Bringing a Warfighter's Perspective to Communication and Intelligence Systems
Bill Urrego
September 2012
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Systems engineer Bill Urrego's experience as a Marine motivates him to identify practical solutions for the warfighter, and his technical expertise enables him to develop those solutions. |
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As a student at Virginia Tech, Bill Urrego studied computer science and math, and he hoped to become a video game designer. A seven-month combat tour in Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps—and a career fair meeting with a team of MITRE engineers—prompted a change in direction.
Other companies at the fair focused on where a person with Urrego's skills would fit, he recalls. "I was looking for a place where I could be flexible, innovative, and on the cutting edge of R&D. I wanted to have an impact."
MITRE offered him an opportunity to bring his ideas and interests and explore them. Today, Urrego is a systems engineer working in the National Security Engineering Center, the federally funded research and development center MITRE operates for the Department of Defense. He develops software and network technologies to enable digital communications between warfighters on foot and mission-command systems based in vehicles or at command posts.
Deployment Offers Valuable Experience
Urrego enlisted with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve as a college sophomore and was entering his junior year when the Marines called him up. He served as a combat engineer with a Marine infantry regiment, searching for improvised explosive devices and weapons caches. His experience as a Marine motivates him to identify practical solutions for the warfighter, and his technical expertise enables him to develop those solutions.
Shortly after joining MITRE, Urrego worked on an internal project, Commercial Communications to the Tactical Edge (CCTE). The project allowed him to draw on operational experience from his first tour of duty and help develop software capabilities enabling commercially available radios and personal digital devices to display the position location of soldiers.
In 2007, the Marines called up Urrego again. He deployed as part of the effort to build relationships within Iraq and ultimately train the Iraqi police to protect their communities.
"We stayed in one area and patrolled it three or four times a day. We got to know everyone in the community including the sheiks, teachers, merchants, children, and police," he says. "We learned the city's infrastructure, employment, and political situations."
Maps Tell the Story
Recognizing the benefit of compiling this information quickly, Urrego installed mapping software on his laptop and obtained off-the-shelf Garmin devices for all the patrols. He also gave orders to take pictures of everything and every person they encountered. At the end of each patrol, the Marines uploaded their information to Urrego's laptop.
Gradually, Urrego's unit built what he calls "a digital picture of the city," which helped them plan for the unexpected. For example, if they knew about a school event and a construction project about to begin, they could send a patrol to protect the school and another patrol to ensure the construction equipment delivery didn't include weapons.
This became the foundation for COIN Collector, a smartphone-based counterinsurgency program. "There was no need to re-invent the wheel," he said. "It was a simple idea that put high-fidelity, localized situational awareness capability at our fingertips."
Following the success of COIN Collector, Urrego contributed to a project called Force XXI Battle Combat Brigade and Below (FBCB2), a digital situational awareness and command and control program. The MITRE team worked to extend these capabilities to warfighters on foot patrol—many of whom are located outside the range of standard military communications—by developing an Android-based proof-of-concept device. The handheld technology includes networking protocols that bridge both Army terrestrial joint tactical radio system networks and SATCOM networks.
The project team demonstrated the system's capabilities earlier this year during exercises at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and the system is being deployed as part of the 2013 Army Capability Set.
"It was very exciting to be at the forefront of digitization for the tactical edge," he says. "Many government sponsors took interest in the designs and prototypes, and we were able to work across organizations to make these concepts a working capability in a very short time."
Turning Concepts into Reality
Urrego takes pride in his ability to use his computer science skills and military experience to support his fellow service men and women.
"I think it's great when an engineer can step back and put himself in the user's place, supporting not just the technical advancement for any one program, but specifically the end users and their operational environment," he says.
"There's no monotony to my day. We're always discussing something new. It's amazing to see these ideas, this innovation, turn from concepts into tangible solutions. That's really the impact I've been able to have, and something that I value about MITRE."
—by Molly Manchenton
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