Geospatial Deputy Brings Soldier’s Perspective
Written by Harrison Donnelly
GIF 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 (July/August)
By Building Relationships Between Tactical Units and the
Army Geospatial Center, CW5 Harper Ensures That
Resources Are Focused on What Warfighters Really Need.
As they go about the mission of the Army Geospatial Center frequently come up with new ideas for geospatial products and services for the warfighter. But figuring out how to get those ideas from the development lab to the battlefield can be a challenge. Bridging the gap from lab to field is one of the key roles played by CW5 Michael Harper, who brings years of experience as an Army geospatial engineering technician (formerly terrain analysis technician) and a terrain analyst to his current role as military deputy to the AGC.
Harper is more than a liaison—or even an “interpreter,” as he puts it—between soldiers and scientists, however. He also serves as a key ambassador and advocate to the senior ranks of the Army, with whom he spends a lot of time talking about the importance of providing soldiers with high resolution terrain data, particularly in the urban and complex terrain environments in which they are engaged today.
Harper recently summed up his job this way: “What I do as a military deputy and adviser to the center is to provide technical advice to Army senior leaders on all aspects of Army geospatial engineering, and advise the director, deputy director and the directorate chiefs on Army geospatial engineering requirements, operations, doctrine, training and crisis support. Additionally, I manage about seven other military personnel, who are geospatial engineers that I employ across the organization, wherever they’re needed, to help researchers or geographers in understanding where their technology best fits in the Army, or understanding how soldiers would actually use that product out in the field. The soldiers also assist in the fielding and new equipment training (NET) for programs like the Digital Topographic Support System (DTSS), the Army’s fielded GIS capability.
“A lot of times, we will have a scientist or engineer who has a good idea and produces something really exciting that could really help soldiers,” Harper continued. “He knows that the idea could help soldiers, but he’s not sure where it connects. What I try to do is to make those connections happen, either by directing that scientist technology best fits, or bringing in soldiers to ask how they might use it.
"My main focus lately has been on buliding relationships between tactical units and the AGC, to ensure that we focus our resources on things that soldiers really need. I also talk to senior leaders about the power of having a geospatial enterprise at the heart of our Army battle command systems, so that soldiers can share information seamlessly from tactical to national and horizontally across the battlefield,” Harper said.
TERRAIN ANALYST
Harper’s career preparation for his current position included being a customer of the Topographic Engineering Center, as the AGC was previously known. “I had experience in knowing what they did and produced, but I didn’t know a lot about the organization and the processes. So it made it an easy transition, because I knew what they had delivered to me in the field, and how responsive the organization was to my needs as a customer. I had some ideas when I got here as to what I’d like to see or improvements that I thought we could make,” he recalled.
Geospatial engineer warrant officers and geospatial engineers serve in almost every formation across the Army, from brigade combat teams to the Army service component command level, and a few at the combatant commands. Harper started out as an Army terrain analyst in the collection section of the 18th Airborne Corps Terrain Team, where he performed on-site collection of the essential elements of terrain information.
“I conducted road and bridge, airfield and stream reconnaissance and gathered tactical terrain data in support of the intelligence preparation of the battlefield process,” he said. “After several assignments as a terrain analyst non-commissioned officer at various Army echelons, I became a warrant officer (terrain analysis tech) and led Army geospatial teams (formerly called terrain analysis teams) at the division, corps and service component command levels. The purpose of our terrain teams was to primarily provide terrain analysis and terrain visualization to support the commander and staff—to enable the maneuver commander to visualize his battlespace and make more informed tactical decisions.”
Harper’s career has spanned major technological transitions, from the days when physical overlays were used to present terrain information to the commander and staff sophisticated software systems of today. What has not changed, however, is the high-stakes role of the geospatial engineer. “There are lots of geographers and GEOINT professionals who prepare products and data within the DoD for various purposes. The difference is that Army geospatial engineers use NGA-provided foundation data; value-add by collecting all-source intelligence information through our close relationship with our military intelligence partners, combine that with operations data from the battlestaff, and produce tailored mission-specific geospatial products in direct support of Army tactical operations. There is a huge difference between producing a map or city graphic to be used by soldiers and producing a geospatial product that supports a specific direct action mission. The latter requires a thorough understanding of Army capabilities, weapons systems, and tactics, techniques and procedures, and is part skill and part military art.
“There’s a significant difference between making a map product and developing geospatial tactical decision aids that enable a commander to visualize and understand the impacts of the terrain on a particular operation.”
AMAZING THINGS
Harper’s position gives him an excellent viewpoint from which to assess the current role of geospatial technology in military operations. Mostly, what he sees is good.
“I’m really impressed by the caliber of soldiers in the Army today, and their ability to adapt technology to their mission. We have soldiers who are doing amazing things downrange every day,” he said. “As GIS technology has improved and become more accessible, soldiers come in contact with geospatial technology both on and off duty—just as we all do with GPS in our cars or GIS services for other things. If you go back five to 10 years, the only people who used GIS in the field in our Army were geospatial teams and maybe military intelligence soldiers. Now, you see GIS used extensively across all branches of the Army in some form or fashion.”
In Iraq for example, Harper met two PSYOPS reservists, selftrained in GIS technology, who had created an Internet mapping service to support their mission. More recently, he continued, “I ran across an infantry captain serving in a tactical operations center as a planner, who told me that he needed GIS software to more effectively do his job. That was incredible to me, that an infantry officer was asking for GIS software, and knew what to do with it.”
Still, Harper reports that soldiers continue to be frustrated at times by a lack of interoperability between battle command systems. “Because of that lack of interoperability, and stovepiped databases, soldiers who work in tactical operations centers have to perform a lot of work-arounds or data translations in order to accomplish the mission and make things appear seamless, to present the best common operating picture to the commander. With an enterprise solution across the force, we can help that a great deal.”
Harper sees positive signs that that enterprise view is taking hold across the force. Organizations are developing small scale enterprise solutions to support their missions, and soldiers understand the technology and want to use it in their missions.
“We’ve just got to do a better job at developing an overall DoD and service architecture that supports that,” he said. “The challenge is in the development of an overall enterprise strategy that works from tactical to national and national to tactical. We can learn a lot from city county and state GIS programs that have created successful enterprise solutions for government.”
What’s also frustrating, he added, is that the technology to do a department-wide enterprise solution exists today. The challenge is in educating people to what’s in the realm of the possible, and adapting our institutions and programs quickly enough to put that capability out there.
Harper concluded with this vision: “If we can get the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Defense Information Systems Agency to serve all of NGA’s information in an enterprise environment at a point of presence in theater, so that there’s one portal for the services to connect to, and the Army can adapt its enterprise solution, from the handheld device to the platform to the tactical operations center, back to the NGA- and DISA-provided point of presence, so that we can create one seamless enterprise solution that enables data sharing to occur, both vertically and horizontally, that has incredible power. It will improve soldiers’ situational awareness and save lives.” ♦
