’ll have analysts and developers going in and out as needed on specific projects.

The immediate piece is the logistics and mechanisms of it, to make sure we can do this. It’s not like moving someone in a big company, sending them to live in San Francisco and you have the flexibility to ensure they can be there and you won’t lose money. As a government entity, that’s one of the issues we have to solve up front just so we can afford to give our people the opportunity to do a tour in this function. It’s scouting, it’s relationship-building, it’s coding and development, some analytics…completely in the open with people who are already there.

The director has talked about the Cortex Innovation Center in St. Louis. It’s a classic incubator kind of place, very open, very flexible. That’s a good example. But also you can look at Boston, Seattle, Austin, the research triangle area of North Carolina — there are a lot of places to get into [and break outside the Beltway]. We’ll get there….one at a time.

Two of the Army Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems’ key officials charged with helping to lead network modernization at facilities around the world are Lt. Col. Greg Soule, product manager at Power Projection Enablers, and Lt. Col. Gus Muller, product lead for the Infrastructure Information Infrastructure Modernization Program. Both arrived last summer with changes of charter to their programs, and they’re working together to make network modernization happen on time and on track.

Soule is charged with handling operations outside the continental U.S. (OCONUS), while Muller oversees stateside or CONUS activities. But the two coordinate regularly to measure progress, ensure their efforts are in sync and share lessons learned.

C4ISR & Networks Senior Reporter Amber Corrin recently interviewed both colonels to get an idea of their missions. The scope, they admit, is so big it can be tough for many to wrap their minds around.

OK, so give us an idea of the work the two of you do and how you work together.

LT. COL. GREG SOULE: In a nutshell, we deliver the networking and modernization services to give soldiers access to the right information, at the right time to be able to obtain information dominance and positively affect the operations that they are doing on a daily basis — be that during a continuous environment or not.

We are about to embark on that for OCONUS. Basically, the dividing line between Gus and I is the continental United States. He has inside; I have outside. Beyond that we do roughly the same job, different focus — being that [network modernization, or NETMOD] was more focused in CONUS initially because that’s where the preponderance of our bases are, the big density when you look at population size. Decisions were made to do OCONUS afterward, so we’re about to embark on that starting next year where we’ll do a NETMOD OCONUS.

Lt. Col. Greg Soule is the product manager for Power Projection Enablers.

Photo Credit: Army

So when you ask where the lines converge, obviously it would make sense that I’m not starting from scratch. I’ve come talk to Gus and his folks and figured out what do they do with NETMOD CONUS (NETMOD-C), and what makes sense for us to transition to OCONUS. Certainly they’re different environments, so not everything’s going to transition over, but it makes sense to use that as a starting point, and we did that, and we’re continuing to do that: figure out what we want to replicate from his team, and use their set of energies to make sure that our folks are more well-prepared moving into that same big effort. Because it is a really big effort.

Lt. Col. Muller, tell me about some things you’ve been working on in your CONUS activities.

LT. COL. GUS MULLER: One is a project called ICAN Modernization. It’s Installation Campus Area Network for each base, post, camp and station within the U.S., and we count more than 70 CONUS installations that we touch. We’re responsible for the inside plant, outside plant and facilities work, voice and data infrastructure improvements. The other task that we take on is specific voice-over-IP projects on a case-by-case basis.

The other is our NETMOD-C, and that is our network-flattening, network standardization based on that architecture document that we call ICAN-DI…DI stands for design and implement. So this overarching document gives us the ability for us to do bases in increments. Add the design plan, then implementation plan. It also gives a standardized architecture for all of our bases, posts, camps and stations. NETMOD-C leverages that and it’s been very, very helpful to do several things for our IT infrastructure for the U.S. Army.

Lt. Col. Gus Muller is the product lead for the Infrastructure Information Infrastructure Modernization Program for the Army.

Photo Credit: Army photos

So there’s a lot of interaction between our two organizations. In fact it’s getting closer because as we see that as we collapse the network, as we’re looking at opportunities to install voice-over-IP capabilities, not only are we interacting on a technical level between our technical staffs, we’re capturing programmatic lessons learned and best practices that are going to be helpful for both organizations over time.

You can’t talk about Army network modernization without mentioning the ongoing implementation of the Joint Regional Security Stacks. Where does that effort figure in with what you’re doing?

MULLER: I can speak to our CONUS efforts. One of the things that NETMOD-C has been very effective in doing is we’ve done this network station at over 25, maybe 30 installations within the continental U.S. Before the campus-area network, before the base actually would be migrated to JRSS, we do the NETMOD-C upgrade. The NETMOD-C upgrades allow us to then take full advantage of the JRSS capability once that is turned on on a region-by-region basis.

SOULE: It’s a concerted effort between the Army and DISA. The intent is to get the ICAN modernized prior to JRSS coming in, so that the folks on that base or the folks who are behind that security wall of the JRSS can realize the full benefits of it…it has a great capability to increase bandwidth and security. If you don’t modernize the ICAN first, you’re not going to realize the full capability. It’ll be like you’re driving on the German Autobahn, but you’ve still got your old hooptie from your high school days. We want to get those bases into those Porsches and Lamborghinis first by doing the ICAN modernization, so that they can drive those high speeds on the Autobahn.

It didn’t quite happen that way everywhere OCONUS because the ICAN modernization effort and the money for that was mostly focused in CONUS first; however, there were still some JRSS efforts that happened along the way. For instance, in Europe we’ve done some limited modernization efforts for the ICAN, but their JRSS has already been stood up. We have a big effort starting next year to do ICAN modernization in the Pacific to align with the JRSS migrations that are happening toward the end of 2017.

In Southwest Asia, I’m currently finishing up ICAN modernization efforts on several bases in Kuwait and elsewhere in Southwest Asia to align with the JRSS migrations that are coming end of 2016 and early 2017.

In Korea specifically you’ve got a huge project in building out Camp Humphries in South Korea – about 500 buildings and 20,000 people going in, you said. How do you balance the massive build out and wiring up, just the IT side of getting Camp Humphries ready, alongside the ongoing modernization efforts?

SOULE: It takes a big effort. It takes a team effort. It takes a lot of coordination and collaboration between the C4I folks in the U.S. government, the U.S. Army, Iraq and the Republic of Korea government. There’s a C4I working group that has a very daunting task of coordinating and syncing all of those big efforts and moving pieces because it’s not just us C4I providers. It’s all kinds of different folks who have a dog in the fight there as well. That starts with the vertical construction. It includes the C4I tail to get those IT infrastructure and services installed and operational, but it’s also coordinating all the various units that are moving and all the equipment that they have that’s got to be brought down and stood up as well.

One thing that really resounded to me on my first trip to Korea when I came into this job was that their motto is “Fight tonight.” So they really are in that mindset where I’ve got to have the right communication avenues in place to be able to deploy tonight if the North Koreans start looking as if they’re coming down toward the [Demilitarized Zone], and they want to get a little bit squirrelly. So even when we’re doing all of these migrations and new installs, you’ve got to have those echo systems in place until, at the right time, you can make the cutover because you can’t have even a few minutes or an hour of downtime because that might be the time that you get called out to fight tonight.

At the Defense Department’s Joint Tactical Networking Center, Russ Wygal leads efforts to connect not just sailors to each other, but to soldiers, Marines, airmen, Coast Guardsmen and coalition partners. Connecting those forces via radio waveform may not be the first thing one thinks of in an era of smartphones, social media and joint tactical networks, but it’s no less critical to getting the mission done.

Recently Wygal sat down with Senior Staff Writer Amber Corrin to talk about how the JTNC works, its new waveform repository and what’s next for military waveforms.

Give us an overview — what is JTNC’s role in the broader Defense Department and in military operations?

RUSS WYGAL: One of the keys to the Joint Tactical Networking Center is that we wear that purple hat. We support the Department of Defense. We support the services and their program offices. So, we’re across-the-service kind of support: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine … the whole gamut there. And, then while we’re doing that, that purple hat allows us to help and support them but also be an honest broker with information if we see them potentially doing something that might not be as standardized — maybe using a waveform that’s not from the repository. It’s an observation that we make to them. We’re not a program office. We are charted by Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall … so we’re implementing [Kendall’s] guidance through that charter. But, we do that for the Department of Defense.

The other thing that we emphasize is our support to industry that is working on programs and projects either in support of a competition for a government contract or in support of a service or program office.

Since we’ve got that hat, that allows us to not be a program office. I can go and talk to, say, Harris in a different manner than I can with a program office that might be doing a competition. I can go and talk to the program offices conversely as well, because I’m more of a neutral party.

So the divisions that we have within the JTNC support that chartered mission that we have. It centers primarily around setting and recommending standards for approval across DoD and industry. We do waveform analysis, we do conformance and compliance evaluation, certifications, and then we have an export office that works supporting these services in [the Office of the Secretary of Defense], doing export, providing support for export type of activities. It might be a license request. We don’t sign that request, but we provide input to it. They might ask a question like, “Is there any implication for critical information if we release it to Country A?” We could provide input to that, because of our knowledge and understanding of a particular waveform, like soldier radio waveform or wideband networking waveform, something like that. So, those are our four key divisions.

What is the waveform repository?

WYGAL: If we’d talked this time last year, it was just being brought online. The waveform information repository for the Department of Defense is up and running now. And vVendors and industry partners who are authorized can come and request access, and if they have the appropriate need and are authorized, they can go ahead and have access to any of the waveforms or other types of software artifacts that are in there. They can utilize those to help support that program office they’re working on.

Or, if they’re independently pursuing a full and open competition, there’s a method that they can just get the information for a product that they want to put into a competition. So, they don’t have to always have an Army, Navy or Air Force sponsor. If they come in and say, “We want to compete for this radio competition,” and there’s [a request for proposals] on the street, we’ll validate that that’s the case. But, they’re not kept from having access to the information. So there’s a checks-and-balance system to make sure that everything is there.

One of the agreements that we have built into the system is if a vendor comes in and takes a version of the waveform out of the repository, they agree to return any enhancements or upgrades to the waveform to the library. So they get something of value in the waveform code, and then they return something of value to the JTNC for use across the DoD.

Setting waveform standards is obviously a huge part of the JTNC mission. Can you talk more about that?

WYGAL: Under the standards division, one of the things that we really promote there is the software communications architecture, or SCA. It’s a reference architecture that industry partners and government offices use to implement and port waveforms onto radios. So it’s kind of like an operating system, for lack of a better term.

The latest version that is being commonly used across all of the manufacturers is SCA Version 2.2.2. And, as you walk around today, you can look at some of the fliers and brochures and you’ll have, and you’ll see that on their list, SCA, implementing SCA Version 2.2.2. So we think that’s been a really good success, because there’s a group that that we work with … of government and industry partners that recommend the updates and changes to [the SCA]. It’s not a unilateral decision, but it’s a group of folks that put together and say, “We’d like to see an enhancement in the next version of the software communications architecture to increase its potential for battery life.” They may implement that in the software communications architecture by making a change that reduces the [size, weight and power], or makes it run more efficiently on a radio so that it requires less power.

Those are the type of things that end up allowing the end user — the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine — to benefit. Because if you’re out in the field and you’re carrying a radio, you can have better battery life, you have to carry fewer batteries, or you get better battery life for longer periods of time, and you don’t have to resupply as often.

Those are the kind of tangible benefits that we consider. When this is being done at an architecture and higher level, the focus is always on how will this affect the operator and how can this improve their ability to conduct the mission that they have. We always try and maintain that focus, even though we’re working with program offices and industry. What’s the end value to that operator, you know, that’s going to ahead and utilize the radio?

How are the roles of waveforms evolving in tactical communications? And what are other applications?

WYGAL: I will tell you the difference from 10 years ago and 15 years ago as 10, 15 years ago, you had primarily voice communications, very small amounts of data, and really no PLI, or position location information reporting. There was a limited capability to send information. What we see now, I think, is enabling in the waveforms that are out there, because they’re voice capable, they’re data capable at different rates, depending on the type of waveform, the spectrum they’re modulated in and the capability for it to send data, as well as that PLI and other things.

But, as an example, the [Mobile User Objective System] is a new waveform, and it has a capability to do what is referred to as point to net. They can actually go ahead and access a network from the radio, which to me is tactical computing, but they could really go and get into that network and say, “Download files from a computer to that radio,” which never before was possible. And, they could do that themselves with the connection that’s provided through the satellite system.

So, I think tactical computing, the waveform facilitates that through the system, and that connectivity that’s provided to a network via the waveform is new and it’s just a new function that was previously not available through a radio communications connection.

He spoke to C4ISR & Networks Editor Barry Rosenberg about the lack of material solutions for EW soldiers, a key EW program of record, and the need to conduct EW training in a contested electromagnetic spectrum.

C4ISRNET: With support of the war fighter a given, what’s at the top of your to-do list?

COL JEFFREY CHURCH: My first and foremost priority is getting electronic warfare material solutions into the hands of the EW soldiers out in our units and in the field. What are we at, 13-14 years of war now? After all of that time, if you go to an electronic warfare officer or soldier in the field and say, “let’s go to your wall locker and see your military issued EW equipment,” he is going to open up that wall locker and there is not going to be anything in there.

C4ISRNET: So what should be in that wall locker?

CHURCH: He should have the ability to conduct electronic attack. He should have the ability to conduct electronic warfare support. And all of our equipment should have electronic protect capabilities and features built into them. Mostly we haven’t done that because of the need to get equipment into the field rapidly. We are very good at doing QRCs, the quick reaction capability.

The problem with that technique is it does not become a program of record. There is no sustainment funding, no improvement funding, none of the logistic tail that goes with it.

C4ISRNET: That may change as the Army recognizes the importance of electronic warfare to its current and future success. A development in that area is the Integrated Electronic Warfare System. Tell me about that.

CHURCH: It is the Army’s overarching approach to the future of electronic warfare. Within the Integrated Electronic Warfare System is the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool. Abbreviated EWPMT, that tool is what allows an [electronic warfare officer] to plan, coordinate, integrate and eventually dynamically control electronic warfare activities in his unit and his unit’s battle space.

The second piece is the Multi-Function Electronic Warfare family of systems. MFEW is going to provide the Army the electronic attack capability and the electronic warfare support capability within its Army units that the electronic warfare officer, again, will be able to dynamically interact with through the EWPMT. So those electronic warfare support sensors and electronic attack capability will be displayed on the EWPMT. And then based on the commander’s intent and the mission, the electronic warfare officer will be able to utilize those sensors and that electronic attack capability to influence the battlefield in the electromagnetic spectrum.

It is an IT solution, and will be on a laptop. You see the battlefield through all of the sensors that are embedded in MFEW. You will be able to see the electromagnetic spectrum around you. That will display in EWPMT. You will know where your offensive systems are. And those sensors will be detecting signals, which you can then either classify as unknown or enemy, based on the signal characteristics and location.

The third pillar of IEWS is called Defensive Electronic Attack, or DEA. Think of it as a current CREW system like Duke [an EW jamming system]. Duke defeats [radio-controlled improvised explosive devices]. But the capability within that Duke box and Duke software is much greater than just denying a radio-controlled IED.

So think of Defensive Electronic Attack as a super CREW system. But it will be used for protecting personnel, facilities and equipment. So we will have systems under MFEW that are designed to go out and do electronic attacks. For example, we are going to jam an enemy radar. That will be something that MFEW does.

Defensive Electronic Attack will still emit in the RF spectrum, but it will be to stop the IED from blowing up. Hence, Defensive Electronic Attack.

EWPMT is a program of record for the Army. We expect that it will initially field FY16, probably September of ’16. We are expecting about 20 systems to go out to the field for initial operating capability. And we expect that that system will be mature and fully operational by about 2022.

C4ISRNET: How should EW training evolve to meet present and future threats?

CHURCH: We have got to get the Army back into the mindset of training in a contested and congested electromagnetic spectrum. Because even if you had no electronic warfare equipment and you were forced to go to a fight tonight, you would have to fight as I think one of our former secretaries of defense said: You have to fight with the Army you have, not the Army you want. So if someone forced a fight on us tonight, the Army would still have to be able to fight and win in a contested EMS.

C4ISRNET: We have not had to do that, so we do not have that capability.

CHURCH: Correct. And so we haven’t done a lot of training in that field either. I started out as a private in 1985. My job was to carry a radio. And we trained back then to fight in a contested EMS against the Soviets. There was a lot of tactics, techniques and procedures that the Army was proficient in. It was just second nature. You did these things when you went to the field so that the enemy could not observe or detect you through your electronic signature.

We have not done that so much anymore. Because, as you said, the adversaries that we have been going up against haven’t had those capabilities. So a lot of those skills have atrophied. We need to bring that back. We need to get back into training in that kind of environment so that our soldiers, sergeants, and our leaders experience those challenges in training, learn how to adapt, improvise, and overcome so that they can still fight and win with the Army we have today.

C4ISRNET: So is that a training issue, or more of a technology hardening issue? I’m thinking about conducting intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance in a contested environment. That’s more about improving the ground stations and the platforms. There is a training element, as well, but it is more of a hardware challenge for the Air Force.

CHURCH: You are talking about a second kind of electronic warfare capability. And I would classify that as electronic protection. We have hardware requirements that have often over the last 15 years been waived in order to get systems into theater to be able to use them to fight the wars we’ve been fighting. And that has worked fine because somebody has not been able to counter my nonhardened technical system. But if we fight a near peer, a more advanced adversary, they obviously could do that. So you have that element of electronic protection that you are talking about from a technology standpoint.

I’m talking more about a training piece where you would do something like using a directional antenna instead of an omnidirectional antenna. You would use a low-power setting instead of a high-power setting. You would set your antennas up 200 yards away from your headquarters and then run a cable back to your headquarters so that if the enemy detected your transmissions coming off of your antennas and attacked, he would blow your antennas up. But your headquarters would be fine.

C4ISRNET: EMS. What can the Army do to better control the spectrum and protect it from our adversaries and prevent them from attacking us through that manner?

CHURCH: First off, I would say that a good defense is a strong offense. I would go back to our material solutions. From an electronic warfare standpoint, we need the ability to conduct Army owned and controlled electronic attack, and controlled electronic warfare support. And then we have got to get back into enforcing policies that have existed for years on electronic hardening.

But the problem with all three of those is money. We are not in a resource growth environment. We are in a shrinking resource environment. So it is a matter of prioritization. To get those material solutions to conduct that training and to do that probably very expensive electronic hardening … that has got to fit somewhere in the list of priorities. And where you are in the priorities will determine whether or not you get that limited resource called dollars.

“The new chief of staff put out his three priorities, which were readiness, future of the Army and take care of the troops. I think everybody can nest in that, right?” said COL Charles Stein, DCATS project manager. “We have current fight, future fight and taking care of people. Those would be our three priorities, also … we are nesting into our higher priorities.”

ONLINE MULTIMEDIA REPORT: Satcom for Tactical Forces C2

At DCATS, those priorities currently center on a handful of core areas, including hammering out future requirements and strategies for programs like the worldwide commercial satellite communications network Combat Service Support Very Small Aperture Terminal (CSS VSAT), the Wideband Enterprise Satellite Systems’ ongoing modernization and the land mobile radio communications system.

Stein recently sat down with C4ISR & Networks Senior Staff Writer Amber Corrin to talk about what he’s focused on, where his programs are headed next and how an old version of a vehicular intercom systems (VIS) headset ended up on his desk.

C4ISRNET: Why don’t you give us a lay of the land of your main programs?

COL CHARLES STEIN: Really there are four product offices under us. The first one would be the quickest, vehicular intercom systems, and actually for that I have a visual aid.

Roughly speaking, there are a bunch of boxes in, let’s say, an Abrams tank or a Bradley. You can talk to the gunner or the driver. I was on a convoy [in Afghanistan when I heard], ‘Get out of the vehicle, get out of the vehicle!’ I got out, threw this in my bag. I unpacked it here. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have one of these things.’ Anyway, that is VIS. It does not really fit our portfolio, because we typically do long-haul and terrestrial communications, satcom or long-haul comms. It’s sort of out of place … but there is a move afoot to basically put it where it would probably serve the Army better, which may be out of this [program executive office].

The next one is LMR, or land mobile radio. Land mobile radio, to give you a visual for that, is what every fireman or policeman on post has, that big kind of brick that sits on their hip, the big walkie-talkie-type thing, but it is more than a walkie-talkie because it typically goes through a dispatch area. It is set up in talk groups so that certain people can talk to certain people. When you go off post, it has mutual aid. When you see the policeman here, you can talk to the policeman in Fairfax County. There are roughly 70 in the U.S. … In the states, it is not only the police and fire, it is the direct logistic. If your water line breaks in housing over here, they call and a person is dispatched on the same dispatch that the police and fire are on. It’s kind of just one big system.

DWTS, Defense Wide Transmission Systems, is interesting in that they have a couple of different products. One big one, CSS VSAT, is what the community uses for their satellite communication. It is a small aperture antenna that goes through the log units … we’ve run it here for years. It is a huge success.

Now, eventually, with convergence it will probably get [integrated] into [Warfighter Information Network-Tactical], but that will be way down the road.

The last is WESS, Wideband Enterprise Satellite Systems; it’s the biggest. It has got the [Army deputy chief of staff/G-8] funding. It is probably the largest on the block and it does X- and Ka-band satellite communications. Literally, they are all over the world. What they are doing now is called MET, modernization of enterprise terminals. There are actually 11 out there right now. There are seven in progress. There will be a total of 94 when they are complete. We do that for the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. We are putting those terminals all over the world.

C4ISRNET: So, in terms of those chief of staff priorities, what are you doing for the current fight and the future fight?

STEIN: The current fight, we are doing things like fielding those METs. So that’s a big one.

For the current fight, we are using a contract vehicle called communication transmission systems, CTS. It’s our [roughly] $4 billion indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract vehicle … and that contract goes out to September 2018. We are going to try to use that as much as possible. There are 12 vendors on it, but, quite honestly, they reach out and touch a lot of other vendors. It really serves the whole community.

For CSS VSAT, right now, we are basically in sustainment, but we’ve had a lot of upgrades, changing the modems, changing different parts to keep it up to standard. I tell you … information assurance is a challenge everywhere. Quite honestly, switching from the [DoD Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Proces] to the risk management framework, I guess it’s new to everybody, but it is going to take more resources to meet the challenge, to do it to standard.

Information assurance is happening every day in the background. They are thwarting attacks or potential attacks every day. I think that is going to be the norm now. People are getting smarter and technologies are getting better.

I guess summarizing what we have done, what we are doing with LMR, with VIS, that is pretty easy. We are fielding capabilities right now.

The future fight, the long-range strategy is a little different. There’s the long range investment requirements analysis, LRIRA … it’s basically how are we spending [research, development, testing and evaluation] dollars. How are we looking at the future? How are you looking at your investment that would make wise decisions in the future? We’ve partnered with Space and Missile Defense Command; they’ve done a capabilities-based assessment to look for capability gaps. We are partnering to see how we can assist with the future challenges.

C4ISRNET: You’ve been on the job here for a year now. What’s exciting for you?

STEIN: The personnel — our people. DCATS has some very technical people … everybody probably gets that. What they don’t get is that they did a [Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission] move a few years ago. A lot of these folks thought highly enough of the mission to say, ‘I am going to leave my house in New Jersey and I am going to move to Belvoir.’ We have an employee here whose father was in satcom. He joined the Army to be in satcom. He drives two hours one way from Maryland. Can you imagine, four hours a day on the road? He is in a leadership position here. He said he absolutely loves it. His father is in it. His brother does basically the same thing for another organization going to be unnamed. He is here. I ask him every day, ‘Are you good to go?’ He says, ‘I love it here. I love the mission we do.’ To have that kind of a background and skin in the game, I mean truly skin in the game, is kind of an interesting story.

Originally published Sept. 21, 2015. 

PMW/A-170 is the Navy’s lead for position , navigation and timing (PNT), and Glover spoke to C4ISR & Networks Editor Barry Rosenberg about assured PNT and operations in GPS-degraded environments.

Top of mind for many people is how to conduct PNT in degraded GPS environments. Tell me about the work of PMW-170 in this area.

CAPT MARK GLOVER: From a GPS perspective, one of the key things we are focused on is GPS modernization. There is an increasing threat out there for GPS, and our enemies know that. We are working very hard to ensure that we deliver our GPS capabilities to our fleet faster. There are a lot of modernization efforts that are going on across the Navy today; we are working in 170 along with our stakeholders across the naval enterprise and our stakeholders at the Global Positioning Systems Directorate at Los Angeles Air Force Base [part of Air Force Space Command] to ensure that we deliver these new modernized capabilities to the fleet.

What are the greatest threats to GPS-enabled PNT today?

GLOVER: As you know, GPS is ubiquitous. There is an increasing reliance on GPS across all ranges of military operations, and, of course, we can’t forget our critical civilian infrastructure as well. Additionally, GPS jammers have proliferated around the globe, from large and complex militarized jammers to cheap and inexpensive units you can buy online. That means that not only that our peer and near-peer potential adversaries are capable of impacting GPS, but we must be mindful of non-state actors, as well.

Furthermore, we are trying to predict other methods that might be employed against our systems, such as cyber threats. Because it is not just a threat against the radio frequency signal, it is a threat against the actual systems that control those. Over the past 20 years, GPS has been a force multiplier for our military. But we cannot assume that any longer. We have to be proactive in protecting this valuable resource.

What are the specific challenges associated with PNT in a GPS-degraded environment?

GLOVER: Let me put a little context on top of it. The GPS satellite signal at a user’s antenna is very low power. To put that in perspective, a 100-watt bulb is [10 to the 18th power] more powerful than a GPS satellite signal at the receiver’s antenna. A low-power jammer can disrupt GPS operations.

To that end, denial and degradation of GPS can have myriad effects on our systems. Without protection, our ships, submarines and aircraft won’t be able to properly navigate. Some of our sensors might not function properly, and provide erroneous information to our war fighters . Plus, time and frequency is a critical part of our communications infrastructure. Disruption of time can prevent those networks and communications systems from functioning properly, as well. Our weapons — interacting autonomously or semiautonomously — can be attacked. I could probably go on, but I will just say that GPS is fundamental to everything we do. It is a part of our plumbing today.

What are some of the alternative means of navigation you are developing, which you would rely upon in a degraded environment?

GLOVER: Some of the things we are looking at today include celestial navigation as a potential source, magnetometry and other signals of opportunity. In some of our newer systems, we tightly couple GPS navigation systems with inertial navigation systems. They have a symbiotic relationship where GPS can calibrate the inertial system. Correspondingly, the inertial system can compute positions during a GPS outage. They work in a dual fashion.

We can use precise clocks. That is another way to help maintain position and time during an outage of GPS [so] if we lose our GPS signal we can maintain the time we need for our networks. It is key that we continue to have the precise time that we need for our networks, combat systems and weapons in a degraded environment.

We are also working to use the next generation of GPS called M-code. M-code is a new DoD effort to modernize the GPS. It provides an additional level of protection for our GPS signal [through the combined use of high-gain directional antennas and wide-angle antennas to broadcast the M-code from next-generation GPS III satellites]. I have a team that is co-located in Los Angeles at the GPS Directorate, and they work on modernization issues such as M-code, as well as day-to-day efforts that we have with GPS across the naval enterprise. That is a new effort that we are going to pull out in the next few years across DoD.

You recently issued a request for information on assured PNT. What you are looking to discover with that?

GLOVER: We are trying to engage industry to assess different alternatives for network-centric assured PNT capabilities for our fleet . Recently, we had about 25 companies in for an assured PNT industry day to learn about how we can leverage the many innovative technologies that are out there. We are not necessarily looking to develop anything from scratch. We are looking for promising technologies that we can deliver to the war fighter soon. We want industry to leverage open architecture developments like GPS-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Service, which is called GPNTS . That is another program under my purview here at PMW/A-170. The bottom line is that the taxpayers have made a lot of investments in programs like GPNTS . We need to make sure we eke out every bit of capability in a system like GPNTS to enhance PNT for the war fighter . We want industry to help us develop anti-jam antenna technology that could be used on smaller platforms in a maritime environment such as UAVs and other small platforms.

What is the time frame for the next steps and possible RFPs?

GLOVER: We are continually looking at ways to do rapid innovation. With GPNTS , we should be fielding that within the next few years. As we field GPNTS we will continue to do rapid-innovation-type efforts and engineering upgrades to the system so we can improve the system and provide more. This will be a continually evolving effort as we go forward.

You are also working with Naval Air Systems Command on anti-jam capabilities? Tell me about those efforts.

GLOVER: As you probably noticed in the name of the program office, it is PMW/A-170. Not only am I PMW, but I am also PMA [Program Management Activity]. We work with Navair to integrate GPS-based solutions on different aircraft across the naval aviation enterprise.

One of the major efforts we have going on today is integrating an anti-jam antenna on our F/A-18E/F/G models at Navair. We also have integrated solutions on platforms such as an MV-22 Osprey, CH-53E, AV-8B and other platforms. We also provide subject matter expertise to the Navair platform program offices. One area of particular note: that our team is working on smaller form-factor, anti-jam antennas that can be used on size-constrained platforms, especially UAVs.

Note: This interview was conducted before the ITES 3S draft RFP was issued on May 20, 2015.

What new initiatives are you planning for this year?

Two major [requests for proposals] will get released. The ITES-3S RFP draft and industry day should be late third quarter of this fiscal year and the final RFP out in the first quarter of next fiscal year. And I think a similar timeline for ADMC-3 as well.

Any other goals for 2015?

We put a lot of energy into getting permission to extend the performance on ITES-2S. That was originally 10 years of performance, $20 billion of ceiling, 16 primes and just south of $7 billion of ceiling left. So, it’s been a successful vehicle for the Army. We went up and made the argument to the Army acquisition executive [Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Heidi Shyu] that we want to extend that vehicle. It’s been highly successful, there’s plenty of ceiling left, task holders would be competitively awarded. So, we’re obviously, on behalf of our customers, happy that she approved that.

Since I got here almost nine months ago I bet we’ve had 150 meetings with industry on 3S, a lot of them small businesses. They’re encouraged, obviously, that the plan for 3S is a significant amount of planned awards for small businesses, so it’s not two separate vehicles. The Army’s small business office was very interested in promoting the ability of small businesses … to stay in business and grow… and IT services is an innovative and cost-effective way of delivering a capability. I think maybe one of the major things that this office owes to the community of businesses that support the Army is the ability for small businesses to compete on a level playing field and win work as a prime rather than relying on subcontracting to large systems integrators.

But why not have just a dedicated ITES-3S small business contract?

We have ITES Small Business [ITS-SB]. We just have not seen the revenue on that that was projected. For one thing, the scope of ITS-SB is just not as broad as ITES-2S. So now we’re going to have on a single vehicle very broad scope, common terms and conditions allowing smalls to compete for very large task orders or for contracting activities that have made a decision that it makes sense to do set-asides for small business using a single vehicle. So we’re excited about that. We’d like to think that one of the value propositions of a CHESS contract is to help small businesses graduate and move into mid-tier large businesses. The best news story that we could deliver to that community is every single small business that wins an ITES-3S award, when that contract expires and it comes up for recompete, that all of those smalls have graduated, their revenue has grown, and hopefully this contract can help them do that.

What are the key metrics that you use to assess performance and success of your programs?

It probably would depend on whether we’re talking hardware or software or services contract. I know that there are some that look at metrics particularly in multi-award [indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity]IDIQ services contracts and they’d like to see all the primes respond to a higher volume of task quarter availability. I don’t know if I share that opinion. You certainly wouldn’t want a small number of your awardees replying to and winning all the competitions, but I don’t think you’re going to see that. I mean, a company that has made an investment in competing for a large contract and winning it, I think they’re going to be aggressive in going after task order competitions. And the customer for task orders [needs to be] transparent with industry during their market research phase so that contractors understand their requirement.

I don’t know if there’s a sweet spot, but two to three really good proposals is far better to a program for a program manager to receive and evaluate. If that’s what they get, it’s almost a no-lose situation for the customer. They’ve got two or three great technical offerings at reasonable prices. The last thing you want is seven or eight, of which four or five are average at best but you still have to evaluate and document those. Not everybody shares that [view]. And as much as the White House and folks within OSD [Office of Secretary of Defense] talk about the importance of talking to industry prior to even starting on your draft RFP, I still see a lot of hesitancy in government folks in wanting to or being comfortable in talking to industry up front.

Why do you think that’s the case?

I don’t know. I remember when I first started doing IT acquisition as a captain. The common thing you heard around an office was, ‘If you say one thing to one company you must say the same thing to every single company.’ Is that true if you’re doing an actual contract negotiation? Yes. But not in the market research phase. One of the reasons why the federal government often gets underwhelming results from their IT investments is they don’t really tell industry what they need and what’s important to them, they’re just afraid to do so. Then maybe they figure out ‘Well I’ll figure it out post-award.’ It shouldn’t surprise anyone what your results are going to probably be.

So, you mentioned you’re expecting the draft RFP for ITES-3S soon and the final RFP shortly after. Final RFP will be first quarter of next fiscal year?

We don’t want to release the ITES-3S final RFP during the fourth quarter [of fiscal 2015] because I really want those companies focusing on answering task orders [on ITES-2S] for the Army that have existing dollars. I’m sure that quite a few of our 2S incumbents are going to bid on 3S. So, anecdotally, do I want those 2S incumbents answering with really good proposals to 2S requirements that may have some expiring FY15 dollars and a mission associated with them? [The ITES-3S RFP] is where I want their focus of the first quarter of the fiscal year. Money has not usually been appropriated yet from Congress; so that’s when you want industry answering an IDIQ procurement. And that would align with what we’re trying to do with ADMC-3 as well.

My commitment to industry, given that we’ve gotten an extension on 2S, is we don’t want to release the 3S final RFP during the fourth quarter [of fiscal 2015] because I really want those companies focusing on answering task orders for the Army that have existing dollars.

And what’s your time frame for expected award?

It will be dependent upon the number of offers we get. We are going to use an advisory multi-step process to help — and I think that will help small businesses make a business decision on whether they want to propose as a prime or be on somebody’s team. Theoretically that should help — it’s not that we’re trying to drive down the number of proposals. What we want to do is make sure that the proposals that we do get are of very high quality. I think we also owe it to the small business community to allow them to get some objective feedback outside of the formal source selection process of whether we think they’re going to be highly competitive.

Based upon the number of companies that have been in here talking to us, I would not be surprised if we get well over 100 proposals on 3S. So, what I’ve shared with industry is the number of planned awards are up to 24, 14 in the restricted pool for small businesses and 10 in the unrestricted pool. So, if that planned award pool doesn’t change and we receive 125 proposals, in order to survive protests I think we need to be very diligent and deliberate in how we evaluate those proposals.

Would you expect awards within a year of the final RFP?

I think that would be very optimistic.

What is the current status and next steps of your ongoing desktop virtualization initiative?

We started this with a pilot with Joint Staff probably about a year and a half ago. And their desire was to have a more maintainable, less costly desktop capability for all the Joint Staff, both on the classified and unclassified side here in the National Capital Region. We’re now in the final production run, trying to get their goal of 80 percent of the Joint Staff having VDI [virtual desktop infrastructure] capability.

One of the things we’ve learned in the pilot was that it’s a change of culture and process. And how we partnered with them [was by developing] a clear statement of requirements and expectations. Many of the ITA staff were actually also pilot users, so we could know exactly what Joint Staff was going through in their day-to-day operations.

That’s one of the things that really added benefit: being in the same boat with your customer as far as performance and expectations.

And what are the demonstrated benefits so far?

Three main things. One that I really like is the ability to patch a desktop or application almost instantaneously and do it once. You can imagine with a population of 20,000-30,000 computers in the Pentagon that will take days, weeks and months. So when I was in the Air Force, we were able to go from 27 days to patch to three days by doing it on the network. What you can do with VDI is to go to minutes and seconds. And that’s a huge benefit in terms of labor and cybersecurity.

VDI actually lets you reduce the consumption of critical power. So, in the Pentagon one of the things that we try to manage as a commodity is the availability of power, to make sure it’s used for the most essential purposes. VDI lets you reduce power consumption by about 70 percent. So not only do we get faster and safer computing, but we also are consuming less energy to do that same experience.

The third thing is the technology refresh. There’s a lot of people that buy laptops, desktops and then you’ll have this holding inventory. You can kind of get rid of the technology obsolescence issue by being able to refresh that image, refresh the server back end of that, without having to go and touch all those individual machines.

So, it saves labor, increases security and really reduces the energy consumption of our footprint.

You mentioned the 80 percent goal for the Joint Staff. What’s your time frame for reaching that?

We’re very much at the end of that. Now we’re rolling into a Headquarters Department of Army pilot and production rollout in 2015. So we ended calendar year 2014 with about 200 VDI Headquarters Department Army users. We are beginning to work out any kind of bugs that there are for Army applications or unique requirements. And our goal is to roll that out to about 14,000 people in the Department of Army through calendar year 2015, and that will be based upon our multitenant cloud on-premise infrastructure. We have a hyper-converge, compute and storage backend that we prototyped with and went into production with Joint Staff. We’re going to reuse that architecture and that multitenant pod structure so we can roll that out right to the Army.

One of the things we’re examining is how to perhaps collapse the number of images that the DoD manages. So the Joint Staff has an image, the Headquarters Department of Army has an image. Is there space to reduce that to a single image, to have less multitenants to a single tenant, to leverage and increase the efficiency of that infrastructure?

Do you see this rolling out to the entire Army desktop population?

I’ll say probably not, but this could roll out to every single user in the Pentagon, whether they’re Joint Staff, Army, Air Force, Navy, OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] or Fourth Estate folks. Because one of the things we learned in the rollout of VDI is the importance of throughput and making sure that all the issues of latency are addressed. One of the things we found out in the Joint Staff prototype is that we had an architecture that was not really conducive for quality of service. There were various hoops that each one of these signals had to go through. So when you moved your mouse, that little signal had to go through 17 different little stops, and when it came back, of course, you get the nonproductive mouse movement. So what we tried to do is reduce, re-architect and ensure quality of service.