TAUNTON, Mass. – Recent public criticism of the Army’s battlefield communications network is not unfounded, but fault likely should reside with the range and security of tactical radios rather than the satellite-based system that drew fire from senior Army officials and lawmakers.
The Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, or WIN-T, is under scrutiny because of concerns it does not have sufficient range and is too vulnerable to hacking and jamming to survive and operate in combat against a near-peer adversary.
“There were some critical questions asked about the WIN-T program and, by implication, this was a 10-year-old program that hasn’t delivered anything, but nothing could be further from the truth in terms of what the program has delivered over time,” Bill Weiss, vice president and general manager of Ground Systems for General Dynamics [GD] Mission Systems, told reporters during a tour June 22 of the company’s Taunton, Mass., facility.
General Dynamics is the prime contractor for WIN-T, which it has fielded to large swathes of the Army in two increments.
WIN-T Increment 1 is the Army’s enterprise network that supports command posts from division to battalion with satellite connectivity all the way back to commanders in the continental United States. A command post equipped with Increment 1 must be stationary to deploy the network.
The basic functionality is the same as a high-speed Internet connection provided through satellite connectivity to hardware and software embedded with a brigade. The entire Army has had access to WIN-T Increment 1, which was specifically designed to deploy with the Army’s new brigade-based modular structure to Iraq, since 2012. Increment 2 has so far fielded to 16 brigade combat teams and seven division headquarters.
Increment 2, comprised of the same capability in a smaller package, provides the same satellite connectivity down to the company level and connects to individual soldier networking radios that are within line-of-sight of a WIN-T communication node.
The systems are fielded to infantry and Stryker brigade combat teams. Neither increment has been fielded to armored brigade combat teams (ABCTs) because the Army does not yet have a requirement to integrate the system on its heaviest vehicles.
“In essence, we are putting the command post where the commander is as opposed to the commander having to find his command post in order to have all the tools he’d like to use for mission command,” Weiss said. “It’s a mobile network that supports mission command on the move.”
What members of the Senate Armed Services Committee were concerned about during a May hearing on the Army budget was a report by Pentagon weapon testers that found WIN-T had insufficient range and security at the tactical edge – where individual soldiers connected to the satellite-based network.
Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark Milley has ordered a review all the Army’s entire tactical network, including WIN-T, to assess whether the multi-billion-dollar system was worth the investment and if it is meeting requirements as fielded. Milley said he expects the report by mid-July and wants to use its findings to finalize the Army’s budget request within the fiscal year 2018 defense authorization bill.
“Frankly, my concern is these systems may or may not work in the conditions of combat that I envision in the future with the changing character of warfare because of issues with line of sight, electromagnetic spectrum, the inability to operate on the move, the inability to operate in large, dense complex urban areas or complex terrain. There’s a whole series of other things,” Milley said. “It is fragile. It is vulnerable. So, we’re taking a very, very, very deep, hard and wide look.”
Weiss said that criticism should be focused on the Army’s networking radios and not WIN-T, which has met the published requirements for satellite beyond-line-of-sight communications. WIN-T also is less susceptible to detection and jamming because it uses directional emissions instead of radiating a signal in all directions like networking radios.
“We’ve actually improved the connectivity that exists from lower parts of the force structure up into the higher parts of the force structure,” Weiss said. “We have WIN-T capability down at the company level, which is connected through mobile satellite communications back to the higher-level headquarters.”
Commanders can then listen in on chatter between tactical radios as long as that radio-based network has a clear line of sight to a WIN-T equipped vehicle or antenna. The primary vulnerability exists between those radios – handheld, manpack and small-form fit devices – and the WIN-T network, Weiss said.
“The range of those radios is very limited,” said Bob Lennox, senior vice president of strategy and Customer Engagement at GDMS. “That’s where the criticisms you see in the DOT&E … reports. But the key piece is they can get calls for artillery fire, requests for medevac and all that back if you have a WIN-T node close by at the company level and you are within a distance you can now link back to God and Country through that node. Without a longer-range radio you are just out there on your own.”
Another criticism of the WIN-T system is its perceived vulnerability to detection, cyberattack and enemy electronic warfare capabilities. A stationary command post radiating communication signals is a sitting duck for enemy artillery. That point was driven home when Russia was able to quickly detect Ukrainian command posts and destroy them with artillery during the invasion of Crimea.
“The network has demonstrated poor survivability in contested electronic warfare environments, which is the primary driver for the Army’s network modernization,” DOT&E wrote in the latest report updating progress of significant weapon development programs. “Certain shortfalls such as the electromagnetic signature susceptibility are trade-offs in network design … in some cases, the capability to operate stealthily was not an operational priority when the Army originally conceived the network modernization plan.”
The mobility of Increment 2 is itself protection against detection, Weiss said. Commanders equipped with the latest WIN-T equipment also do not have to terminate their connection to other echelons once the unit is on the move.
Satellite communication equipment used by Increment 2 also are less visible and vulnerable to a listening enemy because their transmissions are precisely aimed and concentrated, Weiss said. The system’s on-the-move 18-inch SATCOM antenna is much less vulnerable to interference than the larger, stationary satellite dish that comes with Increment 1, he said.
“You have a much-more survivable system, a much more survivable brigade combat team than one that’s equipped with Increment 1,” Weiss said.