SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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??–???
2005
[H.A.S.C. No. 109–15]
HEARING
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
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TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
ON
TACTICAL C4 SYSTEMS: WHY DOES THE DOD HAVE SO MANY SYSTEMS PERFORMING THE SAME FUNCTIONALITY
HEARING HELD
MARCH 3, 2005
TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey, Chairman
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
JOE WILSON, South Carolina
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
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JEFF MILLER, Florida
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
ADAM SMITH, Washington
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
RICK LARSEN, Washington
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia
CYNTHIA McKINNEY, Georgia
Rangel Robert, Staff Director
Thomas E. Hawley,Professional Staff Member
Jean D. Reed,Professional Staff Member
Uyen T. Dinh,Counsel
William H. Natter,Professional Staff Member
Brian R. Anderson, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
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2005
HEARING:
Thursday, March 3, 2005, Fiscal Year 2006 National Defense Authorization Act—Tactical C4 Systems: Why Does the DOD Have so Many Systems Performing the Same Functionality?
APPENDIX:
Thursday, March 3, 2005
THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 2005
FISCAL YEAR 2006 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—TACTICAL C4 SYSTEMS: WHY DOES THE DOD HAVE SO MANY SYSTEMS PERFORMING THE SAME FUNCTIONALITY?
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Saxton, Hon. Jim, a Representative from New Jersey, Chairman, Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee
WITNESSES
Wells, Dr. Linton, II, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration, Vice Adm. R.F. Willard, USN, Director for Force Structure, Resources, and Assessment (DJ–8), Joint Staff, Lt. Gen. Robert Shea, USMC, Director for Command, Control, Communications and Computer Systems (DJ–6), Deputy Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command
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APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
Saxton, Hon. Jim
Wagner, Gen. Robert W.
Wells, Secretary Linton II
Willard, Adm. Robert F., joint with Gen. Robert M., Shea
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Documents submitted can be viewed in the hard copy.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. Langevin
Mr. Saxton
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FISCAL YEAR 2004 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—TACTICAL C4 SYSTEMS: WHY DOES THE DOD HAVE SO MANY SYSTEMS PERFORMING THE SAME FUNCTIONALITY?
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, March 3, 2005.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3 p.m., in room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jim Saxton (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JIM SAXTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY, CHAIRMAN, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. SAXTON. Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman.
The Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities meets this afternoon to assess the Department of Defense's (DOD) command, control, communications and computer (C4) issues. We are interested to learn why the Department has so many different tactical information technology (IT) systems performing similar, if not the same, functionality. This is of particular interest to us because the fiscal year 2006 national defense authorization budget request for DOD IT is $30.1 billion. In this amount, C4 systems comprises about $7.4 billion, an increase of $1 billion for warfighting systems from last year's appropriated dollars.
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The subcommittee supports the Department's goal to have joint, network-centric, distributed forces to provide rapid reaction to any conventional or asymmetric threats. We are, however, concerned that there is insufficient oversight and management of the joint or defense-wide programs. Time and again, this subcommittee has stressed the importance of a DOD enterprise architecture: to lay the foundation, to set the standards and protocols, to guide the development of new systems, and to ensure interoperability from the very beginning of all new programs. We want to know if the Department has viable mechanisms to monitor all emerging systems, while killing redundant ones, and ensuring that existing programs work together coherently.
The crux of the issue is how the Department executes, enforces, and evolves its systems architecture to allow warfighters to capitalize on IT investments that use C4 systems, enabled through the Global Information Grid (GIG). The GIG's potential capabilities will provide major enhancements in supporting how our soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines fight and win wars. The subcommittee remains concerned that warfighters may not have access to these capabilities if individual service architectures, investments, and service-specific systems limit interoperability. We continue to stress our strong support for a DOD-wide enterprise management plan for all IT, not four or more service-specific architectures that conflict with one another.
There are several C4 issues that should be addressed during today's hearing. These include: challenges to fully integrating C4 systems when coupled with service-specific processes and interests, the software-dependent nature of C4 systems, bandwidth allocation and through-puts, and coalition interoperability issues. In essence, we would like to ascertain who is responsible in determining whether a C4 system becomes a program of record or is eliminated? Who has the authority or hammer to prevent the creation of duplicative, stovepiped, and noninteroperable systems? Essentially, the subcommittee would like a better understanding of what processes the Department has in place to shape the development and fielding of C4 systems.
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So thank you very much for being here today. We look forward to your testimony. But before we do that, I would like to ask Mrs. Tauscher if she has an opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Saxton can be viewed in the hard copy.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA
Ms. TAUSCHER. I do, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry to see you are not feeling well. You have tea and cough drops, not a good sign, but I hope you feel better.
Mr. SAXTON. We are surviving so far.
Ms. TAUSCHER. It is great to be here for the first official meeting of our subcommittee in the 109th Congress. Let me join you in welcoming our panelists. Welcome, gentlemen. And I would especially like to thank the people sitting behind you, the ladies and gentlemen behind you who I know if they are as good as my staff, they are the smart people that make sure you know what you are going to say in the next hour or so, and I want to thank them for their service.
I must associate myself with the chairman's opening remarks. As he points out, IT systems represent perhaps the most essential enabling military advantage in our fight against terror. Yet, too often, a stovepipe legacy system undermines our Nation's efforts to respond. In short, the technology and infrastructure of yesterday threatens the very essence of transformation.
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The goal established by Secretary Wolfowitz in 2001 to have 80 percent of legacy C4 Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems interoperable by the year 2008 represents a watershed event. Our challenge, indeed your challenge, is to meet this goal. Please know the subcommittee stands ready to assist.
But not unlike the chairman, I remain concerned about the way ahead. I am concerned about the available bandwidth in the near term, about redundant investments, and about the possibility of disconnected or counterproductive strategies. I understand this issue is not simple, coming from Silicon Valley. I realize its complexity, and that is the basis of my concern. Thus, I hope today's hearing will assist us in better understanding the challenge ahead.
I look forward to your testimony. I look forward to working with you and to perhaps a full and enlightening exchange on all of our perspectives.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much.
We have one panel of witnesses for our proceedings this afternoon. Once again, welcome. We are looking forward to hearing your testimony. The witnesses are Dr. Linton Wells, the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration; Vice Admiral Robert Willard, the Director for Force Structures, Resources, and Assessment, DJ–8, on the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Lieutenant General Robert Shea, the Director for Command, Control, Communications and Computer Systems for the Joint Staff; Lieutenant General Robert Wagner, the Deputy Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command, JFCOM. Welcome, gentlemen.
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At the outset I ask unanimous consent that all members and witness' written opening statements be included in the record. So ordered. I ask unanimous consent that all articles, exhibits, and extraneous or tabular material to be included in the record. Also, without objection.
Dr. Wells, welcome, and please proceed.
STATEMENT OF DR. LINTON WELLS, II, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR NETWORKS AND INFORMATION INTEGRATION; VICE ADM. R.F. WILLARD, USN, DIRECTOR FOR FORCE STRUCTURE, RESOURCES, AND ASSESSMENT (DJ–8), JOINT STAFF; LT. GEN. ROBERT SHEA, USMC, DIRECTOR FOR COMMAND, CONTROL, COMMUNICATIONS AND COMPUTER SYSTEMS (DJ–6), JOINT STAFF; AND LT. GEN. ROBERT WAGNER, USA, DEPUTY COMMANDER, U.S. JOINT FORCES COMMAND
Dr. WELLS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, representative Tauscher, members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you on this issue of tactical command and control communications computer C4 systems, which is very important in the war against terror and in the ongoing campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries around the world.
As you mentioned, with me today on my right are Vice Admiral Willard; on my left, Lieutenant General Shea, and then on my far right Lieutenant General Wagner, Deputy Commander of Joint Forces. I will make a consolidated opening statement, Mr. Chairman, on behalf of all of the parties, if that is acceptable to you.
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Let me set the stage by providing brief answers to the questions you raised, important questions you raised related to this hearing. We are prepared to elaborate on these points as part of the dialogue.
First, what are we getting for the money we are investing in the C4 systems? The answer is that we are getting warfighting capability, delivered now, and increasing in the future. You, your families, friends, and constituents are very familiar with the power of the internet. You can access huge amounts of information easily and quickly to answer questions, to learn new things, to conduct business, and to keep in touch with each other. We all use these capabilities at home, in the office, and sometimes on the move. The information revolution is transforming our societies and our way of life. The Department of Defense's vision is to leverage this revolution and empower our warfighters through easy access to information any time and any place with attendant security and decision support. To achieve this vision, we are requesting funding in fiscal year 2006 to continue our efforts to create a secure, robust, global internet-like capability for our warfighters who must operate in high-threat environments at fixed, as well as ad-hoc, and often mobile tactical locations. We call this collection of capabilities the Global Information Grid.
Our young soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan today grew up using information-age technology. As we transform to the joint force, we want to leverage that experience and extend these capabilities to the battlefield in ways that are secure and reliable. I can elaborate on this point if you desire.
We learned from our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan that securely connecting people and systems, regardless of time and place, vastly improved our situational awareness, provided better access to information, and enabled decision superiority which increased our warfighting effectiveness and, ultimately, saved lives. As General Jumper, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, says, ''there should be no hour glass for the warfighter,'' meaning the warfighter cannot wait for information. Secure, dependable, and global networks are the key to our vision. Network-centric operations underpin the Department's transformation and our defense strategy.
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We have several great stories to illustrate the value of net-centric capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan that we can provide if time permits and if you desire. Today, we are a nation at war. Even as we develop, test, and deploy new and future capabilities, it is imperative that we sustain legacy C4 systems that are critical to current operations. On the surface that may appear as duplication. Let me assure you, it is not. Legacy systems will be terminated once the new capabilities are in place to satisfy the joint warfighters' needs.
Second question: who is responsible in the Department of Defense for ensuring that we are getting something for the dollars spent? Is there a hammer out there to ensure results in this area? The answer is yes on both counts. There are three key processes within the Department of Defense. We focus on capabilities for the warfighter via the new Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, or JCIDS process, which is a significant improvement over the previous so-called requirements process. We use the planning, programming, budgeting and execution, or PPBE process with the addition of portfolio management to assess investments from an enterprise-wide perspective, we leverage the acquisition process to ensure we are developing and delivering net-centric capabilities. These three processes provide multiple hammers to ensure that results are being delivered.
The third question: who has the authority to shape the investments to force discipline and change in this area? The answer is all of us do. We use our roles within the three departmental processes to ensure that we are getting appropriate capabilities for the investments, to ensure there is no duplication and to force discipline and change. Admiral Willard and Generals Shea and Wagner support the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Requirements Oversight Council in identifying, assessing, and prioritizing joint military capabilities using the new JCIDS process.
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In addition, General Wagner, in partnership with the Office of Secretary of Defense, is leading the development of the joint battle management command and control, or JBMC2 roadmap which provides a comprehensive, executable plan for improving how we organize, train, and equip to achieve joint battle management command and control capabilities.
My office, the Joint Staff, the combatant commanders, services and agencies, along with other parts of the Office of the Secretary of Defense are partnering with Joint Forces Command in producing this roadmap and executing it with the JCIDS process. I set DOD policies for command and control and communications capabilities. I am the milestone decision authority for major information systems acquisition and, as the DOD Chief Information Officer, I execute rigorous direction and policy oversight to ensure net-centric attributes are incorporated into warfighting and business capabilities.
You mentioned bandwidth. Last year there was a Presidential initiative on spectrum policy, which turned out to be a very important document. The 24 initiatives under the President's initiative are being developed. I am part of the steering group for that effort. One of the most important from the standpoint of the warfighter is research and development into new means of making better use of available spectrum. This is, as you say, a very important issue.
Finally, it appears, as you said in the letter, that there are numerous duplicative C4 systems in use by the services, has anyone terminated any of these? It may appear we have duplicative systems, but I assure you progress is being made to eliminate unnecessary duplication. For example, the Joint Command and Control system, JC2 capability, will replace the current family of Global Command and Control Systems, or GCCS. However, both are in our budget request for this year. The reason is the current block of legacy programs is the last block. It will be fielded as is, and it is being postured for transition into the net-centric environment. The JC2 is a program documented for convergence in the JBMC2 roadmap. Initial funding for JC2 was drawn from legacy systems development, taken out of it. JC2 has been fully vetted within the JCIDS process, the Joint Staff, and within the Department's budgeting and acquisition processes to ensure the most judicious use of resources. The JC2 program demonstrates the Department's commitment to terminating legacy service-centric programs and reapplying their resources to joint systems that will operate in a net-centric environment. Keep in mind that variety in numbers does not necessarily equate to duplication. What we are striving for is interoperability of systems that meet the capability needs of the joint warfighter.
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To conclude, Mr. Chairman, our imperative is to provide the tactical C4 needed by our servicemen and women to succeed in the tasks they face around the world. The risk of failure is so dire; conversely the rewards success are so high in fighting the war on global terror, we must give priority to C4 in our capabilities development, in our funding, in our acquisition processes. We are continuing to identify the best systems, to study and engineer the human systems and processes needed to maximize their effectiveness, in partnership with other parts of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, services and defense agencies, the Joint Staff, Joint Forces Command, and the other combatant commanders. This work must continue, and your help is essential if we are to succeed.
I thank you again for holding this hearing on this important topic. We look forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Wells, Admiral Willard, General Shea, and General Wagner can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, Dr. Wells. Let me go to Mrs. Tauscher for questions.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Excuse me. Was that the joint statement from all of you?
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Dr. WELLS. Yes, it was, sir.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Wells, that was a very comprehensive statement. I really appreciate that.
I have a number of questions here, and let me just start here. Much of the Department's existing information and storage technology rests upon core service support or basic office applications, even as the Department attempts to embrace greater horizontal sharing and infusion of information efforts. I did not write that sentence, but some little techie person did.
As you know, Secretary Wolfowitz established the goal of command and control communications, computer Intel, surveillance and reconnaissance, C4 ISR interoperability by 2008. You mentioned different kinds of progress, and you said you had some anecdotal stories. I am going to give you a chance to tell us both in this next 5 minutes, but can you tell us exactly what the metrics for progress are?
Dr. WELLS. Well, an example, Congresswoman, yesterday, actually, I signed off on an acquisition strategy for an Air Force program called the Expeditionary Support System, and this is a series that will be developed between now and fiscal year 2012. This one system will result in the elimination of nearly 500 legacy support systems now within the Air Force, and the document has pages and pages and pages and lists of which year they will phase that out. I think this is a real success story of showing how that happens. This is an Air Force initiative, but it is being developed in a net-centric environment and we will be working with the other services to see if we can extend its velocity and benefits to the other services.
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Ms. TAUSCHER. That is great. What is the Department's plan to better support horizontal information flows between the legacy stovepipe tactical C4 systems?
Dr. WELLS. The key to the net-centric strategy is an underlying data strategy. So we talk a lot about building the network, and that is critically important to have a transport layer that can move the bits and bytes around. But our goal is to move from a smart push situation to smart pull. Smart push, think of a telephone system. I need to know not only what you need to know, but where you are in order to convey that information. In a dynamic mobile network environment, I may never know that. So the goal is to post the information to the network in ways that it is tagged so it is discoverable, it is accessible and understandable, so that different users with different applications can draw on the smart pull, pull through their own needs, and find that information.
So the key of the net-centric data strategy is tagging the information in ways you can find it is there, pull it up, see what is there, and then tie it into applications that let you make use of it. That is really the key piece of interoperability. It is kind of like you use Netscape Navigator navigator, I use IE6, somebody else is using Mozilla; it doesn't matter. The data is on the network. That is our approach.
Ms. TAUSCHER. I came from the private sector before I came to Congress 9 years ago, and one of the challenges for big sales organizations and tech organizations was to basically do the same thing. It is not that different. It is about basically being able to have the push-pull of information and have it actually not only accessible, but in the format that you need it. I mean sales and tech are interoperable, but they don't have the same requirements, nor do they have the same, necessarily, language.
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Dr. WELLS. May I ask if Admiral Willard or General Shea might have an answer?
Ms. TAUSCHER. Sure. Absolutely, and if you can also incorporate into the answer the issues of security.
Dr. WELLS. Let me take security, and then I will turn it over. Security is absolutely crucial to the development of this network. We are becoming dependent on the ubiquitous, global, robust network. In the network environment, a risk accepted by one is a risk imposed on all. So we need to move away from a model that says, we will build higher walls and deeper moats around our enclaves to one that lets us have near real-time situational awareness of what is going on, with anomaly detection systems.
NSA (National Security Agency) last year delivered, I thought, an excellent architecture that would allow us to move toward this system. It was quite a fundamental difference from the way we had done business in the past in that they are focusing on this strong authentication and identification of what is going on in the net. But the real key to information assurance is mission assurance. We have to be able to continue to operate, irrespective of the attacks we are under. It is not enough just to try to keep out the bad guys. I come from a naval background. Ships are designed to accept damage, there are firefighting systems built in, people have emergency breathing apparatus, and you train and you train and you train. We need to be able to move toward fighting this network, the weapons system, the core it is becoming, so the information assurance piece has to be designed in. We need to have it designed on a network-wide basis, and we need to train our people, design our processes and conduct our operations to protect it.
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Ms. TAUSCHER. That is fascinating. I may try to come over and take a look at it.
Admiral and General.
Admiral WILLARD. Ma'am, we mentioned seeking interoperability between horizontal systems, and I would begin by referencing a comment that Dr. Wells made in his opening statement, and that deals with the subject of variety. And there is a difference between the variety of systems that are accommodating our joint forces today and duplication, unnecessary duplication or excesses of systems.
I am kind of the capabilities guy within the JCIDS process in answering to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, and what is important to me is that regardless of the variety of systems in the hands of our warfighters in the joint force, that they are in fact interoperable and that they function to a performance standard that is adequate and that we have enough to go around the joint force and we are not in excess, and that is much different than duplicative and redundant.
Ms. TAUSCHER. That is a tough job.
Admiral WILLARD. So what we seek is the interoperability that Dr. Wells alludes to. And while in the future we are transitioning to web-based and while we have a number of initiatives in play right now to make our databases that are resident within the services more transparent, tagged for information, and accessible throughout the joint force, we are also seeking to ensure that the variety of systems that are out there are able to communicate with one another, and we do that through the application of technical standards and, if necessary, with our legacy systems, the necessary interfaces that we need to ensure that they talk. I would tell you that forward, the joint force, while using a variety of systems, many of them legacy, are in fact interoperating, and it is I think evidenced by the performance that we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Ms. TAUSCHER. Anyone else?
General SHEA. You know, in its simplest terms, Ma'am, I think the best analogy to draw to what we are trying to do is we are building at the operational, strategic and tactical level the equivalent of the internet that you use every day probably, or your family uses every day. And the key, as has been discussed before, number one is security, but it is this data tagging. And really what data tagging is about, it is organizing the gigabits and the large amounts of data that are out there and available to everyone, organizing them in a logical manner, determining what data is the authoritative data and a series of rule sets that will bring you to that conclusion. And then you have these different applications that will use a common data. You will be drawing from the same database, but the rules will tell you what data you draw for any particular need.
I think I will leave it there. The key to this obviously is the fact that we have to be able to provide security for that data.
Ms. TAUSCHER. That is right. Well, it sounds like you have the killer application, which is the right thing.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Kline.
Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.
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I am trying to figure out how to express this and ask a question without just too much frustration coming through. It is amazing, if you look at, if you look at what is in the commercial sector, and I understand the security concerns are not quite the same, but if you look at something like Travelocity, those are multiple databases from airlines, from hotels, from car rentals, all kinds of different things out there, and yet any one of us can go on our computer at home or wherever we bought it from, can go on line, whoever the internet service provider is, and we can book a flight and a hotel and a car and everything in a matter of seconds.
So I know that the capability is there for us to get inside the databases that we need to get into. The applications that we have, and I was just over in Iraq a few weeks ago and saw the modern sandtable, just terrific stuff with real-time, friendly force locations, blue force locations and great stuff. Now, the applications that the Marines were using at Camp Fallujah are quite difference than what the 1st Cavalry Division was using, very different pictures. And I suppose I would wonder why we can't get more standardization in the application, but fundamentally it is the database issue and why we can't all cut through the resistance, why we can't get the tags that Bob Shea was talking about, and why does it take so long?
Twenty years ago, and Bob Shea and I have known each other for at least that long, but somewhere around that time frame I remember being at the Marine Headquarters and the Marine Corps was going to buy a computer system for administrative purposes, and it was working its way through the acquisition process and it had sort of gotten up to about to be considered by what the Marines call the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corp (ACMAC) committee, which is probably General Winthen, and while they were deliberating all that every Marine organization went out and bought computers just so they could function, because the world was blowing by. Now that created problems because everybody got something different; I understand that. But I just don't understand why this is so slow. Does anybody want to venture a guess?
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General SHEA. Well, I will take that. I can give you a reason, sir. First of all, the enormity of the effort within the Department, it is significant, quite frankly, and I think we have to look at ourselves in some cases. There have been different systems within the services or even within respective communities that are developed within the systems that are legacy systems that we are still living with, and we don't have the agility to move to that next level at the pace I think that you anticipate. But it is clearly where we are headed. If you look at some of the experimentation that is going on, or demonstrations that are going on right now, as an example, that this is done with net-centric enterprise services. They have done exactly that type of thing and they have given us a look at what the future is going to look like where we are going to tie these databases and the Joint Force Commander (JFC) is going to see the same picture as the Marine ace, as is the Army aviation unit, as will the ground commander.
What I think you saw out in Iraq with the 1st Cav was that it was an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) that has been done and being worked by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). There is a lot of great work there that is being done, and that is where we are headed in the future. There is still some work that needs to be done and we need to refine the things and the tools that we have seen; we have to do a better job in tying those databases together.
What we are living with right now I would argue is legacy. We think we know where we need to go in the future and that is the direction we are headed. And as I said, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has just done what they call Octoberfest, where they have demonstrated what the future might look like for us where they do tie these databases together, and we do go back and we are able to pull the same common operational picture, the same data across all four services, as well as the coalition.
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So it is a matter of resources, number one. It takes a lot of resources to do this, and it is a matter of organizing across the whole department to get to where we need to go.
Mr. KLINE. I guess I don't understand why it takes so much in resources, but that is something we need to explore. If it is a matter of money, then we need to understand what it is and why that is. If it is a matter of just confusion or entrenched mindset, then that is something we need to break through.
I guess we are going to do another round of questions. I have some others here that talk about all the different plans and roadmaps that are out there, but I am just frustrated that we can't seem to move faster. We know, and in every other area that we talk about on the Committee on Armed Services, if we have soldiers over there who are being killed or injured because they don't have up armored Humvees or because they don't have body armor or because they need something, we move. We moved through this committee, through the whole Committee on Armed Services, a change in law that allows the Secretary of Defense to waive all the Federal acquisition regulations and other red tape to buy what our soldiers and Marines need if it is getting them killed. We are in combat, we have got consistently over 100,000 soldiers and Marines that are engaged, and yet we are bound up without having all of the resources in the sense of information, of data that we need.
Those were wonderful applications I looked at out there. I am not at all confident that all the data that needs to be going behind that is properly linked. So I try not to let the frustration come through, but I am. I don't understand why it moves so slow, and I think that is part of what we are trying to get at. I mean, it was handed to me a minute ago by the same wonderful, I think, techies that Mrs. Tauscher was talking about, but it is a good point here. I will just read the text. It says, over the past few years DOD has issued many architectures, roadmaps, strategic plans to address joint C4 needs. For example, CIG integrated architecture, Communications Interface Group (CIG) transport roadmap, JBMC2 roadmap, transformation communications architecture, communications management plan, ISR strategic plan, and so forth.
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Maybe it is just in the Marines, but when the top says, hey, we are going to do this, it seems to me we ought to be able to step out and move through this. I think, I am expressing the frustration of many of my colleagues of why we can't get this together and start allowing all of the services and all of the combatant commanders and all the way down to communicate, because command control communications now is through the network. I don't understand.
General SHEA. Sir, I think what you are seeing is the legacy that has been left behind in many cases, and I think the other thing you are saying with the 1st Cav is exactly the way we are moving into the future. That in many ways is an experiment that is going on in the battle space over there right now. We have to maintain some of that legacy capability, because we have to keep that out there. We don't have the time to train while people are in the middle of the fight. But what we have got going right now with 1st Cav is the opportunity to go out there and try some of this thing and what we are seeing is the results of that, and we are going to learn the lessons that come as a result of working it, and I think we are moving in the right direction.
I think the point that needs to be made is that we have to be careful. I mean a lot of this is legacy, this is left over. We think we have the right way ahead through this JCIDS process and it is starting to pay dividend, 1st Cav being an example.
Admiral WILLARD. Congressman Kline, I think key to what General Shea just said is that we are moving in the right direction. We are not standing still at all, imagining that this is beyond our grasp and just drafting documents to try and get us to a vision without moving ahead.
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We, in fact, have multiple initiatives in play right now to try and draw our database information together and make it more accessible. I would give you one example from the directorate within the Joint Staff that I am involved in, and it is in fact in support of Joint Forces Command as force provider, and this is something that we are pursuing because it matters in the current operations, and that is in joint force provider, in global force management, there is an ongoing initiative to draw commonality between the service databases in terms of visibility into their force structure and readiness so that we can compile the force modules that we will be deploying now and in the future. And while much of what you said, your frustration is well founded and, in some cases, correct. And we use data calls to glean that information now, because it is not readily accessible from a computer.
The fact is that all of the services are moving toward a common database format that has included an understanding of how to characterize their respective organizations so that we can have the kind of transparency Joint Forces Command needs as joint force provider to establish that data without data call, but rather automatically or have it accessible on their computer, and we are making progress. It happens that the ground forces are the most advanced right now. The Marine Corps and Army are moving out the fastest, and the JCIDS process, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council is monitoring the progress of this initiative because we consider it to be current and most important.
Mr. KLINE. Thank you. I am going to press for indulgence for just one more minute, and I apologize to my colleagues. We may have to be in another forum to get into this, but talking to a number of the intelligence activities, I have been traveling, doing a lot of traveling lately, and I would hope that we would move to very quickly at least to get a start on being able to pull those databases together. And again, maybe in another forum, but it is just a shame, if we have, if we have forces engaged and there is information out there that is in a database that we can't pull because it is not yet properly tagged or we have not completed the coordination necessary, and if it is a coordination thing, then, Mr. Secretary, we have a lot of horsepower sitting at this table, we ought to be able to make that happen.
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Admiral WILLARD. When we deal with the intelligence piece, there are really two factors that impact us. One is the releasability of the intelligence across what are traditionally the firewalls necessary to contain release of that other than to properly classified personnel. The other is the equipage necessary to get the intelligence down to where it is needed. There is a current initiative in play to support the forces in Iraq, to try and overcome both of those initiatives, and it is very promising and very, very much in our view right now. So once again, I guess frustration aside, the point that I would make is that we are not standing still on any of these in trying to get multiple databases of information readily available to the warfighter.
Mr. KLINE. I certainly hope not, and I have no doubt that everybody is running, and running hard, because all of you, everybody in the Pentagon understand that we are at war and we have troops engaged. I hope we will run it together and do something about those firewalls.
Mr. Chairman, I am sorry, I have way over-exceeded my time and my colleague has been here very patient, and I will yield back for the moment.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. Mr. Thornberry.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, this is the same song, second verse, actually, so I appreciate you setting it up.
I think it is important for us to acknowledge, as several of you have said, the enormity of the job, the resources required to make the kinds of changes we are talking about, and the fact that we are doing all this while we are fighting a war. I don't think anybody means to or should belittle what we are asking for. But at the same time, just to piggy-back on that last point, which is not really what I intended to talk about here, a piece of tactical intelligence may also be of strategic importance. You can't divide out what that individual soldier may find on the ground and say, oh, this just applies to certain channels; it may well have a number of applications. I am not at all convinced that the architecture that you all are looking at is compatible with the Intelligence Community, even understanding the point about the different classification levels and so forth. We are not in a world where you can segregate things out in nice, neat packages anymore. And I don't mean to get into—but I guess what I really want to ask, Dr. Wells, fair or not, there is a perception that you don't have any money, basically, to control; the services are doing their own thing. Yes, we are making progress, but we are not making nearly as much progress as we want to, partly because the services come at their acquisition decisions from their own perspective, not from a perspective of how it all fits together. And some people have even gone so far as to suggest that we need to quit all that stuff and have one joint acquisition authority to make all the buying decisions, because it is only that way that you are going to overcome the parochialism to make sure that the stuff works together. I suspect you don't like that idea, but I guess if you have comments, I would be interested in hearing them.
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But second, I would be interested to know, has there been—dealing with legacy systems is one thing, looking ahead is something else. Has there been a system that has been put forward that basically you were able to stop because it did not fit into the architecture of the future?
Dr. WELLS. Congressman, thank you very much. I think each of us will have some points to make on this. Let me begin. First of all, with regard to the broad sharing of intelligence information with the Intelligence Community, I think one of the more important initiatives is that stemming from Executive Order 13356 of last summer, where the President directed that the members of the executive branch get together to get a common framework for sharing counterterrorism information across the government. That then led to the establishment of something called the Information Assistance Council, which provided a report to the President in December, right before Christmas.
One of the things we found in that was that our data strategy within DOD was quite compatible with the Intelligence Community's strategy in broad terms, in terms of the way we are going to go about tagging data. Does it address all the issues? No. There are policy questions, as Admiral Willard alluded to, about how much we are willing to release, and so on and so forth, but the technical approach to the problem is much closer than I would have imagined say last summer, after having worked this for 6 months. We are now working very closely with the Department of Homeland Security and law enforcement authorities and Treasury to see if we can extend this data-centric approach across the government. This is an Office of Management and Budget (OMB)-led initiative.
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The second piece is that within the military one of the problems of sharing intelligence information has been the absence of secure networks at low tactical levels. I think General Shea and his people have done remarkable work over the past year in extending to the tactical operations centers Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET) connectivity that did not go there before so that we can begin to do the sharing.
Third, General Shea has an initiative under way I will let him talk about called the NCOE the, Net-centric Operating Environment, on how we might get—and he observes that of the seven major systems he was looking at, I think they had four separate milestone decision authorities and were being overseen by three separate services or agencies to find ways to come to closure on that.
As we go forward with that, though, it is worth considering where is the right balance between the creative interchange of ideas and the monopoly single point of view on the acquisition. And what seemed to us in some cases to be a slam-dunk case for a single joint electronic acquisition agency, if you will, and more reasoned discussions say perhaps there should be some kind of creative tension between having a monopoly or having this kind of tension. I will let the General talk about that a little bit more.
To answer your final point, have there been systems that have been stopped, I offer two. One I mentioned in my opening statement about the JC2, Joint Command and Control, the family of systems that are now called GCCS, and there is a GCCS Joint, and there is a GCCS A for Army and a GCCS M. These sorts of systems are going to converge into the future of JC2. So developmental money was taken out of GCCS, out of these legacy systems to get started on the development of JC2. And, in addition, the last block of GCCS that is being rolled out is being made net-centric in order to make it more easily transitionable to JC2 once that is available. I think that is a clear-cut example of how this process is migrating.
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In addition, any time a program comes up for milestone, milestone review in the acquisition process, it has to provide something called an information support plan which basically says, okay, I am planning to draw on the following information and provide the following information to the network in my program. We had a recent case of a major acquisition system that did not have a data link that was adequate to participate in the net-centric force, and we stopped that program from going forward until they made adjustments to put the data link on the program. It is now on there. It is not going to be here next year, it will be incorporated into the development, but yes, those are examples of what has happened.
General SHEA. Sir, one of the things we are taking a look at right now, it is still in the analysis process, is how do we field capabilities instead of things, and that is kind of the thrust of this effort that Dr. Wells was talking about, and how do we, working through the JCIDS process that Admiral Willard talked about for the chairman, and how do we get capabilities up to the line of scrimmage, so to speak, at about the same time so that we are fielding these capabilities across the services together rather than having one service way out in front of the other, because we really are building the equivalent of the operational internet. It doesn't do any good if the Army is networked but the Marines aren't, or if the Air Force is networked and the Navy isn't. So how do you get these capabilities out there at about the same time so you get the maximum benefit from what it is are trying to do.
So this effort we have right now, what we are looking at is how do we field these capabilities across multiple programs, or how do we field multiple programs, rather, and meld them into a capability. We are really still in the exploratory process of that, but it is an effort that we have going and are putting a lot of work into at this point in time, so that we are fielding capability instead of things.
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General WAGNER. If I could perhaps take an approach at it from an operator perspective, it kind of goes along with I think both of the questions, but it is really amazing how fast our view of what might be possible has changed. I think in each of our own homes we probably change rapidly the different computers we have had, whether we had a pager to a beeper and what is happening with our cell phones and commercial carriers, and so we look at how fast we have seen that develop.
If we look back to Desert Storm up to Iraqi Freedom, where we have had 42 times more of the bandwidth available, what that gives us is a phenomenonal power but it allowed us to capture capabilities in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) that we could not even have imagined. For example, precision munitions. Now, is this command and control? Well, it is. Because it relies on the information, the targeting, the position, to identify the target, to communicate the target, and then the ability to engage it.
So again, in Desert Storm, 8 percent precision. By the time you get to OIF, 66 percent. That is saving lives. That is putting the right weapon to the right target with precision information, information that came through this system to tell us where the target was and let us go engage it. A three-fold increase in the moving target indicator, the types of data we have available. In OIF, 3,200 hours of full mission video. What did we have in Desert Storm? Zero. These are incredible numbers.
So when we look down and we wonder why it has taken so long to change the systems, and we look down to the tactical level, and you are working with a guy who is working with a radio out of his backpack and has to operate with a battery that is in there, and who he or she needs to talk to somebody who is moving in an aircraft or on a ship or on a fixed base where they have tremendous bandwidth and power, each of these have a different requirement, a different mission, a different movement rate, a different threat. So we have to have a family of systems to provide the capability to communicate. I think that now we see the vision.
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Unfortunately, we have a legacy system, and if we could take a strategic pause and if we could have certainty about not just what happened 2 years back, but what will happen in the next 2 years, we could take the strategic pause. But, sir, as you mentioned, we are at war. So in the meantime we find ourselves in some cases having to continue to buy a legacy system to support the warrior while at the same time we are looking to those systems that pull together at the joint operational level, the command and control, the headquarters that are offering this.
So in our case we have to heavily focus on things like the deployable joint command and control suite, so we can provide a common system to our joint task force (JTF) headquarters that are operating. Why? Well, 4 years ago we had 10 JTFs operating. Now we have 24. The way we have done business is we have changed from a service way of operating to a joint way of operating, and we are trying to bring these joint capabilities to the battle space, not to the battlefield. But look at this in a broader context. How do we employ the information that is available? How do we employ the information that comes from the departments, the agencies and the coalition partners, so we can use the elements of the power of the nations, lethal and nonlethal, as opposed to bombs, artilleries, and tanks?
So this is all part of the same change but, unfortunately, we are a nation at war and we have soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines at risk every day, and we can't afford to stop fielding them with the legacy systems while we wait for our vision for the future. So it is frustrating. It is as frustrating to us as it is to you, because anything we put into a legacy system is a dollar we would rather put to a future system. But it is identifying—so we have to phase one out and bring one in. That is the careful balance that all four of us work at each and every day as we try to tailor this future capability.
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Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, and I appreciate what each of you have said and I don't want to take more time, but let me just end with this. General, I think that is a very important point. There is a lot about this I do not understand, but I have spent the last couple of years focused just on cyber security and research and development from Homeland Security. I think I have some appreciation for how fast this stuff changes, the technology, as well as the threat, in some ways, when you are looking at cyber security, and I think part of the reason that we think it is our job to push you is that it looks like the technology and the threat are changing faster than our bureaucratic processes can keep up with, and that is what worries us on this side of the table.
General WAGNER. Another simple example, awareness and tracking, which is, of course, a concern to all of us. When General Franks started, there were two primary systems that he had to integrate, a family of blue force trackers, and through a system of SIPRNET and translators and what not we were able to merge those into a common picture. From when he started until now, we have been able to bring in eight more systems with the potential of bringing in many more using the same technology. It wasn't buying new hardware, it was through a technology, a simple technology that changed the way you looked at these things from a digital correlation that gave you 10 million correlations per second now to an optical one that gives you 40 billion. What an incredible change.
So we have this available now. This next month we are taking it to Central Command (CENTCOM) to give them a capability to integrate all of these additional sensors that they didn't have. So there are many real term successes, just as I gave you the earlier ones. This is an incredible aspect to technology that we were able to field.
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Dr. WELLS. One of the most impressive things I have seen recently is Joint Forces Command has stood up a new command called the Joint Systems Integration Command that is designed to look at how applications fielded in different theaters do or do not apply, and also to capture commercial ideas and turn them quickly into programs of record so that—when we field a program, it is not enough just to take technology and put it on somebody's desk. There needs to be a training pipeline and a logistics tail that goes with it so we can sustain the warfighters across multiple theaters.
General, would you want to talk about JSIC?
General WAGNER. Sir, I would love to talk about it.
JSIC is a Joint System Integration Command at our Suffolk facility heavily supported by civilians and contractors. In this building, 86,000 square feet, we have 127 miles of optical fiber cable and 65 miles of copper, but we have the ability to store 110 terabytes. That is about one-tenth of the internet.
What this allows us to do is bring in at the same time every single service command and control system, link them up and repeat the iterations to see if the data is interoperable between the systems, and bring in the system managers and fix it on the spot. In the past you could have never done anything close to this, finding mistakes in the field. Again, this is all brand new within the past year, but it is incredible capability for the Department, and also bringing in coalition partners to look at their systems.
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So it is an amazing capability. You can take any computer and put it on a disk and without moving a single wire you can change its operating system perhaps from UNIX to Windows on the spot, to bring in any system, put it there and test it in a rigorous environment.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I apologize for taking so much time. I have some follow-up questions I would like to submit for the record.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much. Let me just follow up on my three colleagues' questions.
From what I was able to glean from your answers—and I do not propose to be any kind of an expert in this field, but an interested observer at least. From what I heard in your answers to the inquiries, I was able to, I think, pick out three areas why this appears to be very difficult.
One is that we have legacy systems in place. We have systems that operate and people that are trained to operate the systems, and therefore, in order to continue to operate, we have to have legacy systems. And I believe you said that we are even acquiring additional legacy systems. So this is one part of the answer, because we have to have them.
The second part of the answer is that we can't all have new systems at the same time because we are at war and we have to take time to train people to do new things with new systems. Is that fair?
The third thing I heard you say, I think, is that change occurs so fast in the field of technology that by the time this year's changes take place, we start to look ahead at next year's and the year after that, then we have a whole new set of changes that we need to implement in terms of acquiring technology. And, therefore, we never kind of get caught up, because we continue to chase technology. Therefore, based on these three—these three things that I think I heard, you all conclude that we are doing the best that we can.
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General WAGNER. I am sure they will have a better answer than mine, but my response to you, Mr. Chairman, is that what we did not have before is the vision and ability to get to a global information capability and network force—the power to let us take that information from the bottom level to the top level, the ability to collaborate—and those things are entering into the force. And our job is to merge those systems, just as we have been able to take the legacy Blue Force interoperating systems and, through the data management, merge them.
The word ''legacy'' is not always bad. We are able to work with a lot of the systems and bring them into a network capability. But, again, when we look through the joint mission threats and we take a mission threat from the top to the bottom, whether it is time-sensitive targeting or joint fighters, and look at all the things that have to connect to make that system work, those are the things that are happening right now. So we are not waiting for the future to give us the capability of the network force.
Some of the system is a weight on us until we transform it or get rid of it, divest of it, but that does not mean that the capability is being terminated. Fair?
Admiral WILLARD. Sir, one of the things that has come out in the line of questioning has to do with what we are divesting ourselves of in order to reach our future vision, and divestiture is going on as well. And I will give you one example, or a couple of examples, if I may.
We discussed global command and control system, GCCS, as the common operational picture that, by and large, the services use. And while I say that, there are other variations of the same theme out there, generally interoperable, to give us the Cop that our joint force needs. There were three rather competing programs—one termed ''family of interoperable pictures,'' one termed ''single integrated ground picture,'' one termed ''single integrated air picture''—alongside global command and control. And our vision is that we would ultimately settle on an answer for joint command and control, JC2, which is our future vision.
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We terminated the family of interoperable pictures, the single integrated ground picture program. We retained only single integrated air picture, because it had some systems engineering attributes that we wanted to ensure could inform the Cop that we would use in JC2. And so we are leveraging that in the JCIDS process right now, trying to merge the best of the SIAP, the single integrated air picture, with the family of global command and control system to ultimately reach our vision for JC2. These things are ongoing now. But, again, two programs terminated.
Likewise, in trying to manage ourselves to the future capabilities, the joint integrated tactical radio, JTRS, which we are all familiar with, is a program the first version of which has had some difficulties. But in the meantime, as we are developing the JTRS radio family, there has been a demand that we request waivers to purchase any legacy radio systems as we are progressing toward JTRS. And those waiver requests in this current operations environment, have been especially from the Army, forwarded on a periodic basis to the acquisition authority for permission to purchase legacy.
So we are attempting to control the new legacy buys on our way to the future vision of the future system that we desire.
Dr. WELLS. With regard to the waivers, this committee expressed an interest in the waiver process, and I wrote a letter to Chairman Hunter on the 20th of January explaining the acceleration that we had put into the waiver process to make sure that warfighters are not denied what they need, but also to not just give us and continue to buy only legacy systems, there is a balance there; and once new systems are available, to replace them.
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We will ask that the new systems be bought to meet the warfighter needs. In the meantime, we have to provide in this time of war what they need, and that is what this waiver does.
Three quick things in terms of, are we doing the best we can? There have been a number of changes in the past year that perhaps may not be everyday. My organization, Networks and Information Integration, last year did a series of net-centric reviews. We looked at programs to see, are they in fact moving to net-centric? Are they stovepipe? Stand-alone? Should they be terminated or modified? And those were done largely independent of the rest of the Department. What we are doing this year, in partnership with my colleagues at this table, is aligning these reviews with these processes, so that we get into the capabilities development early, the net-centric requirements; so that those future systems coming out will be, from the beginning, born joint, born net-centric.
We are working with the acquisition process so that when a program manager is coming up on a milestone decision, rather than walking in on the decision and saying, You failed, you did not get the criteria; several months ahead of time, we will get to them and say, ''This is what you need to do in order to be net-centric. It is an open-book test; let's work together to succeed''. And with regard to the programming, planning, budgeting, when the end-of-the-year program reviews are done to see if those can be done not just on a program-by-program basis, but a capability basis to look across individual programs to pull together. We are trying to take these processes and integrate them.
The second point is that these processes are newer than a lot of people realize. The JCIDS process—Admiral Willard can talk to this—is only 20 months old. The acquisition process, the 5000 series instructions to govern it, were completely rewritten in the past couple of years. Even the PPBE process is new—the planning, programming and budgeting, where the planning piece has been significantly expanded. So the processes of the Department are trying to change to become more net-centric. And the final piece reflected in the budget, in the review of the 20O6 program that was reviewed in the Department and is being submitted to the President to come forward, the balance between platforms and networks were considered very carefully. And traditionally in these environments, it has been on platforms. And in this review, increasingly it is the network, and the platform is the node in a network, not a stand-alone thing, that was significantly emphasized. And I think you will see more of that across the 2006 budget in the future.
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General SHEA. Sir, I would just like to make a comment about what Representative Thornberry said about the IA. That information assurance piece, that is one of the things that keeps me awake at night; and as we move to this network-centric world that we are talking about, the ability to protect the network grid becomes our Achilles heel.
So we are paying a lot of attention. We have a campaign plan what we call our Joint C4 Campaign plan that we put together with the Joint Staff in conjunction with the services and the combatant commands. And we feel that the information assurance piece, the computer network defense piece, is so important that we are building a separate annex for that plan. We have already got a rough done. If someone wants to see that, we would be happy to share that with you. But your comment is something that I take very seriously, and everybody at this table does, because it really is our Achilles heel; and we really do have an agile potential adversary out there, and it does not take a lot to cause us a challenge.
Mr. KLINE [presiding]. We have been joined by Mr. Langevin. Do you care to inquire?
Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, gentlemen, thank you for your testimony today. Some of the questions that I have you probably have already touched on; and I am going to ask them for the record, and if you could expand upon them, I would appreciate it.
In the area—there has been a great deal of criticism over the past several years over how the Navy has handled the build-out and implementation of the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). Most recently, there have been problems with its inability to run or support DOD's common operating environment, and therefore, it can't support the joint global command and control system, a crucial part of net-centricity of the joint warfighting command.
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Can you tell me the status of NMCI, and is this in any way indicative of how other services are implementing their networks? And does WIN–T or C2 have similar issues with interoperability?
General SHEA. You know, sir, we will get back to you on this, but I really do not think it is an interoperability issue per se. I think it is the way some of the service level agreements and the way perhaps the contract was constructed that are causing some of those challenges.
We need to find a way—and if I am wrong, we will get back to you on that, but we need to find a way to be more agile so that we can respond in a timely manner to operational situations that mandate the speed that we need to be able to connect into the network from an operational perspective.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Anyone else?
Dr. WELLS. Let me introduce Major General Marilyn Quagliotti, the Deputy Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency. May I have her speak to you?
General QUAGLIOTTI. To address your question, it is true that we ran into issues with GCCS operating on the Navy-Marine Corps internet in PACOM. And it is also true, from General Shea's comments, that it had more to do with how the contract was constructed and the hardware that was on the contract than it did with whether or not the network itself was interoperable.
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I hope that answers your question, sir.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Sure. If you have additional information to forward for the record, we would appreciate that.
General SHEA. We will do that.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Dr. Wells and Lieutenant General Shea, there have also been reports this month that the future development of the joint tactical radio system has been halted due to delays and cost overruns, and sources claim that the delay could be almost 2 years and cost overruns could be an additional $29 million.
Can you tell us more about these reports and give us an update on the status of JTRS?
Dr. WELLS. Let me start. Later this year, the joint tactical radio system is being developed in a series of clusters, and cluster One is being developed by the Army and deals with helicopter and vehicle-borne radios. Cluster Two is being developed by Special Operations Command and deals primarily with handheld. Clusters Three and Four were combined, Air Force and Navy did the air, maritime fixed radios. And cluster Five is for disadvantaged users such as handheld wearable embedded types of computing.
The problem you are referring to has to do with cluster One. And there is an early operational assessment that is going to be conducted in a few months and milestone decision authority on this program, who is Mr. Wynne, the Under Secretary for Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics, put a hold on funding that did not directly relate to the early operational assessment, although additional funding along the wave forms for other JTRS clusters and things like that. So what he wanted to do was make sure that he saw how the result of the EOA, the early operational assessment, came out and decide where to go.
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At the same time, Mr. Wynne in January restructured management of the program in response to a report provided to Congress last year, which is to put the different clusters under more centralized management under the joint program executive officer; and so I expect that will also bring returns with this as well.
The other clusters—Cluster Two is doing very well. Cluster AMF is early in the process. Cluster Five is beginning the spiral development of its first spiral radio. So we are focusing on fixing Cluster One.
General SHEA. Sir, what we have also got going on is what we refer to as an analysis of alternatives with JTRS. And, as Dr. Wells said, that analysis of alternatives, which will be completed late fall, will really inform us if we do have the right strategy in buying these clusters or organizing the clusters that the current program has.
We are also taking a look—it is also looking at the costs of how we are doing this. Are we getting the biggest bang for our buck? Have we tried to do too many things with this radio too fast, or should we take more of a spiral approach to what is going on? And it is also looking at the different wave forms. And by wave forms—what this radio really is, it is taking multiple radios and, through the use of software, making one radio. So we are trying to see if we tried to make this radio too many things too fast. And that is what this analysis of alternatives will do, it will help us say, we have got the right strategy, or we need to make some modifications to the strategy that we currently have.
Mr. LANGEVIN. When is that report going to be?
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General SHEA. November. The final report will be out in November, sir.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Will you be able to forward that to us?
General SHEA. Yes, sir, we will.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you.
[The information referred to can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. KLINE. I thank the gentleman.
Do you have more questions? The gentlewoman is recognized.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Remember the Ed Sullivan show? One of my favorite groups on the Ed Sullivan Show were the plate spinners. Remember the plate spinners? They get up to four or five plates going, and all the sudden number one would go wobbly on them.
I share your pain, my colleagues that are frustrated. But I also think that from what I am hearing today, understanding that we have made huge technology leaps and understanding that we have gone from, basically, stovepipes to joint systems, we have gone from joint to network, we have to really, understand that we are in a plate-spinning business right now because we are at war. And that is what legacy systems are about. And we have got to keep some of these plates going, because we have real needs on the ground to protect our soldiers and Marines specifically, but obviously, tactically, everyone around the military.
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To add French porcelain to the plates, we have an extra challenge. It is not just that we have jointness, we now have a global environment that includes allies and coalition partners. So we have upped the ante again. What exactly, Dr. Wells and gentlemen, are we doing to move our interoperability into the next sphere of rotation, which is basically the coalition, those others who do not all speak English, by the way?
General WAGNER. I will tell you that 3 years ago, JFCOM had somewhere around six—we now have them from 30 and 55. And, of course, you are familiar with allies and the command of joint forces, joint experimentation. And our concept and our technology is being done in partnership with the coalition environment that we now have—this is incredible—each week we have another country who is asking to participate in this. And this is not a one-way participation. There are other countries with tremendous technology capabilities that we are interested in getting their knowledge, their insights as well. So I will tell you that I think we are doing a wonderful job of moving from where we were just a few years ago and where we are now in terms of building this coalition partnership.
And an example in the current warfight would be, how do you do time-sensitive targeting? We introduced the collaboration tool that did not exist that they could use on our net-centric system that allows them to, every day, continuously collaborate across the nations and share their information in a manner that they did not have. Again, we introduced the technology after the war started. So I think we are making great progress in partnership with the coalition partners.
And again, looking to the future, it is not just trying what we have now; it is informing the future of the things that we will develop as well as what we currently have.
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General SHEA. Yes, ma'am. Right now, from the areas that I cover and am responsible to the chairman for, we have allies that are strongly involved and heavily involved in the JTRS program, which will be the keystone for our transformation, as well as—we also have them involved in the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) program, as well, if I am not mistaken.
As far as information sharing among the coalition partners, we have recently stood up an office called Multinational Information Sharing. And the purpose of that program is to look across the different coalitions and our coalition partners and to develop a capability that will allow us to share information with the various partners based upon the relationship that we have with those respective nations.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Could I interrupt you for a second?
Does that include security filtering?
General SHEA. Yes, ma'am, it will.
Ms. TAUSCHER. So the gates and guards are basically——
General SHEA. Yes, ma'am, it will. And that is what really makes it a challenge; because when you look at our friends and our partners, we have different relationships with different countries, and that is really what makes this all a challenge. And so it is not as easy as putting a box in place and saying, we are going to be able to share the information. So we are moving—and that is being stood up as a formal program within the Department.
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Admiral WILLARD. I would just point out that the centric system that we are currently using, and that is the program of record, was derivative from a former system that had an air gap and delay factor in it whenever we were trying to share secure information with our coalition partners.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Like the famous Janet Jackson 30-second delay?
Admiral WILLARD. This was literally a download on a disk, put it in another server, and upload it in order to communicate it to the coalition partner. In that way, it ensured that whatever amount of filtering was done could be done by an operator.
We are past that now and centrics does provide some of the fire-wall characteristics that you were referring to. And it is more than just data. It includes common operational pictures. It includes voice-over information protocal (IP) and techniques like that. So we have a pretty robust coalition-sharing architecture in play right now in theater. And multinational information sharing, which the Navy has been made executive agent for, is embedded in the JCIDS process where the Joint Requirements Oversight Council is intending to take receipt of a plan that the Navy has to come forward with to advance us beyond centrics.
Dr. WELLS. If I could amplify a little bit.
The key to this, again, is the data strategy. And the data strategy has been designed from the beginning to allow for unanticipated users to join the network. In other words, you don't have to have fought through from the beginning. Everybody is going to be on there.
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Moreover the U.S. and the NATO network-enabled capabilities data strategy is extraordinarily close. And I was, last November, at NATO Command and Control Board, OCQ Board in Brussels. And in Afghanistan we have both U.S. and NATO forces operating. We are working on a common operational picture pilot work in the Allied Command Transformation, Admiral Giambastiani's other half, using this data strategy.
But there is another piece that has become evident in Iraq and Afghanistan and tsunami relief. That is that DOD has got to be able to communicate, collaborate, translate and sustain engagements beyond the dot-mil domain, with the U.S. Interagency, with the international organizations non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and commercial partners.
Ms. TAUSCHER. You need to have the ID in there perhaps.
Dr. WELLS. In some cases we may never let them inside our fire walls. This may have to be an air gap for that kind of system. We either push to them, or as long as we say, put it through the following virus detection software, we will bring it in. There are three parts to this and one is capabilities, which shouldn't be too hard. We will all be largely relying on commercial capabilities. But there is a sociological part to this. People who can both speak military and speak NGO or speak interagency or whatever. That is something that we are working very hard to develop.
We found in Indonesia in the tsunami relief that we had people experienced with the nongovernmental organizations in the Balkans and that allows them to work better with our military people and, in some cases, facilitate information exchange that hadn't existed before. And then there is a doctrinal piece. It is important for the U.S. military to plan for these kind of operations. Admiral Giambastiani at Joint Forces Command used the term ''Joint with a capital J.'' others used the term ''integrated operations.'' the point is, U.S. interagency, international organizations, NGO, are as much a part of our mission statement, if you will, as is joint military combined coalition.
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So I think we are making enormous progress on a number of fronts, and we can see how it goes.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. KLINE. I am going to shamelessly take advantage of having the gavel here for a minute and pursue maybe from a different angle—the same bone, the same dog, but coming at it from a different angle. And I can't help but look at General Shea just because we shared some common pain a number of years ago, but anybody can jump into this.
But I want to use the example again that the Marine Corps went through almost 20 years ago as we were trying to decide what computers to buy. We were looking for the perfect system in order to put out there Marine Corps-wide. And while we were deliberating through the process, the system wouldn't wait and Marines did what soldiers and sailors and airmen do. They went out and bought some systems, so we ended up with kind of a mess.
So the question is, do we have to sit here and wait for the perfect system? Can't we—as General Shea said earlier, can't we spiral out some of these systems when the technology is better and take advantage of what we have right now? I am frankly afraid if we wait for the perfect system—we don't know what that system is. I mean, even now, as we look to what this vision is, the technology is changing; and by the time we figure out what it is and decide to buy it, it has gone past us again.
The question is, can't we spiral out these technologies in a way to get them in the field and start using them and not keep ourselves too bound up and waiting for the perfect system?
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General SHEA. Sir, I think that is exactly what we are embarking on right now. I think we will see with the JTRS, when all is said and done, that we will decide that we can't do all things at one time; but let's get the core capabilities out and build on it as we go out.
I think you are seeing that—I do not want to steal General Wagner's thunder, but I think that is where we are headed with JC2. We have GCCS, and we will spiral into the—from GCCS into the JC2 program.
That is one of the things we have learned, we can't hit a home run every time. We haven't been very good at doing that. So we need to put pieces out and build on the pieces and increase capability. And in a lot of cases we are in a learning process as we go along. We may not get it perfect, but we need to put some capability out there, prioritize what that capability is—and that is what the JCIDS process is all about—and then move out in an incremental manner in many cases.
Mr. KLINE. If I could interrupt, it seems like we sort of stumbled into this with the JTRS system. Why can't we make that a policy? I mean, JTRS is a couple of years behind schedule. Why can't we say, ''Look, what we are going to do is, we are going to spiral out this capability and get it out there to the troops that need it now and not what seems to me to be bound up waiting for that future system.''
Admiral WILLARD. Sir, I would answer you two ways. Number one, we are spiraling in many more ways than just the JTRS clusters. Future combat system, the Army modernization program, is a series of spirals where they are going to establish a degree of risk, let industry demonstrate what they are capable of, and as the capabilities demonstrate themselves, then take it into testing and attempt to—take it into rapid acquisition.
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But there is a difference, I think. For several years, we have been advancing our networks in the fashion that you allude to. We have learned that networks are different than applications. And while the applications have to be formulated to meet our needs in our various warfighting environments—and commercial applications for our systems do not necessarily do that—the networks themselves in terms of the computer on the desk, the servers and so forth are, in fact, in many cases commercial, off the shelf.
Where we begin to diverge with industry is in areas like information assurance, where we have to protect our systems from attack in ways that commercial industry does not, and in the applications that are military-peculiar applications and the formulation of those.
General WAGNER. Dr. Wells asked me earlier to comment on the headquarters we stood up, the joint systems integration command. One of its primary responsibilities is to take common off-the-shelf technologies and prototype that and put it in the field rapidly.
A few examples where we have done that, one is a system that provided command and control for commanders. So when you leave your office, en route, wherever you would stop on the way, you would still have access to the SIPRNET, Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET), Base Transition Coordinator (BTC) capability, all the capability that you have in your office. That was fielded, and the first version we fielded was about the size of these two desks together. The next was a quarter the size of one desk. And the next version was in a suitcase. So we were getting more capability with less space.
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As you look to the deployable joint command and control suite, which is the kind of suite that the Department is building so that each of the combatant commanders will have common command and control system for their headquarters, increment one is being fielded with GCCSJ; increment two will be JC2.
Going along with that change, the first system goes out there again with heavy boxes, the wired boxes, and you have things that weigh the size of a full pallet, heave weight. Then it goes on to IP technology and you have the same thing down to a shoe box in size. So there are so many examples of where these things are happening real time. We probably can only convey to you a small example, but not represent the reality of how fast the spirals are coming to the field.
Mr. KLINE. I thank you. I would just like to think that we are doing it as a matter of policy, if you will, and not that we are stumbling into it in an ad hoc way. I guess I have chewed that bone about as much as a can. I very much appreciate your answers, and I want to allow Mr. Langevin a follow-up question.
Ms. Tauscher? I know the hour is running late.
Ms. TAUSCHER. I am happy.
Mr. KLINE. I think the chairman is back self-medicating someplace. I hope he is doing well. I thank everyone for attending, the witnesses—it is great, and this is a discussion that could go on for a long time.
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Dr. Wells.
Dr. WELLS. If I could make one point that has not been part of the tactical command and control discussion to one extent. But we have a satellite called TSAT, the transformational satellite, and I want to make the point of the criticality of this satellite to our future system.
It really provides a set of capabilities that are essential to our ability to communicate with the joint force. It provides more bandwidth on demand, connectivity, empowers mobile users, reduces communications bottlenecks. It is far out; it is going to be a 2013 launch. But this vision of getting a global ability to meet command common to move is—TSAT is essential to that. It is consistent with each of the service's joint vision, and provides real-time connectivity across the information global information grid. As I say, common to move; although not tactical C4 in today's sense, it is an very important part of where we are going.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Mr. Chairman, if I could make a suggestion, and Ms. Dinh can be the continuity agent here. I think that there is a lot of ''aw shucks'' stuff out there that we need to see. And all of us who have been to Iraq a number of times—even in the last year, I have seen completely different things that are stunning me and pleasing me at the same time. And we need to consider having the subcommittee come out to see you and make sure that our head is in the game too, that we understand how difficult it is to spin plates at the same time, that there is a natural evolution of technology out there that is lifting us up, but at the same time causing havoc in the ability to pick and choose.
But I am impressed by the things I heard today about jointness, and globalism and, obviously, interoperability have been embedded for a long time. But I think you get it. I think that you get that this has not necessarily been the smartest way for us to do things in the past, but I think that we understand now that we have real people at risk and we have real investments that we have to make. And the rubber has to meet the road here and we have to get this right. And I think we have to come out and see it. So I am hoping that we will have a trip out there to do it.
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Dr. WELLS. We would welcome that.
General WAGNER. We would welcome you and other members of the committee to come to Joint Forces Command to see what we have out there. It is incredible.
Ms. TAUSCHER. We should do that.
General WAGNER. It is interesting, you start out doing something, for example, modeling simulation capability; and then you show it to a warfighting JTF commander, and he says, I could use this for mission rehearsals now. And it is exciting to see something turn from an idea, to an experiment, to the field.
We would like to share that with you, ma'am.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you. We will see if we could do that.
Mr. SAXTON [presiding]. I am sorry I had to leave. I was just about to ask another question before I had my coughing fit. Anyway, we really appreciate all the good work that you guys are doing, and if it sounds like we are just critical, we do not mean it that way.
You mentioned the Joint Systems Integration Command, which reminded me of another question that Uyen briefed me up on here. The question is this:
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Some recent studies have apparently questioned whether the existing management structure in DOD is conducive to joint development and have advocated that the government establish a new joint development organization with the authority to acquire and budget for C4 systems. From an investment and oversight point of view, is this something you need or is this Joint Systems Integration Command something that you put in place to accomplish that task?
Dr. WELLS. Mr. Chairman, I think this is an issue that all of us are keenly aware of, and I will defer here to General Shea in just a moment.
But it is during the course of—of course, this is the year for the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), I don't know whether that particular question will get on the table in the QDR, but we at our levels are asking ourselves, how can you best acquire joint electronic equipment? We know how to buy tanks and ships and planes. We are still learning to buy joint electronic interoperable things.
Is the right answer a single agency that is a monopoly and does everything? Is the right answer some kind of creative tension between a small number of centers of excellence? I don't know the answer. I can't speak for the Secretary in terms of where we will come out on it, but this is on the table during this year.
General SHEA. Sir, as you pointed out, some of us think that that is a challenge as well. And we are working right now to look at how we might address that issue. We haven't taken it beyond the joint staff level right now, but we are looking at alternatives out there, how we might make this process better. And trying to weigh the pros and cons of doing something of this nature. Or looking at different alternatives out there.
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The bottom line of what we are doing is, we recognize that we are not as agile as we need to be. And we maybe do not have the synergism that we need. This is what I would characterize as taking a look at continuous process improvement and how we might make the process better than it is today instead of sitting back and saying, Hey, we are happy with what we have got.
Dr. WELLS. The Secretary last fall had in a group of industry chief information officers, talked about how world class Information Age Chief Information Officers (CIOs) did things; and we learned a lot. But in the follow-on discussions with these folks, the question was the applicability of some of these industry lessons to an organization that the DOD budget actually puts us among the 50 largest GDPs in the world—in some respects more of an economy than it is a company. And somebody said, ''We are just like Wal-Mart, except every store was mobile, the competition fires ordnance at you, and Christmas comes randomly on any given day.''
How do you take examples that work beautifully in the commercial world and put them in an environment when the carrier from the Pacific needs to show up and interoperate, the minute it arrives, with the carrier from the Atlantic in the Persian Gulf? And it is those issues of scale and interoperability, as we have all said, the legacy, maintaining the legacy, that we are trying to balance to find—we have got to do better.
We think we are doing better than we did a year ago, but we have people's lives on the lines; and as we try to do better, we have to meet their needs today. That is what we are trying to do.
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Mr. SAXTON. Is there anything that you know of in Title 10 that creates an impediment to acquiring effective C4 joint capabilities? That is our job to change that. If there is something in your way, we ought to get it out of your way.
Dr. WELLS. Let me take that for the record. But I personally believe that the Secretary has all the authorities that he needs to structure the Department, in this case, the way he wants to, between the Clinger-Cohen legislation, the Title 40, the Title 10.
I will take that question for the record.
[The information referred to can be viewed in the hard copy.]
General WAGNER. If I could give a little bit different answer to the same question, the term C4—command, control computers, communications—to a degree, we have focused on hardware in a lot of the questions. But the reality is that the issue is much broader than that.
It is the process of any of these entities together, the capability that lets you see, sense, feel, understand, and knowledge and how it affects base operations. A lot of that goes beyond just technology, the hardware piece.
And you should feel proud of the way that that has happened. What we are doing is changing the culture, and I know there is some discussion about, are they good or not. But again it is another one of the issues of the open book test. What we are doing is socializing at a very senior level before ideas are put to pen to create how they should be, how they have to fit into the future system.
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So I think you should feel very good about the fact that it is broader than just an understanding of the hardware. It is how to do you deploy that hardware, and how do you think, how do you operate in a joint way? This is probably the training aspect of it, joint organize, train, and equip. We have spent a lot of time today on the ''equip,'' but there is also the organization piece that is enabled by this, and that too is advancing forward extraordinarily fast. I think if you were to sit in some of these meetings with the Joint Battle Management Command and Control board of directors and sense the fact that we all feel—as you said, we get it. We are moving in the right way.
We have changed this from where services buy, organize, train and equip and buy those things to do a service thing, to how you do this for the joint command and control headquarters and the joint forces. Because we have changed; we have changed from operating as a service force to a joint force. And that too is advancing, just as you have seen as we talked to the technology piece.
Dr. WELLS. This is an extraordinarily exciting area, and I think all of us feel privileged to have the chance to participate in a seminal period in our Defense Department and, in fact, the Nation's technology change. So it is actually fascinating.
Mr. SAXTON. We should be really proud of the way that we can develop and use technology in this country.
Ms. TAUSCHER. That is right.
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Dr. WELLS. To leverage the private sector.
Mr. SAXTON. Absolutely. I was in an antique store the other day, and I was looking at an oil lamp, a kerosene lamp. And I looked up and saw the light bulbs lighting the store and it reminded me of all the things that we have developed in this country in the last 100 years that enable us to have the kind of life we have, to win wars that we win.
And while we seem grumpy about the speed with which we are implementing change in the world of technology, we really are not. We are really pretty proud of what you do and what our society does and what industry does to provide the technology that helps us do what we do. So thanks for what you are doing.
Dr. WELLS. Appreciate the support, sir.
Mr. SAXTON. You are part of the creative folks that help implement those changes. Thank you.
Ms. TAUSCHER. Hope you feel better, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. I got over my coughing fit. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much for being mere. If we have any other questions, we will send them over for the record.
And the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:40 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]