interoperability

“There’s a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think … it’s all about the information.” These lines are from the 1992 movie Sneakers, a film exploring the possibility of a decryption machine that could break any code, obliterating the ability to protect secrets. Nearly three decades later, the fictitious decoder still doesn’t exist, but the importance of data has grown exponentially.

President Donald J. Trump sent Congress a proposed Fiscal Year 2021 budget request of $740.5 billion for national security, $705.4 billion of which is for the Department of Defense (DOD), department officials announced today.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has begun the implementation phase for the Fourth Estate Network Optimization Initiative and will now begin building the network for 14 defense agencies. The endeavor will standardize equipment, enhance cybersecurity, improve interoperability and save significant money, DISA officials say.

Engaged in a concerted modernization effort, the U.S. Army is making strides in overcoming a persistent challenge—interoperability, according to Maj. Gen. David Bassett, the Army’s program executive officer for command, control and communications-tactical.

The Army’s network modernization plan and strategy calls specifically for officials to “define and develop the Mission Partner Environment to improve network joint interoperability and coalition accessibility.” Simply defined, interoperability is the ability to effectively communicate or share data with international partners and allies or even with other U.S. military services.

The U.S. Army has partnered with NATO and other coalition nations to enhance operational readiness in a series of multinational exercises this year focused on interoperability. The drills enable national militaries to assess and adjust the interoperability of their capabilities long before meeting adversaries in the battlespace.

Raytheon Co., Tewksbury, Massachusetts, is being awarded an $11,778,274 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to provide communications and interoperability for integrated fires in support of the Office of Naval Research. The future naval capability will develop networking and communications enhancements to enable next-generation sensor netting, electromagnetic maneuver warfare and integrated fires across the force. Work will be performed in St. Petersburg, Florida (35 percent); Largo, Florida (29 percent); El Segundo, California (27 percent); and Tewksbury, Massachusetts (9 percent), and is expected to be completed in February 2020.

CSC Government Solutions LLC, Fairview Heights, Illinois, has been awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a not-to-exceed $88,085,627 for logistics integration and weapon systems logistics network support. Contractor will provide the support for the services necessary to perform four separate interoperability roles. The interoperability roles include supporting information technology infrastructure at headquarters Air Mobility Command, at the wing-level for sortie generation, and for G081 Program Management Office staff, as well as providing G081 functional programming support, training and subject matter expertise for technology, policy and system integration recommendations.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate announced today the implementation of a new technology to streamline and improve secure information sharing between the DHS and its partners. The Backend Attribute Exchange will simplify user identification and verification between different organizations for the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) by eliminating redundancies while ensuring proper security.

While cybersecurity is getting big play in the news these days—as it well should—three topics require just as much attention but have not yet hit the big time. Acquisition, spectrum and interoperability may not have the headline-grabbing charm of the hack into the U.S. Central Command’s Twitter account, but they are issues that need the same serious attention.

For years, industry and government personnel have agreed that the system for purchasing information technology systems needs change—serious change. The complicated acquisition process not only puts out-of-date technology in warfighters’ hands, it puts lives in danger.