Richard Allenbaugh, director of the Ground Intelligence Support Activity (GISA) – Bragg, outlined LandISRNet and the future of tactical and strategic intelligence for Army forces during the chapter's monthly luncheon at The Fort Bragg Club in February. Allenbaugh, a former Army officer and a now Defense Department civilian, spoke on the past, present and future of tactical and strategic intelligence. He stated that the Army intelligence must support all six phases of joint operations to include phase 0 (Shape Operations) and four phases of Army Force Generation. He discussed the intelligence process and access to essential information, the need for flexible, mobile and secure applications, and he outlined how the intelligence community, especially within the Army, is set to change the way it gathers, processes, disseminates and acts on real-time intelligence.
The Army intelligence system is Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) that transforms to a cloud architecture for ease of data access. Allenbaugh further iterated that by having Army intelligence capabilities move to virtualization, consolidating data centers and focusing more on mobile application development and employment, the intelligence soldiers of tomorrow will have incredible technology expectations. But in the end, it's about how we can improve combat readiness, send fewer people forward over time and still remain effective, Allenbaugh said. While technological advances in the intelligence realm present great opportunities for future intelligence warriors, Allenbaugh said the key challenge remains in establishing secure, fixed and mobile communications at the last tactical mile.
“It's a question of how we get that information from an MI soldier that could be in a direct supporting role stateside to that soldier in the field,” Allenbaugh said. “It's a question of how we reduce complexity and exploit technology for advanced analytics on a common framework to ensure the soldier in the field can act on credible intelligence in a faster manner.” Allenbaugh then outlined the footprint and potential design of the LandISRNet architecture. LandISRNet has many stakeholders throughout the Army to include the Army Forces Command, Army Component Commands and the Army Intelligence and Security Command. The goal for LandISRNet is to focus on stronger analytics for Army soldiers and synchronization of all of the data sources for all phases of military operations. In the end, regardless of the technology, it's all about people, Allenbaugh said. We owe it to our future warfighters to give them the best tools possible to enable the mission success. |
