U.S. warfighters depend on technology more than ever to achieve their missions around the world. So do the people who support them. America's defense agencies are complex organizations with complex technical needs. Thousands of Pentagon employees rely on a myriad of technological systems for day-to-day functions. It's vital that data operations run smoothly, whether it's a simple document exchange between bureaus or protecting a classified database.

So when the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) was faced with the unwieldy task of updating its essential technological standards—while migrating toward a totally connected, "netcentric" environment—it turned to The MITRE Corporation. MITRE was asked to review the DOD's Joint Technical Architecture (JTA) document, a manual that defines and mandates applicable standards for all DOD systems to ensure interoperability throughout the DOD.

Why MITRE? Frank Driscoll, a MITRE software systems engineer who served as the JTA co-project lead, explains, "The DOD knows the corporation is well positioned to handle this type of assignment because we are already involved with many government sponsors, and we have the wide range of unbiased technical expertise needed to address the JTA, all under one roof."

And there was one other expectation. "The DOD felt we could get it done quickly," Driscoll adds. "In about 30 days to be exact."

Getting Down To Business

"Our overall goal for the JTA document was to promote seamless communications and information transfer across all of the DOD systems, including all branches of the military and other DOD services, agencies, and commands," says Don Gingras, a principal engineer at MITRE who acted as the co-project lead with Driscoll and Jim Providakes, a technical director.

The JTA covers a wide range of technology standards. "There are security standards, human computer interface standards, document exchange formats, and a wide variety of networking standards, including IP (Internet Protocol, inter-networking standard) and SONET (synchronus optical network, a structure for multiplexed digital traffic)," says Driscoll.

The JTA undergoes major updates about every two years and individual standard changes in between these major updates. The normal change process calls for individual requests for changes to be sent to the DOD where they are evaluated by a government working group that has representation across services and agencies. But MITRE was handed a unique challenge: to really "scrub" the JTA, which will help the DOD move toward a totally interoperable network environment.

MITRE was asked to review more than 350 mandated standards. To make the best use of the limited time available, the co-leaders divided the subsections and sent them to MITRE's in-house experts to review, according to Driscoll.

For example, there are several MITRE engineers who are specialists in XML language, which happens to be one of the standards mandated for use in JTA. "Our task was to determine whether or not it was still appropriate for standards like XML to be continued to be mandated, given the DOD's vision of a netcentric environment," says Gingras.

"Sometimes the specialization was not only in a technology area but in a services area such as the Army or the Navy," states Gingras. "Our team members conveyed their knowledge about standards as they applied to actual programs, such as the Navy submarine communications programs and tactical data links."

Two Steps Ahead

MITRE's challenge wasn't simply to update a laundry list of technology standards. The JTA team had to anticipate future use of technology as well, in order to give the JTA document as long a shelf life as possible. Gingras explains, "We looked into emerging standards to figure out what impact they would have on current mandated standards. This train of thought is tied to the DOD's commitment to IP version 6 (an internet protocol used for internetworking)."

Currently the DOD's networking environment operates on IP version 4. "Last year, the DOD shifted to IPv.6, because it provides a larger addressing space—almost infinite, in fact." The DOD also switched to this protocol because its long-term vision is to achieve an interoperable network of systems. "So we made every effort to streamline standards to make it more netcentric, or IP-centric."

"The DOD's IPv.6 requirement made it a little harder for us to update standards, because in many quarters of the Pentagon, it's considered an emerging standard since it doesn't currently have a huge deployed base," points out Chakravorty. "But I think we succeeded in appropriately incorporating it into JTA."

Inside The Process

One of the MITRE team members was Sham Chakravorty, principal engineer, whose expertise is in networking and communications. "There were 20 engineers who contributed to the networking portion of the JTA because of its complexity. The goal was to promote seamless communications and information transfer across the DOD systems." The engineers worked to establish more streamlined, IP-based standards for the user community, eliminating many of the non-IP, non-netcentric standards. "The work turned out to be rather challenging," adds Chakravorty.

"We also identified 'triggers,' when certain current standards would no longer be applicable," explains Driscoll, "which will help keep the document timely."

Feedback

When the first draft of the updated JTA was almost completed, MITRE's three co-leads traveled to the Pentagon and various military bases to brief senior leadership from services and agencies, including the chief technology officer of the Defense Information Systems Agency and the chief information officers of the Army and the Air Force. By and large, MITRE received a favorable response to our work.

"We were able to provide our sponsor, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a draft deliverable within 35 days," says Driscoll. OSD was "very pleased" with the draft, adds Gingras, and asked MITRE to continue refining the JTA document for another 60 days.

The updated JTA, version 6.0, was approved and distributed in January 2004. Driscoll concludes, "The team is proud that MITRE, thanks to technology know-how, was able to provide a streamlined update process to support the DOD vision for netcentricity."

The technology standards established by the company will pave the way for interoperability among all branches of the military and related agencies, and, at its most grass-roots level, a greater level of safety and efficiency for men and women on the front lines around the world.

—by Cheryl Balian

Related Information

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