Intelligence Integration
Written by Peter Buxbaum
GIF 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 (February)
New versions of Distributed Common Ground
System are making it more joint and more
amenable to be managed as an enterprise.
A young corporal standing on a street corner in Afghanistan uses a handheld device to take a photo of a suspicious vehicle. That image makes its way across a multi-service intelligence network known as the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), and is displayed on the desktop of a stateside analyst. Video intelligence generated by a Predator UAV is transmitted to the same analyst and then back to the theater to the same handheld device carried by the same corporal.
These are examples of how U.S. warfighters in Afghanistan are benefiting from the continued evolution of the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS). As these scenarios illustrate, DCGS facilitates the transmission of intelligence from the edge of the network to its core and back again.
The ultimate DCGS vision is to amalgamate all sources of intelligence so that everyone—from warfighters on the ground to commanders at headquarters to remote analysts and planners—has access to the same intelligence from whatever source it may have been derived. Recent developments in the evolution of the DCGS architecture are bringing that vision closer to reality.
DCGS continues to be configured as a family of service-centered systems that provide multi-intelligence ISR processing, exploitation, analysis, production and dissemination capabilities with an interoperable architecture for the collection, processing, exploitation, dissemination and archiving of all forms of intelligence. But with the rollout of a new version of the architecture, known as DCGS 10.2, the level of interoperability is enhanced, with the consequence that the DCGS family is becoming more joint and more amenable to be managed as an enterprise. This is evidenced also by the growing number of common elements that have been developed from the beginning as enterprise capabilities.
“DCGS use in the Afghan theater can be fairly ubiquitous to the individual warfighter,” said Kevin Meiners, acting deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence portfolio, programs, and resources. “This is in keeping with the goals of making data and capabilities readily accessible directly to intelligence and command and control systems.”
Intelligence has never been more of a driver of operations than it is in the battlespace today, Meiners contended. “The ability of theater operations to leverage a full spectrum of intelligence information and analysis is a key enabler to successful theater activities. A lot of this near real-time access to the most relevant data is directly due to the DCGS enterprise and the capabilities it brings to our warfighters.”
DCGS facilitates the evaluation and assessment of intelligence such as Predator video, across service lines. “These analysts may be in-theater Army DCGS users, Air Force analysts using reachback to large DCGS nodes in the United States, or even in some cases a collaborative effort linking both sets of analysts,” said Meiners. “With chat capabilities, we can jointly and immediately communicate actionable intelligence simultaneously as events unfold in the battlespace.”
As a result, users at DCGS nodes throughout Afghanistan have access to more timely and operationally focused data for deciding and acting. “This compresses time to task and execute operations and ultimately deliver intelligence in support of the nation’s overall strategy,” noted Meiners.
Common Services and Standards
The implementation of DCGS 10.2 by Air Force, the originator of DCGS, is promoting ever greater levels of integration among the intelligence organizations of the armed services. With the earlier iteration, “It was still not a network—you still had point solutions,” said Mark Kipphut, deputy director of tactical intelligence systems at Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems, Air Force DCGS lead contractor. “DCGS 10.2 was designed to create an open architecture to allow distributed operations. The 10.2 architecture is more integrated. They are no longer trying to upgrade stovepipes.”
That DCGS is increasingly being managed on an enterprise basis is shown by key core capabilities that have been agreed upon by all the services and are developed from the outset as DCGS enterprise capabilities. Key among these is the DIB, which is used to ensure data discovery and interoperability across the family of DCGS systems.
Version 2.0 of the DIB, released in October, consists of a common set of services and standards used across the DCGS community to facilitate sharing of ISR information and allow DCGS programs to query and retrieve each other’s holdings and find critical ISR information. The military is already working toward version 3.0, planned for release around June 2011.
“Version 3.0 will establish a more modular and flexible set of software services that can be integrated by the DCGS programs of record,” said Meiners. “The service programs of record will be able to select the services they want to use from the DIB suite of software services and use those in whatever way best supports their mission. This will significantly enhance intelligence discoverability for the warfighter.”
The point of DCGS is to get the right data in the right format to the right person, according to Mike Worden, director of tactical intelligence systems at Lockheed Martin. “Whether the intelligence is an image or an image overlaid with signal intelligence, we are trying to make the information as relevant as we can,” he said. “By posting metatag data to the DIB, intelligence is more readily available than before to interested service members at whatever level of command. Products posted by intelligence analysts or sensors are made available to those who may be interested in a given geolocation over X amount of time. Users can access data on the DIB posted by the DCGS community.”
The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) plays a key role together with the services in coordinating DCGS activities across all the service programs. “We have instituted integrated product teams for the various intelligence functional areas of geospatial intelligence, signals intelligence, human intelligence, and measures and signatures intelligence,” Meiners explained. “These IPTs are charted to look horizontally across the service DCGS programs and help ensure their data types are made interoperable for all DCGS nodes.”
The actual addition of new DCGS capabilities takes place primarily at the service level. The services have been active evolving their DCGS architectures and enhancing their capabilities.
The latest version of Air Force DCGS is replacing stovepipes with interoperable systems pulling the ISR data from a common repository and putting a single picture on the screen of the operator—whether an analyst, commander or pilot—who needs it. This upgrade is a hardware and software package that ingests data from multiple ISR assets, such as Reaper, Rivet Joint, U-2, Predator, and soon the Global Hawk.
“Air Force DCGS is providing worldwide, distributed and net-centric architecture enabling the processing of vast amounts of raw intelligence information received from the U-2, RQ-4, MQ-1, MQ-9 and wide area surveillance sensors,” said Meiners. “On an average day, AF-DCGS exploits 1,010 high altitude multi- INT targets and 365 hours of full motion video.”
This is being made possible by two major advancements in the Air Force’s networkcentric capabilities, according to Meiners.
“The distributed mission management capability allows data from different regions to be shared with operators around the world,” he explained. “Its portal capability allows anyone with the proper security permissions to access the data over the network without needing be at a DCGS terminal. In addition, the Air Force recently fielded an enterprisewide crew communications system that connects over 500 analysts on the same network and enables conferencing and real-time collaboration for global ISR operations.”
Ramstein Rollout
The Air Force has also started rolling out its new DCGS 10.2 architecture with a successful installation at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, which was completed in December 2010. The next step will be a similar installation early in 2011 at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii.
“DCGS 10.2 marks the first of the transformational capabilities of DCGS,” said Kipphut. “It is going from point solutions to a global architecture supporting data sharing and collaboration. Army analysts can see what the Air Force is collecting and can tailor intelligence products to meet the needs of warfighters.”
Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems built the 10.2 architecture under contract to the Air Force, and was instrumental in hardware and software deployments at the initial installation at Ramstein. Those activities included delivering equipment, installing servers and cabling, and adjusting workspace ergonomics at Ramstein’s sprawling command and control facilities. Raytheon was also involved in familiarizing crews with the new systems and in conducting exercises on them before the Air Force began its formal evaluation process in an operational setting.
“DCGS 10.2 is transformational,” said Kipphut, “because it really does move the Air Force to a national global enterprise where users are able to do number of activities like internal and external collaboration. They will also have their disposal tools and mechanisms to find information easier than before.”
The Air Force is also now in the process of fielding a common workstation, provided by Lockheed Martin, that is capable of running both Windows and Solaris applications seamlessly. “The Air Force is looking to reduce its many specific workstations, for geospatial, signal and human intelligence,” said Worden. “This will enable the Air Force to reduce its hardware footprint. Other DCGS communities have expressed interest in the workstation as well.”
The latest version of the Army’s DCGS software baseline provides analysts an integrated multi-intelligence, weather and terrain capability, with all-source, imagery and full motion video, signal, human, and geospatial intelligence and weather capabilities. This version uses the DCGS-A Portable-Multifunction Workstation (P-MFWS) to the analyst’s user interface with the DCGS-A cloud.
In November 2010 the Army began deploying enhanced capabilities to units in Afghanistan, including the software and hardware to establish a SIPRNet cloud architecture. “This is an advanced DCGS-A software baseline that adds expanded multi-intelligence and allsource capabilities and is focused on incorporating all theater collected information into the analytic process,” said Meiners.
The DCGS-A Enabled Common Ground Station, which began fielding in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2010, and the DCGS-A Surveillance Information Processing Center, which will begin fielding in the third quarter of fiscal year 2011, provide direct connectivity to the enhanced ISR sensor architecture being deployed in the Afghanistan theater. “The DCGS-A software baseline and advanced analytics available through the cloud enhance tactical analysts’ capability to exploit the data,” said Meiners.
Lockheed provides support for multiintelligence fusion for both the Army and Air Force DCGS programs, according to Karen Duneman, the company’s technical director for C4ISR systems. “We are involved in electronics intelligence for both,” she said. “We do multi-INT fusion to produce more precise geolocation information. We are also key players in DCGS infrastructure, both the DIB and the Web portal implementations.”
The Navy is delivering improvements to its intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting (ISR&T) support and situational-awareness capabilities by incrementally installing DCGS-N aboard ships and at key shore sites. Completed installations include two aircraft carriers, the USS Harry S. Truman and the USS Ronald Reagan, and two shore sites. Installations currently underway include aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, the USS Blue Ridge and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
These installations, which include hardware and software enhancements, are being accomplished under contract with BAE Systems. The software improvements come under a Navy program called Early Adopter Engineering Change Proposal (EAECP), which provides multi-intelligence tools to support the carriers’ strike wings.
The enhancements also support changes at the DCGS-Navy Enterprise Node (DEN) which resides at the Office of Naval Intelligence. “These provide reachback capabilities for the fleet to tie back to intelligence sources inside and outside the Navy,” said Tom Hennies, director of DCGS enterprise programs at BAE Systems. “That shoreside infrastructure is part of the capabilities we are delivering as well.”
EAECP comes as a precursor to the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program, which will provide a common network architecture for the Navy at sea, noted Phil Turner, BAE’s DCGS-N program manager. “That is going to dramatically reduce the hardware footprints for future DCGS installations,” he added. “It will be much easier, cheaper, and quicker for the government once it is able to leverage a common infrastructure.”
Developments at the Marine Corps include exposing 17,000 products via DCGSMC at the Marine Corps Intelligence Agency to the DCGS enterprise. The Marine Corps is also deploying a Squadron Expeditionary Exploitation Suite prototype to enhance web-centric exposure and dissemination of Advanced Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance System data. “The Marine Corps has also pushed forward a prototype of its DCGSMC capability to generate operational feedback as they develop their full system,” noted Meiners.
The future of DCGS includes an enterprise framework that will allow common enterprise capabilities to be delivered and shared, said Meiners. “It will allow for easier and quicker incorporation of emerging technologies such as predictive analytics and toolsets for complex and large data types like wide area surveillance and hyperspectral imagery.”
Cloud Ahead
Cloud computing and storage will also loom large in DCGS’s future. The Army has led the way in developing a cloud computing environment for intelligence, noted Kipphut, and the other services are likely to follow suit. “In the Army, cloud computing is becoming more of the norm,” he said. “From an operational perspective, it reduces infrastructure and makes war fighting more agile and expeditionary.”
The Army, Meiners noted, plans on creating a global enterprise of cloud data centers and expanding its complex search capabilities. Cloud computing will take off in the Navy once it adopts its CANES integrated architecture, he predicted.
The Air Force plans to develop an improved DCGS weapon system software baseline; incorporate single query access to the full spectrum of information from all intelligence sources; and create DCGS storage and dissemination data centers to provide redundant storage and dissemination capability, reduce network complexity and reduce the amount of data crossing the network at a given time.
OSD is championing the building of a common enterprise framework that goes beyond data sharing. Meiners’ office is currently sponsoring an effort to develop and make available a common framework, architecture and set of Web services to improve the sharing of data, services and applications across the defense intelligence community.
“The goal of this effort is to create a framework to allow software components to be easily and quickly upgraded and integrated avoiding the need for costly rebuilding of components as new requirements and capabilities arise,” said Meiners. “The key concepts are being demonstrated at the U.S. Southern Command and have already highlighted the operational, programmatic and technical enhancements achievable with this approach. The time an analyst spends on mining for data was reduced from 75 percent to 25 percent, while the time an analyst spends analyzing the data increased from 25 percent to 75 percent.”
There is also a policy change coming this year, Meiners predicted. “We’re focused on changing the DCGS family of systems from SECRET NOFORN [not accessible to foreign nationals] to SECRET Releasable to Five Eyes,” said Meiners, which will facilitate information sharing among the United States and four close allies—Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“We didn’t build the DCGS systems with this in mind, so we’re making the necessary adjustments,” Meiners added. “This policy change is a key part of transforming DoD’s intelligence enterprise to meet the needs of combatant commanders, joint task forces, services and our allies.” ♦
