Two Missions, One Goal: Communications

To ensure homeland defense and support to civil authorities, personnel at the North American Aerospace Defense Command/U.S. Northern Command (NORAD/NORTHCOM) focus on interacting with their counterparts in the federal, state and local governments on a daily basis. And today, these same experts also are interacting with their international counterparts to facilitate the security of the global community. This need to share and integrate information presents challenges that NORAD/NORTHCOM communications specialists address by using technology as an enabler to build strong relationships before being called into action.

Col. Brian Jones, USA, deputy J-3, NORAD/NORTHCOM Command Center (N2C2), relates that on a daily basis his group works with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its individual facets, from the National Interagency Fire Center to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In addition, representatives from the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Secure Transportation (OST), which provides safe and secure transportation of nuclear weapons and components as well as special nuclear materials, and the U.S. Transportation Department’s Federal Aviation Administration operate out of the N2C2’s command center at NORTHCOM. “So it’s a wide range [of expertise] that we can pull in as the situation requires,” Col. Jones says.

Technology is not viewed as the be all and end all of information sharing in the interagency, allied and coalition effort. However, because of its important role in facilitating coordination during emergency situations and National Special Security Events, the command relies on a variety of tools—both proprietary and commercial, the colonel allows. “The communications architecture we have has to be able to support our two missions: First, it’s got to be able to do the homeland defense mission set, which is missile- and space-related and involves our early warning and assessments, long-range aviation, strategic aviation and operation Noble Eagle, which is the internal aviation protection within the U.S. and Canada. [It includes] domestic attack assessments, maritime warning, maritime homeland defense,” Col. Jones explains.

These missions call for typical U.S. Defense Department architecture and communications capabilities that most of the combatant commands possess. Information sharing in this arena is very much structured both vertically and horizontally, he adds. “In other words, I know exactly that when I get a piece of information, it comes through the Integrated Tactical Integrated Threat Warning Attack Assessment System from the defense program satellites all the way through the channels that come out on my Mission Analysis Reporting System screen, my MARS screen. I know exactly how that’s going to function; I know exactly who I need to share it with; I know what the time requirements are,” the colonel relates.

To sustain the command’s second mission—support to civil authorities—communications tools can vary greatly, depending on which government organizations NORTHCOM is assisting.

Mark Dalla Betta, chief, information management, NORTHCOM, shares that Col. Jones has played a key role in ensuring the command is ready to communicate and share information no matter the situation, event or partner. The colonel inspired incorporating Google Earth into the command, Dalla Betta says. Google Earth is one of the systems the Secret Service uses, which was advantageous when NORTHCOM coordinated with the service to provide security during Inauguration Day.

“As we all got smarter on how Google Earth worked and how many different agencies were actually building KML [keyhole markup language] files or templates for the Google Earth capabilities and what we had available through different agencies on the NIPRNET and SIPRNET, we brought that in. We pushed it to the various machines and our directors to be able to give them a thumbnail of what’s happening at any one time and using any KML,” Dalla Betta explains.

To facilitate information sharing even more, DHS, the Defense Department, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also recently introduced the Universal Core, he adds. “It’s a universal translator between not just waveforms and radios but actually among major systems. It does all the translations within this core, and we’re using that as a mitigation process in many of our larger JCTDs [Joint Capabilities Technology Demonstrations] and other applications that are just beginning to be built,” Dalla Betta notes.

Col. Jones and Dalla Betta agree that upfront in-person and verbal communications as well as tools coordination is one key to successful information sharing during a mission or operation. Personnel from the lead organization must determine the event’s communications requirements and what each organization will provide and act on. Information must be designed and loaded into individual systems in a way that allows other organizations to pull and integrate what is needed, they maintain.

“It all boils down to relationships, regardless of what the technology is. If you don’t know the guy operating the machine on the other end, it’s not really going to help you. If you get to know those people, it really lubricates the friction of the machinery that operates the command,” Col. Jones says.

Interagency and multinational information sharing is the focus of the webinar that will take place on April 23 at noon as a precursor to the next AFCEA International Solutions Event, May 19 and 20, 2009. Robert Ackerman, editor in chief of SIGNAL Magazine and SIGNAL Connections, will moderate the webinar, which will feature speakers from NORTHCOM, this Solutions event’s sponsor, as well as representatives from industry and the George Mason University C4I Center of Excellence. Center representatives will present white papers during the Solutions event on topics that include command and control data interoperability and service-oriented architecture.

To facilitate participation from throughout the Washington, D.C., area as well as the United States and other nations, the event’s location is near Dulles Airport at the National Conference Center, Lansdowne, Virginia. Online registration for the webinar and to attend the Solutions event is now open, and online participation for both the webinar and the conference is free.