Military Takes Page From Consumer World
A few decades ago, military laboratories were the source of much of the technology that emerged in the consumer world, the most famous example being the Internet, which began as a communications network designed to function in the event of a nuclear strike.
Today, according to the commercial industry, the opposite is true, at least in terms of communications and data networking. The general populace may not be buying rocket launchers, tanks, or fighter aircraft – at least, one hopes not – but it certainly drives demand for new applications like voice over Internet and instant messaging, and the military follows.
Judging by a number of presentations at the TechNet International show in Washington, DC, on May 17-19, military officers generally agree. “The 38-year-old majors may not be so used to using these things, but the people who’ve just joined certainly are, and they expect to have them” said US Marine Corps Col. John Toolan, currently director of the Marine Corps University Command and Staff College.
Corporate approaches to managing organizations – and by extension, training organizations to use new technology – seem to be seeping into the military ranks. For example, Gen. Benjamin Griffin, commanding general of US Army Materiel Command, during a presentation at the conference, repeatedly mentioned the use of Six Sigma methodology, which General Electric and other corporations have popularized, in making his workforce more efficient.
Indicating the interest that the military has in corporate practices, one panel of speakers at the TechNet show consisted of executives at a number of large corporations, including IBM Federal, Bank of America, and Ryder, who discussed how their organizations had implemented better “network-centric operations,” which is precisely what the US and other militaries are aiming to adopt to make their fighting forces faster and more precise (see see “Too Much Security Prevents Data Sharing,” on p. 25).
Given that a company like Bank of America (BoA) serves 33 million households and handles some 1.1 billion transactions per year, a global organization like the US military can certainly relate. Like Gen. Griffin, the senior vice president of BoAs global banking division, Stephen Herndon, attributed his company’s success in integrating operations to Six Sigma practices. IBM Federal, meanwhile, discussed its efforts to integrate various information- technology (IT) systems – a widespread problem for the different military services and allied countries attempting to run joint operations. Dr. Peter Bahrs, chief technology officer of IBM Federal’s Government Solutions, said his company found that loose connections between different systems is the best means of integration, rather than attempting to connect everything together into one big system.
Playing video games isn’t a waste of time. Shown above is a soldier using a simulator to practice how to call for fire. Instant messaging, computer simulation, and other new technologies are transforming how militaries train and fight, and much of these technologies originate in the commercial world.
While the US military certainly sees the use of commercial off- theshelf technology (COTS) as promising, it still appears a bit attached to developing things on its own. So far, the US military has yet to solve its IT problems, at least in integrating its various services so that information on location of forces or aircraft, what supplies are available, or other data is readily available. The US is spending some $6 billion on developing network- centric operations, said US Army Major General Dave Bryan (ret.), an executive at Northrop Grumman Information Technology, yet people continue to have to sort through mountains of information to get what they want.
Communications certainly are not at the level that commanders want. Because existing radios are cumbersome and unsophisticated, in some cases during Operation Iraqi Freedom, US servicemen were buying equipment off the shelf, because the acquisition process is not working fast enough, said US Marine Corps Col. Eric Rolaf. (For more on this, see “Alternatives Sought Amid JTRS Delays, “JED, May 2005, p. 18.) Could part of the problem be that the government still feels it can develop its communications systems, such as the Joint Tactical Radio System (ITRS), from scratch? An executive at one major commercial manufacturer of telecommunications infrastructure equipment, Ericsson, said that much of what the US military aims to construct with its ITRS program already exists in the commercial world, yet it has basically chosen to build a network anew, with proprietary radios, as opposed to simply adapting something from the commercial world.
Younger troops, like these US soldiers seen playing a computer game during a break, often can better grasp the uses and advantages of technology than their superior officers.
Along with communications, the same tendency to build from the ground up instead of buying commercially available products also still prevails in the area of mission-planning software, said Gene Colabatistto, CEO and president of Xvionics (Vienna, VA), which provides mission-planning software for the Israeli and Hellenic Air Forces and is trying to crack the US market as well. Things have changed over the years, Colabatistto noted. The US Army now buys Fords and other commercially produced vehicles, when they used to have their own special types of vehicles built (Jeeps, for example). Even 15 years ago, the government awarded contracts for computers specially designed for the military, rather than buying commercially available personal computers, as it does today.
“People are saying the right things, but it takes a while for organizations to change,” said Colabatistto. “You can buy something for $1 million that provides 80% of what you’re looking for, or you can buy something for $100 million that provides 100%. Consumers make this choice all the time, and they choose the option that makes sense economically. If they didn’t have to worry about price, they’d always choose to buy a Ferrari. Well, the government always seems to go for the Ferrari option.”
Whether or not militaries do decide to purchase commercially available products instead of building their own, they may well find themselves faced with adversaries who do buy products on the commercial market, and given the type of computer and networking equipment available commercially, that can be quite a threat. Take, for example, cryptographic products. Dr. Michael Kurdziel, chief cryptographer at Harris’ RF Communications Division (Rochester, NY), said during a presentation on his company’s products at the TechNet show that the spread of cryptography is difficult to stop. University professors write papers on how to compromise algorithms, and that information becomes publicly available.
Recognizing that not much could be done to stop the spread of highgrade cryptographic technology anyway, the US government has begun allowing its sale overseas. And while data networking might seem like a secondary consideration in preparing to fight an adversary, whoever that might be, in fact, the amount of computing power that an enemy could devote to, say, the US military’s data networks, is huge. “The resources they can have is mind-boggling – Cray computers, for example,” Dr. Kurdziel said. “But if you look at the costs, spending a couple of million dollars makes sense compared with the cost of an offensive involving tanks, aircraft, supply lines, and so on.”
As Napoleon Bonaparte said, “The secret of war lies in the communications.” Communications and computing products available commercially today can, with some modification, give their possessors a serious boost in capabilities. How quickly militaries will move to capitalize on them, though, remains a question. – Ted McKenna
Copyright Horizon House Publications, Inc. Jul 2005