How the Global Information Grid Is Transforming Communications for the Warfighter

By Marc Richard and Dave Roth

Achieving a decisive military advantage through end-to-end communications and universal situational awareness is the idea behind net-centric operations. The Department of Defense's (DOD's) vision is to connect everyone from the commander to the warfighter in the field, who operates at "the tactical edge." Achieving net-centricity depends on the supporting infrastructure of the DOD's Global Information Grid (GIG).

he GIG is a network of networks—a complex system that links hundreds of information system elements to enable the rapid exchange of information among the U.S. services, the Intelligence Community (IC), and multinational allies. The GIG involves more than just technology. Rather, it is a globally connected, end-to-end set of information capabilities, associated processes, and personnel for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating, and managing information on demand. It comprises most of the DOD's information systems, software, and services, and supports the DOD and IC in peace time and during conflicts.

The GIG is a reality today. For example, its power was evident in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, when U.S. and multinational forces took networking to a new level in warfare. They used a combination of networks that were linked by gateways to provide a remarkable degree of situational awareness and understanding—leading to mission success, particularly in SCUD missile suppression. In this effort, friendly forces had to fully leverage their intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets and use combat aircraft in nontraditional missions, such as ISR. Warfighters were able to succeed on the ground and in the air by being connected over robust communications networks—including terrestrial radio systems, satellite radio systems, airborne data links, SIPRNET, and various information and command and control systems. Engineers and operators worked together to construct gateways that connected previously incompatible systems, such as Link-16 and Situational Awareness Data Link. Many other systems were connected as part of the GIG—including Battlefield Universal Gateway Experiment (or BUG-E), which connected local area networks and wide area networks with a wide array of information and command and control tools.

GIG users (people, processors, sensors, etc.) are either producers of information or consumers of information. Producers "publish" their information to the shared information space provided by the GIG, and consumers can access this data by searching and retrieving, or subscribing to the data. All users can get the relevant information they need (subject to security classifications) at any time. They can search databases that they couldn't search before because of difficulties with connections and compatibility. As new data is published, its availability becomes known to those subscribers needing that information, thereby enriching their situational awareness.

The GIG will continue to evolve and grow into the future as users' needs change and as new technologies emerge. At the heart of the GIG is an Internet-like communications network that provides the underlying connectivity among the users of the GIG. The DOD is in the process of significantly upgrading its overall communications network, including its terrestrial infrastructure, satellite systems, and tactical radio systems. MITRE is supporting these upgrades in many different areas, including acquiring new systems, upgrading fielded systems, and investigating new technologies. In all cases, the use of commercially available products is a key consideration.

Producers "publish" their information to the shared information space provided by the GIG, and consumers can access this data by searching and retrieving, or subscribing to the data. All users can get the relevant information they need (subject to security classifications) at any time.

Terrestrial Infrastructure

To support the DOD's need for net-centric operational capabilities, the terrestrial infrastructure required a significant upgrade to remove network capacity as a limiting factor in the design of new capabilities. Network planners from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) envisioned a quantum leap in capability over the DOD's existing terrestrial communications infrastructure. DISA is revamping its switched transport network and Internet Protocol (IP) terrestrial networks to provide a robust, optical network foundation for the warfighter. The new Defense Information Services Network-Next Generation, which is based on the Global Information Grid-Bandwidth Expansion (GIG-BE), will provide a secure and reliable platform to enable worldwide netcentric operations for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and command and control information sharing. The state-of-the-art IP infrastructure will use an optical core network with physically diverse, ultra-high-speed routers to connect key DOD assets. This DISN optical and IP infrastructure will support new and evolving applications, such as multicasting, voice and video over IP, and IP collaborative planning.

Creating the GIG-BE required procurement and installation of state-of-the-art optical fiber and IP equipment. This procurement was particularly challenging because not only did it have to be executed in a very aggressive government procurement cycle, but the DOD needed it to be put into operation much faster than normal commercial telecommunications are set up. Teamed with government counterparts, MITRE staff helped write the functional specifications for the network and acted as technical advisors to the source selection boards, all of which contributed to a successful contract award in record time.

As the network is activated, we are providing optical engineering support, working with government counterparts to resolve numerous technical challenges, and meeting critical implementation milestones. MITRE is providing systems engineering support to DISA in the transition from legacy closed networks to a common network infrastructure capable of providing unclassified and classified service to meet the future warfighter's needs. With widespread use of the Internet and ever increasing network speeds, users have come to expect reliable and efficient data access. We are helping DISA to develop the strategies and deploy the technologies to provide the same reliability and efficiency to the warfighter in the field.

While the DOD optical fiber network heavily leverages commercial technologies, it is also unlike a commercial network in that it makes use of several different types of fiber. To guarantee that the bandwidth promised by this network is realized, MITRE is researching performance issues that arise from the use of such a nonhomogenous network of fiber.

Mobile Systems

The most important attribute of the GIG is the rich, robust connectivity it will provide to anybody connected to the common network. Obviously, it is much easier to build this for an office environment with a stable infrastructure than it is for the highly mobile elements of the military. In today's military mobile environment, existing legacy communication systems (and applications) were tailored for very specific needs. Different radios, waveforms, and networking protocols are the rule, so much preplanning is required to provide connectivity among different communities of interest.

In addition to the abundance of non-compatible legacy radio systems, waveforms, and networking protocols in use, another major challenge in this environment is available bandwidth. In an office, workstations are supported with various local area networks (e.g., Ethernet) that connect to the Internet through high speed connections. Data rates are not a major issue. In the mobile environment, however, all communications require mobile wireless connections. Current DOD radios provide only limited data rates on the order of dial-up connections in the 1970s and 1980s—much less than in today's office environment. It's one thing to receive a text message—and even that is not guaranteed on the battlefield—but downloading photographs and maps cannot be accomplished in a reasonable time period. In addition, as vehicles maneuver on the battlefield, wireless connections are continuously broken and re-established. This results in a very difficult application environment on the "tactical edge." Improved mechanisms and applications are required to better share and re-use available network connections.

The DOD's Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) is the program intended to address these two challenges. JTRS is a software-defined, multi-mode, programmable, multi-channel, tactical wireless radio system. Different hardware sets are being developed to meet different environmental conditions (e.g., vehicular, aircraft, handheld, etc.), but one set of IP-based communications waveforms is being developed for all the different hardware sets. The intention is to ensure interoperability through the use of these common waveforms. When operational, JTRS will implement new wideband, networked waveforms that will leverage commercially available protocols and increase the bandwidth provided to mobile users. MITRE is supporting the Assistant Secretary of Defense (NII) in developing policy, the Joint Staff in the evolution of JTRS requirements and concepts of operation, and several Program Offices in procuring JTRS hardware and waveforms. MITRE is also supporting a new office that was recently put in place to oversee the entire JTRS program: the JTRS Joint Program Executive Office.

In addition to working on DOD acquisition programs, MITRE is conducting research on some of the technical challenges of the mobile tactical radio environment. One research team is addressing a well-known problem with the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) currently used by the DOD. Because the TCP uses IP addresses to identify a transport layer connection, if a node changes its address, its connection breaks. We are investigating a possible solution called the Host Identity Protocol (HIP), which allows transport layer connections to be identified using long-term Host Identifiers rather than IP addresses. With HIP, transport connections can be preserved even if IP addresses change.

We are also investigating ways to improve mobile connectivity by dealing with the scarcity of available frequency spectrum. Certain parts of the spectrum are better suited to specific environments than others, so the challenge facing GIG transport layer designers is to develop systems and protocols that will most effectively use (and re-use) the available spectrum while still ensuring the security of the links. We are investigating the ability of a radio to "cognitively" employ electromagnetic spectrum; that is, it will be able to "change the way it operates" depending on the environment it is in to make the most efficient use of the spectrum available.

Satellite Systems

As described above, the Internet Protocol plays a big role in transforming communications. This is due to a number of factors, including its far-reaching commercial acceptance as the common convergence layer for packet switching, the efficiency and flexibility attained through the use of packet switching compared to circuit switching, and the availability of standard applications that seamlessly interoperate using IP.

Most of today's military satellite communications (SATCOM) systems are basically stove-piped, circuit-based systems, that are not Internet protocol-friendly. Standard applications can't be run over many of today's SATCOM systems because they were designed with different applications and communication approaches in mind. Consequently, the DOD is in the process of developing and acquiring a fundamentally new SATCOM system to change this paradigm. The Transformational Communications Satellite (TSAT) system, when fully fielded, will provide an Internet-like backbone in space. This packet-switched approach will provide for more efficient use of the spectrum and more dynamic connectivity to users than do today’s legacy circuit-switched services. The Air Force’s Family of Advanced Beyond Line of Sight Terminals (FAB-T) will provide user connectivity to TSAT.

In addition to radio-frequency links, TSAT will employ laser communications. Compared with radio frequency links, the GIG’s optical communications in space will employ smaller and lighter equipment and provide higher data rates and more effective use of frequency resources. Data rates will exceed 1 gigabit/second. An example of this tremendous increase in performance is that a TSAT can transmit a radar image from a Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle in less than a second, compared with the 12 minutes it takes for Milstar to transmit it today. MITRE is supporting the TSAT system in many areas, from overall systems engineering and terminal developments to researching fundamental technologies (e.g., free space optical propagation and terminal software architecture). MITRE also supports other efforts to provide transformational capabilities based on using IP for SATCOM systems, including the development of a new SATCOM waveform—the Net Centric Waveform—the use of commercial IP modems, and satellite performance enhancing proxies.

Conclusion

Implementing the GIG will take a number of years, but bit by bit it will increase the DOD's ability to conduct net-centric warfare. MITRE will continue to work on GIG programs for all the Services, investigate novel ways to improve the capability of fielded systems, and perform fundamental research to improve DOD's networking infrastructure. We will continue to work across the DOD on these efforts, providing technically objective systems engineering support to all aspects of the communications infrastructure (terrestrial, mobile, and satellite). Our mission is to support DOD's goal of providing an Intranet-like capability for warfighters, to enable secure interoperability and timely information sharing.

For more information, please contact Marc Richard or Dave Roth using the employee directory.

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