Steve Cooper, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Which emerging technology will have the biggest impact on your organization in the future?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security became the 15th cabinet department in January 2003, consolidating 22 agencies and more than 180,000 people under one unified organization. Prior to creation of the department, no single federal department had homeland security as its primary objective. One can only imagine the challenges it faces as a brand new department in this age of technology. The department’s staff is confronted every day with building the enterprise architecture, developing its geospatial capabilities, enhancing its cybersecurity and improving its wireless technologies.

Of all the issues the department is working on today, the deployment of a wireless-enabled, network-centric command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) capability throughout the department represents both the greatest wireless challenge and the greatest potential wireless benefit to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The military has demonstrated the operational benefit of network-centric C4ISR in a number of military campaigns. The success of the homeland security mission requires that this technology be extended to the complex federal, state and local fabric. It is not simply a wireless technology challenge; it is a concept of operations challenge as well.

In order to implement a successful C4ISR capability, the department must promote the union of wired and wireless disciplines to ensure that DHS agents and officers have access to the full gamut of DHS information through wireless subscriber devices. This capability will permit the networking of geographically or hierarchically dispersed entities that will allow the real-time sharing of information among federal, state and local law enforcement personnel supporting both tactical operations and strategic information interchange in times of crisis. The interchange and provision of information to the tactical user is fundamental to achieving situational awareness and knowledge.

Essential to achieving this capability is the widespread creation of multiband, multimode subscriber devices that are small, lightweight and cost-effective. These devices need to be in both the handheld/portable and vehicular/mobile form factors supporting aeronautical, maritime and terrestrial tactical wireless communications operations. The deployment of a multiband, multimode capability with federated authentication and encryption capability will permit full interoperability between and among federal, state and local law enforcement and homeland security agencies, facilitating both routine and crisis tactical communications.

While such universal subscriber devices are within today’s state of the art, they are not within today’s state of common usage. Evolutionary advancements are forthcoming in such areas as secondary power source energy density, reduced power consumption and thermal emissivity processors, nanotechnology, and software quality assurance. These advancements will enable cost-effective multiband, multimode, multicryptology subscriber sets to be available for all law enforcement and homeland security personnel.

Anticipated developments in wireless system architecture will further necessitate the deployment of the multiband, multimode, multicryptology subscriber sets. Next-generation advanced tactical communications architectures will provide for adaptive information transfer rates, permitting the transport of both information-transfer-rate-intensive multimedia geospatial information as well as traditional low-rate voice traffic.

These emerging wireless networks need to be secure; however, today they are not. Such networks need to fully address the department’s needs for confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication and nonrepudiation of both classified and unclassified information in a real-time, low-latency, low-overhead fashion.