The Afghan Mission Network (AMN), allows for the first time, NATO allies, ISAF and U.S. coalition forces that sign up, to share critical information over one network, improving situational awareness and informing decisions, an officer said.
“First and foremost the AMN is an operationally driven requirement to establish one mission network within Afghanistan,” U.S. Army Col. Andrew McClelland, Communities of Interest Team Leader within the Communication Information Services Branch in the C4ISR Div., at Headquarters, Supreme Allied Commander, Transformation (NATO ACT).
NATO ACT, located in Norfolk, Va., is one of the group of agencies, organizations and nations working toward one goal: “this idea of one federated network where within the context of the Afghanistan Mission Network you have basically unabated information sharing, free to the nations that have signed up to be a part of the AMN,” he said.
The core of AMN is the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) secret piece, which is surrounded by nations that are operating their own national extensions that are connected to the ISAF secret core, McClelland said. It is within that “bubble” that the information-sharing takes place.
For example, he said, “The U.S. still operates SIPRNet, but there is a guard between SIPRNet and the national extension, which in this case is [combined enterprise regional information exchange system] CENTRIXS-ISAF.”
Anything within CENTRIXS-ISAF and within AMN is available to anybody else that’s a part of the AMN bubble, he said. However, if the United States doesn’t want to release something, it would stay on SPIRNet only and not be pushed to CENTRIXS-ISAF.
“The nations that are part of AMN are now in a state where we are sharing information in an operational environment that probably has never been done before,” he said.
In July, AMN achieved initial operational capability focused on the human to human contact, or the ability to collaborate via e-mail, chat, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP), web browsing and VTC.
The case for AMN was laid out in January to improve battle command with better situational awareness.
Part of the operational imperative to establish AMN coincided with the COIN-based campaign–centering around information and information sharing.
“Certainly success in that type of operation involves a large amount of information sharing,” McClelland said.
The next stage is developing full operational capability, building upon the IOC in trying to encourage more contributing nations to participate in the AMN to make it the primary operational network at all levels.
“The intent would be to have as many of the information systems fully operational [as possible] and where we can interoperable across the network,” he said. “And have integrated operational centers that are fully operational as well.”
The NATO piece of AMN is found in the ISAF secret core, governed by NATO standards and security policies.
Nations still own, operate and govern their own national extensions. If a nation is hooked to ISAF core, and wants to place a system on their national extension to share, as long as it meets the NATO defined security policy and standards and doesn’t crash the network they can do so, he said.
NATO ACT is part of a fully integrated effort with other partners such as SHAPE, Allied Command Operations, ISAF, national teams, and agencies working to develop an AMN testing enclave and a staging and training enclave outside Afghanistan.
In the testing enclave, a nation that will be going to Afghanistan and part of the AMN would be able to initialize their systems and do their testing in a replicated environment to ensure interoperability outside the actual network.
ACT plays a part in some of the development of the staging and training environment and ensuring requirements are met as well as writing a training concept of operations, McClelland said.
The concept envisions something like this: A unit in pre-deployment training would be able to link into the training enclave, which would replicate the data and conduct training in the same type of environment that exists in ISAF Afghanistan. It also potentially would allow the linkage of deployment partners. So a U.S. unit at a training center would be linked through a network into the training enclave and training with, say, its Italian partners with whom they may soon occupy adjacent battle space in theater.
Or, for instance, if Italy had systems they were going to employ in Afghanistan, they could move into the testing enclave at some point, hook to that, verify their systems are interoperable and will not cause the network to crash. They would then move to a staging enclave where the systems would be set up, IPs configured, accounts created and other work done before the equipment was packed and shipped to Afghanistan. There, the equipment would be plugged in, turned on and be ready to go.
Of course, not all nations bring equipment, some fall in on equipment in place.
McClelland said the enclaves would likely be outside theater, perhaps somewhere in Europe, though no location has been identified. Nations first must approve funding, a process now in the works.
AMN is a NATO environment, and for the long term, an enduring capability is envisioned. So whenever Afghanistan closes out the enclaves would likely still exist–at least the testing and training enclaves, he said.
From a NATO ACT perspective, part of its charge as a transformational headquarters is that as a requirement or capability is requested in Afghanistan for AMN, ACT will look to see if something already exists or is delivered or in development that could met that AMN requirement, but also if it is relevant to a future capability needed for NATO.
“The nations are paying for this, we don’t want them to pay twice,” McClelland said. “Where we can harmonize efforts and leverage existing work we try to do that.”
In line with the commander’s vision that ACT be a think tank, the command hosts different partners in AMN discussions.
NATO ACT works with U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), also located in Norfolk, Va., where training is a major focus.
JFCOM has built boxes that ensure systems can communicate with each other, primarily through the Joint Systems Integration Center. Some personnel work in theater addressing such issues in AMN. Also, JFCOM replicated AMN in the most recent mission rehearsal exercise for a U.S. unit preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.
NATO ACT looks to the future, looking at how NATO could work something similar to AMN for future missions. Thus, the command is capturing the policies and procedures of current AMN efforts to examine for a future mission network capability, something that could be useful for a similar network for other missions–and domain agnostic–ground, air or sea, McClelland said.