[iwar] [fc:Agile.Innovation.Critical]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-06-04 07:24:25


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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 07:24:25 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Agile.Innovation.Critical]
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Army Times
June 10, 2002
Agile Innovation Critical
Despite billions of dollars in investment and years of effort, senior U.S.
commanders still complain that communicating across the Pentagon, much less
with allies, remains a problem.
Warfare today is all about information. But information is worthless if you
can't get it to the right people quickly enough. 
If there's one thing the current Afghanistan campaign has demonstrated, it's
that by better linking existing systems, capabilities can be dramatically
improved. B-52 bombers, now half a century old, have been used with
devastating effect because their pilots have been linked to Special Forces
troops on the ground and and data from new surveillance systems in the air,
such as the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. 
This concept of interconnectedness is at the heart both of what the Pentagon
likes to call "jointness" and a still-newer buzzword, "transformation." 
Transformation's broader aim is to adopt new doctrine, training and
structures to make the U.S. military more agile, more flexible and, as a
result, more powerful. But without a communications infrastructure to
harness and coordinate all that capability, the concept can't possibly
succeed. 
Commanders' warnings that the networks that fuel their voracious appetite
for bandwidth are not adequately integrated are cause for alarm.
It's bad enough that NATO allies and others supporting the U.S. military's
war on terrorism don't have consistent secure communications links. That the
U.S. military can't always get the information it has to the people who need
it most, in real time, suggests a much more dire situation. This should be
especially worrisome to the Pentagon now, as leaders contemplate a war with
Iraq, a much more challenging foe than the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Over the past half-century, the U.S. military has evolved into the most
powerful fighting force in history through the steady introduction of
advanced weaponry, sophisticated information gathering techniques,
communication technology and management systems, along with the doctrine and
training to make them work.
Progress, however, has come at a cost. Systems have been piled one atop
another, resulting in a Gordian knot, tightened by unique service
requirements and, frequently, the services' refusal to cede control of their
systems to those who might be able to do a better job of building them. 
Major corporations, realizing that time and information are money, have
invested heavily in the same problems. Many have successfully retooled their
information infrastructure, so that leading banks today can handle trillions
of dollars in annual transactions worldwide, all electronically, and yet
still in a secure fashion.
"We have a lot to learn from commercial industry about getting connected,"
one senior Pentagon official says. "We know battlefield systems, but the
problem is largely with the systems that support the battlefield. We
wouldn't want Sun Microsystems trying to figure out how to invade Iraq, so
why are we trying to tell Sun how to do their job?"
Whether the solution is wholesale outsourcing of communications and
information systems or some subset of that is not clear. Several years ago,
former Marine Corps Commandant Charles Krulak ordered his service to stop
piecemeal computer and software upgrades that were doing more harm than
good. By improving something in one place, leaders were creating
incompatibility problems elsewhere. That was a good start.
The Pentagon leadership should develop an overall information and
communications architecture, and institute a system of incentives to drive
progress. Career advancement - military and civilian alike - must be tied to
demonstrated improvements in interconnectivity. Future contracts must demand
that suppliers ditch proprietary architectures that make it difficult to
improve systems.
And acquisition cycles must be accelerated. A system that buys new products
over the span of a decade is ill suited to stay current in a world where
technologies can become obsolete in months. 
This job will take time, and be fantastically costly. The consolidation of
financial systems alone is expected to take many years and cost billions of
dollars. But the cost of improvment pales when compared with the
consequences of suffering defeat at the hands of a more agile adversary.

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