By Geoff Fein
Raytheon [RTN] has developed a new communications tool that enables personnel at Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) sites to talk to each other over the Internet using any number of security levels, a company official said.
Crew Comm will provide enhanced communication to and from pilots and sensor operators that will increase intelligence collection to enhance warfighter needs. When completed later this year, Crew Comm will connect more than 500 pilots, operators and analysts, according to Raytheon.
The new intercom communications system modernizes peer-to-peer collaboration between intelligence operators regardless of geographic location, the company said. The system is a multiple-level security system designed to support enterprise-wide execution of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
“You can talk at Top Secret and the push a button and be at Secret and push a button and be at Unclassified all on the same system,” Mark Bigham, vice president of business development for defense and civil mission solutions, told Defense Daily in a recent interview. “That’s never been done before.”
Engineers came up with a really creative and simple way to do it, Bigham noted, because no one could ever figure out how to do it and get the proper security accreditation.
“The team came up with a simple and elegant way to do it. They created an air gap in the system, and the microphone talks one way to a receiver,” Bigham said. “There is actually a physical air gap and then that way they can assure that no one can reach across the line and connect because they never really touch…they don’t connect electronically, and that the ‘secret sauce’ that makes this thing work.”
As far as Raytheon knows, its technology is the very first Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) intercom with multiple levels of security in the world that’s been accredited, he added.
The Air Force is buying Crew Comm, Bigham added. The Air Force paid Raytheon to build the system for them. The company fielded the first systems and have gone through site acceptance.
“We are pretty far down the road. We have a system that is in the field, installed, working now that was built on contract,” he said.
Crew Comm went through initial operational capability (IOC) in September, Bigham added.
“We are accredited…[getting] the first Protection Level 4 accreditation and going through IOC is really a big deal,” Bigham said. “We think people with intercoms that are not secure are going to move to this very quickly as the cyber threat grows. We think there is a pretty healthy market in the military and intelligence community.”
Bigham said there are orders for additional Crew Comm that will eventually go out to DCGS sites. “And then [the Air Force] is going to start including it into all of the UAS sites and operations centers.”
“It’s very important the UAV operations pilots and sensor operations be able to communicate in real time via voice with the DCGS intel operations, to have a complete picture and understanding of what is going on,” he noted.
The flow [of information] among UAV operations centers, the ground control systems, and DCGS is critical to help understand the context of what is happening on the ground, Bigham said. “So that the data that is being pushed to the warfighter, as fast as we can, is the best information. We are trying to help them make sense of the sensors as fast as you can.”
All the data being retrieved from unmanned aerial systems is being run through Raytheon’s DCGS. The new 10.2 system processes 12 simultaneous Predator feeds and five simultaneous Global Hawk feeds, Bigham said.
“It processes 10 times more data than the current systems in the field today and it’s just now coming online and standing up,” he said.
Bigham pointed out that a few weeks ago Raytheon went five for five for five: five installations with five major tests, accomplished all within five weeks.
DCGS version 10.2 is now out at a number of sites including Beale AFB, Calif. “[They] are now up and running, they have passed DTs (developmental testing), they are going toward OT (operational testing) toward the end of the month.”
Currently, Predator flies 30 combat air patrols (CAPS) and there is interest in expanding that to at least 50, Bigham said. Each CAP, which is made up of four drones, is a 24- hour, 365-day orbit of Predator, he added.
“All around the world you will have 50 CAPS…that’s 10 aircraft pumping 24/7 365 [days] on average into each of the DCGS. That’s a massive amount of data,” Bigham noted.
And that’s just doesn’t include data coming in from Global Hawk missions, he added.
“Before 10.2, there was no way to basically share that information or distribute it around the world so that you could take advantage of this gigantic enterprise we have,” he said.
What is happening now is that analysts are taking all that information in, processing it, exploiting it, figuring out what it means and then sharing it, as fast as they can, with the warfighter, Bigham said.
And, as the data is flowing in, it is being metadata tagged and posted so that it is available to other personnel, he added.
“If I am on the other side of the world and I am trying to find out something about a bad guy, and let’s say I am trying to look for information, I can type in a standing query and as soon as somebody drops in information into the 10.2 cloud, it will automatically trigger an alarm,” Bigham said. “It will pop up on my screen, so I can see the new data that’s been dropped in, and it could be dropped in by a guy [on the other side of the world]. It’s this massive social networking site for intel folks to rapidly exchange information.”