[iwar] [fc:US.DoD.Seeks.Radical.Information.Network]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-07-16 21:03:55
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 21:03:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:US.DoD.Seeks.Radical.Information.Network]
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Jane's Defence Weekly
July 17, 2002
US DoD Seeks Radical Information Network
By Andrew Koch, JDW Bureau Chief, Washington DC 
The US Department of Defense (DoD) is seeking to revolutionise how it
manages and sends information and is preparing a new intelligence processing
paradigm and multi-billion dollar high-speed network to make that happen. 
Called 'power to the edge', the concept would provide access to all
available intelligence information, raw or finished, to anybody on the
network, not just to specific subject-matter experts within the intelligence
community. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control,
Communications and Intelligence John Stenbit is pushing the concept as a way
to facilitate information sharing and break-up existing problems of
'stovepiped' intelligence. 
Under existing intelligence procedures, information is collected, then
processed before being sent over a secure network, or 'pushed', to users in
a more polished form (task, process, exploit and disseminate, or TPED).
Stenbit said late last month "TPED is out the window," and will be replaced
by a new system of immediately posting raw intelligence data after it is
received. "It's a pull system, not a push system ... and if it happens it
will change how intelligence works," he added. 
"We are talking about a dramatic change ... people are no longer going to
talk to people. They are going to talk to the network, they are going to get
data from the network and when they want to they are going to use the
network for collaboration," Stenbit said. 
As good as this sounds, not all users of the proposed new system are
supportive of the idea. Several military intelligence analysts, who
requested anonymity, complained that if implemented, 'power to the edge'
could overwhelm users with too much information while removing the
quality-control filter intelligence specialists currently provide. For
example, how will military commanders, military intelligence's primary
customers, know or have time to determine good data from bad, several asked.

Vice Adm Thomas Wilson, outgoing Director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, summed-up these concerns last month, saying "power to the edge, I
think that is fine ... but it better have a system of analysts in it to
interpret all of the data that is available and turn that into value added
information and into what I would call intelligence". 
Stenbit, however, appeared to dismiss these concerns, saying "I am much more
trustful of a system with variable techniques of doing that job and holding
the person that did that end-game responsible" than leaving the task to
current system of intelligence experts. "I am unambiguously in favour of
multiple people deciding the best sources of information over some form of
perfection of quality control," he added. 
Stenbit did admit, however, that better browsers, search agents and
data-fusion technology would be needed to help the information's user find
both the relevant raw data and any specialised analysis of that data that
may be posted later. 
To enable the tremendous amounts of information exchanges required by 'power
to the edge', vast improvements to the communications infrastructure will be
required - improvements that senior US national leaders have said are badly
needed. Earlier this year, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet,
for example, told a Senate panel; "the communications backbone of the
national security infrastructure writ-large is something no-one pays
attention to. The truth is we don't have the bandwidth we need, the truth is
we don't move data in pipes the way we need to." 
Infrastructure upgrades that will begin this year, however, will change
that. 
Those improvements include building a network of different satellites called
the Transformational Communications System ( TCS) as well as fibre-optic
ground-based upgrades that will be able to handle very large amounts of data
(Jane's Defence Weekly 30 January). 
The ground-based portion, called the Global Information Grid-Bandwidth
(GIG-BW) expansion programme, is a $600 million effort to build a
fibre-optic network. The goal is to have a GIG-BW capable of handling 10-40
Gbits/s in place in 2 years, Stenbit said. Work on the project is expected
to begin in a few months and a total of about 90 ground-based sites will be
linked by the network, said Kevin Meiners, Director of Intelligence,
Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems under Senbit. 
The space-based part, conducted under the $3 billion TCS effort, will take
longer. Current plans call for datalinks between unmanned air vehicles and
satellites that are capable of handling up to 1 Gbit/s, while links between
satellites and to ground stations will have a multi-Gbit/s capability,
Meiners said. 
While the exact architecture of the TCS is still being determined, it will
use Boeing's Wideband Gapfiller Satellites, the first of which is expected
to be launched in 2004. TCS will later incorporate Advanced Wideband System
satellites, the first of which is scheduled for launch in 2009-2010. 
These upgrades will ensure that future use concepts for unmanned vehicles
are not unnecessarily limited by bandwidth constraints, Meiners said, adding
that other new concepts such as deployable combined joint task force
headquarters and the naval fires network would also be enabled. 

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