Telecommunications Archives

Bob Brewin will return to What's Brewin' July 20.

The warfighting philosophy of Marine Gen. James Mattis, nominated to replace Gen. David Petraeus as the next commander of U.S. Central Command, is to break down units into very small groups that have lots of autonomy that allows them to act very quickly. Greg Grant, who covered Defense issues for Government Executive and now works for Defense Technology, writes that under such a "decentralized battlefield . . . quality becomes much more important than quantity."

Smaller independent units will rely more on social, or what in the past has been referred to (sometimes condescendingly) as soft, skills. From Grant's piece:

As the large footprint counterinsurgency approach is fast falling out of favor, eliminating scattered insurgent networks will require small, discrete units. "It's going to be more important what individuals bring to the battlefield than their numbers," Mattis said.

The "advise and assist" capability of ground forces will be key, requiring that regular forces achieve a "seamless" integration with special operations forces. Those small teams, he said, must partner with foreign militaries, live and work among the local people, and operate with a minimal logistics footprint.

"These wars will be fought among the people... we're going to have to deal on human levels with human beings and not think that technology or tactics by targetry will solve war," he said.

What does this mean for technology? It's hard to say. You can see the references to technology with the words "networks," "seamless," and "partner," which typically means information sharing. But Mattis also is dismissive about technology solving all the military's battlefield challeneges: We should "not think that technology or tactics by targetry will solve war," he says.

But these smaller units, ostensibly, will need good communications, imagery, and lots of intelligence that only high-powered networks can deliver to small handhelds.

The 413th Contracting Support Brigade, Ft. Shafter, Hawaii, which supports the U.S. Army Pacific, placed an order in late June for 12 Apple iPad tablet computers, the first federal order I have been able to find for the gizmos that, based on everything I have read, will change civilization as we know it.

The 413th paid $5,940 total for the 12 iPads, each equipped with 16GB of memory and WiFi but not cellular communications. That works out to $495 for each gadget, not much of a discount from Apple's retail price of $499.

I don't know if Ft. Shafter has an on-base WiFi network, but if not, there's a Starbucks and McDonalds nearby with free WiFi.

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. - I arrived here on Wednesday to see a demo of the Joint Tactical Radio Systems program operating in the vehicle of choice for Afghanistan and Iraq: mine resistant ambush protected vehicles. I plan to file a full report for the Nextgov news feed.

I'm well known as either a realist or a cynic when it comes to JTRS, but have promised the Boeing folks, who developed the JTRS ground mobile radios used in the MRAPs that I will have an open mind.

I'd be really thrilled if a manpack version was going through a test here so I could relive my youth as a Marine 2531 radio operator and wear one on my back.

The Defense Information Systems Agency wants some really smart folks to help it, the Central Command, the State Department and the Agency for International Development to build an information communications technology infrastructure for Afghanistan.

The work will be performed for the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, which works out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and DISA says it wants senior-level expertise to jump start a commercial communications industry in Afghanistan.

This includes a mess of policy and governance stuff as well as a regulatory framework that undoubtedly will require inflicting the Afghan government with reams of Power Point slides.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said on Monday it wants individuals and industry to develop military iPhone and Android applications "that can be used today with little or no additional research and development expenses."

The request, posted on FedBizOpps on Tuesday, dovetails with plans that Maj. Gen Keith Walker, director of the Army's Future Force Integration Directorate at Fort Bliss, Texas, detailed on Monday, which included testing smart phone apps with 200 soldiers in the Army Evaluation Task Force.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, the Army's chief information officer, also kicked off on Monday his Apps for the Army contest, which seeks some good ideas for mobile and Web apps.

You can't beat this synchronicity. And hopefully Mari Maeda, who runs the DARPA program, will have a confab with Sorenson and Walker.

DARPA said it is looking for mobile apps that can be used on the battlefield, for humanitarian assistance and in disaster recovery efforts.

The Defense agency said it views the use of mobile phone apps as a way to transform the fielding of battlefield systems and software that could result in the rapid development of applications and system enhancements that keep up with the changing demands of warfighters on the battlefield.

If this works, maybe the Defense Department could kill off the decade-old Joint Tactical Radio System project, the primary purpose of which seems to be the consumption of billions of dollars in finding without delivering many working radios.

Google, it seems, thinks it can do almost anything better than anybody, from its core search business to broadband networks to mobile phones.

I suggest the company start up a French bakery business, desperately needed on this side of the Atlantic, because, hey, if you can do search and broadband, why not branch out into croissants?

And, Google will not have to work hard to equal the attitude of Laduree, the Parisian bakery that dispenses its heavenly croissants with a hauteur unparalleled in the entire City of Light.

When the U.S. Southern Command needed a whole mess of radios to support folks engaged in Haitian relief operations, it turned to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

The center, which is managed by the Forest Service and the Interior Department, coordinates federal response to wildfires and that requires a lot of radios. It has the largest number of mobile radios -- some 8,000 -- in the federal government, ready to go at a moments notice.

The center's National Interagency Incident Communications Division deployed 320 handheld radios to Haiti at the request of SOUTHCOM, yet another example of the depth of the federal support to relief operations in Haiti.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so I'm going to doff my grump hat and thank the folks who make this column possible, starting with some really fine military public affairs officers.

These PAOs have a tough job. They need to feed news hungry hordes of ink-stained (or in my case, digit-stained) wretches with accurate facts on a Web-driven deadline schedule -- and in doing so with probably more grace and style than I could muster if the roles were reversed.

In my experience, military PAOs also could teach their colleagues in civilian agencies a lesson or two and are way ahead of most of their counterparts in the private sector.

So, many warm thanks to these folks:

• Jon Anderson, Defense Information Systems Agency
• Terry Jones, Military Health System
• Charlene Reynolds, Military Health System
• Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh, Pentagon press desk
• Army Lt. Col. Marty Downie, Army Pentagon press shop and Iraq
• Steve Davis, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command
• Julie Calohan, Madigan Army Medical Center
• John Donaldson, Naval Network Warfare Command
• Dave Hampton, Fort Bliss, Texas
• Ray Steen, Army Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care
• Vicki Stein, Pentagon Air Force press desk
• Michael Kleiman, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.
• Lindy Kyzer, Army Online and Social Media Division

And finally, two true friends and superb PAOs who serve as living reminders of what is important: George Wright, in the Army Pentagon public affairs ship, and Navy Capt. Dave Wray, commander of the Joint Public Affairs Support Element of the U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Last, but not least, my thanks go to Katie Roberts, the press secretary at the Veterans Affairs Department, who puts up with me despite the slings and arrows I send her way in this column.

Want a really interesting job guaranteed to keep you slim?

Army Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the U.S. Central Command, said in a speech at the National Press Club yesterday that he faces a big shortage of joint tactical air controllers who call in air strikes for ground units.

JTACs may have Air Force blue running in their blood, but for all practical purposes they're grunts carrying a really heavy load of radios and laser target markers.

This is not exactly the safest line of work, but based on my long-ago experience in a Marine ground Forward Air Control team, it's a sure fire way to lose weight.

After toting around about 70 pounds of gear -- radios, three canteens, spare batteries, C-rations and smoke grenades -- in Vietnam, I ended up weighing 125 pounds on a 5' 11" frame.

Alas, I have not seen anything near 125 pounds for years. I wonder if Petraeus would like to hire a JTAC who has qualified for Social Security.

That's how much funding the House Appropriations Committee estimated the Military Health System will need in the next two years to develop a Services Oriented Architecture to create interoperability between the electronic health record systems operated by the Defense Department and the one maintained by the Veterans Affairs Department. The cost also includes fielding the system within 28 months.

Meanwhile, I hear folks inside MHS view the graphical user interface developed for this project as "not ready for prime time." Because GUI development is relatively simple, one wonders about the status of the rest of this project.