Defense

The benefits of virtualization can be extended to thrifty end-users either through public clouds or via private clouds. The time has come to reach out to the millions of user devices that operate in thousands of separately programmable silos that require spending money on labor-intensive overhead. U.S.

Defense Department projects can be brought into a consolidated cloud environment where much lower costs and increased security can deliver immediate benefits.

The May 21, 2012, issue of Forbes magazine describes how start-up firms acquire information technologies without spending much money. These firms use commercial cloud services instead of setting up their own data centers.

There now is a flood of commercial offerings for low-cost cloud computing solutions. Thought should be given to switching smaller Defense Department projects to deployments through Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). More than 2,000 such projects now exist in the Defense Department.

New projects need not be encumbered with the burden of elaborate planning, cost justification, development and acquisition of computers as dictated by existing directives. Instead, the department can adopt the method for setting up new projects inexpensively and instantly. This can be done in weeks, not months or years. An experimental system can be tried without much risk and for a small investment. Innovative applications can be tested and even discarded without committing to a multiyear stream of cost. After a new project demonstrates its suitability, it always can be scaled up.

Forbes illustrated the benefits of thrifty computing for a small venture firm:

A well-known communications technology company is bucking the trend of reduced sales to government and the defense sector. Its leadership sees the advent of new technologies and capabilities creating a boom market for government organizations looking to tap that innovation wellspring.

Juniper Networks is well-known throughout the high-technology world as a key supplier of high-performance networking gear and related products for companies that provide online and wireless services. But that focus on supporting the bandwidth and security needs of Internet providers, corporate networks and data centers obscures a key fact about this Silicon Valley giant—the federal government ranks as its next largest customer by far.

Not only that, but defense and intelligence agencies account for the bulk of its federal sales. Last year, federal revenue grew faster than the company’s overall sales.

In a wide-ranging interview with SIGNAL, Juniper Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kevin Johnson notes that his company has nearly doubled sales in the past five years, jumping from $2.3 billion to $4.5 billion. Though Johnson declines to say what proportion of those sales come from the defense market, he does say defense and intelligence agencies at least kept pace with Juniper’s overall expansion since 2007.

“In many ways the same market trends that we see broadly around the world are very applicable to federal,” Johnson says. “I would argue in fact that they are more applicable to federal because of the scale at which the federal government is required to operate.

“And that sort of connects to the value proposition and the focus we have at Juniper. We are a company that is a pure play in high-performance networking,” he states.

Patrick Grother is a computer scientist with the NIST Information Technology Laboratory, in charge of the biometric portion of the FIPS 201 update.

The Personal Identity Verification cards used by every federal worker and contractor are being revised to address the technology advances that have occurred since the card standards were published in 2005. Changes are expected to reflect improvements in identity verification using biometrics and to address integration of mobile devices as well as to manage credentials in a more cost effective manner.

Each Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card carries an integrated circuit chip that stores encrypted electronic information about the cardholder, a unique personal identification number, a printed photograph and two electronically stored fingerprints. Along with being used to control access to facilities, some federal agencies use PIV cards with readers to control access to computers and networks. The Federal Information Processing Standards 201 (FIPS 201) ensures that the PIV card will be interoperable across the government.

The update to FIPS 201, which defines the operation of the PIV cards, is being managed by the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST expects to publish the final draft of the standard, which will be called FIPS 201- in the spring of 2013. The standard is currently in the comment period.

The Holland features the I-Mast 400 from Thales Nederland, a new comminications mast that can be built modularly, saving time and money in the shipyard. The 52-ton, 370-foot radio mast also is designed so that most equipment maintenance can be conducted inside the mast structure, reducing the number of crew needed for this work.

The Dutch Navy is building a new class of oceangoing patrol vessels designed to meet the range of missions expected in the decades ahead. These concerns include illicit trafficking, drug smuggling, human trafficking, weapons smuggling and piracy.

The first of the four ships in the Holland class, the HNLMS Holland, was commissioned in July 2012. The ship requires only 50 crew members, has a weight of 357 tons—enabling operations in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, and has space for a pair of Fast Raiding Interception and Special Forces Craft (FRISC) and an NH-90 helicopter. It also has enough room onboard to support noncombatant humanitarian operations when needed.

Prior to the development of the Holland class of ships, the Dutch naval fleet was composed primarily of destroyers, frigates, submarines and a range of support vessels designed primarily for fleet-to-fleet combat.

The Center for Advanced Studies in Identity Science (CASIS) is helping to usher in a new school of biometrics known as identity science, which goes beyond traditional biometrics of iris scans, fingerprints, palm prints and facial recognition.

The Center for Advanced Studies in Identity Science (CASIS) is helping to usher in a new school of biometrics known as identity science, which goes beyond traditional biometrics of iris scans, fingerprints, palm prints and facial recognition.

Even as biometrics technology becomes more integral to everyday life, researchers working indirectly for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warn that some tough challenges have yet to be overcome. Refining facial recognition in crowds, coping with obscurants, finding answers with less than perfect data and addressing flat funding hinder progress.