By Geoff Fein
The Marine Corps is looking for solutions to maintaining network connectivity in theater as well as ways to rapidly procure information technology, according to a top Marine Corps official.
In the early stages of both Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), the Marine Corps had issues with down networks, Brig. Gen. George Allen, director, C4/Chief Information Officer of the Marine Corps, told attendees at the annual AFCEA Naval IT Day in McLean, Va.
Allen was recently nominated for promotion to major general.
Down networks don’t help troops that are on the move, he added.
“We don’t have data in the moving environment right now. We are working very hard on that,” Allen said.
IP, or Internet Protocol, on the move is also a challenge for units on the battlefield, Allen said.
In today’s battlefield and facing a more diverse adversary, it’s vital for troops to have IP on the move without reassociating into local area networks, he added.
When troops move out from one area, they have to reacquire network connections, Allen noted. “It’s not good. It takes too much work to do right now. It took us weeks to find [a network] in a static environment. We have to do better than that.”
One area the Army and Marine Corps are working together on is self-healing and self-forming networks.
“So any unit moving around the battlefield can join in [on the network],” Allen said.
He added the Marine Corps and Army are working together on the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, more commonly referred to as WIN-T.
“IP on the move, in today’s environment with the enemy being who they are, it’s an important thing to get and finish,” Allen said.
It was one of the top concerns the Marine Corps had in both OEF and OIF, Allen added.
“We need to look at fresh approaches of how we do that,” he said. “We need a standardized non-proprietary approach so we can all use it.”
And the systems have to be able to discover each other, particularly aviation assets such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Allen said.
“JSF will have an onboard computer system that will allow us to do a lot of things we haven’t seen before onboard an aircraft, and aircraft of the future,” he said. “We have the ability to do it, we just don’t have the technique and procedures to do it.”
Another issue is the rapid IT procurement system, Allen said.
“It takes too long to procure IT to meet the warfighters needs,” he said. “We have been saying that for a long time. It hasn’t gone away.”
The services need to move fast on that, but Allen added it has to be done while continuing to follow federal acquisition guidelines.
“We need your help to shape that, and to do it better than we are doing right now,” Allen told industry representatives in attendance.
Industry needs to share its best practices and lessons learned with the services, he said. “How do you do it, how do you get that done as quickly as you do, keeping in mind what our rules are.”
“We need to work together on that to make that happen faster. Right now we are not as fast as we need to be. [It’s] something we need to work through,” Allen added.
He told attendees the Obama administration is looking at IT procurement and that the Marine Corps has talked to them a little bit about that.