It should be impossible to mistake the lush green fields
of England for the hot dusty deserts of Helmand. But stepping
inside the cluster of tents at the UK Minister of Defence's weapons
research establishment in Porton Down in Hampshire somehow removes
the distinction.
Inside the tents are full-scale mock-ups of headquarter
establishments for theatre, regional and battle group levels.
Camouflaged-clad soldiers rub shoulders with casually-dressed
civilians. Conversations are clipped, to the point, acronym-heavy.
Arm-thick cable clusters snake around the room. Scores of computers
connected to fixed wire and radio link back to governments, NATO,
non-government agencies and forward to equipment suppliers and
front line commanders. Monitors display the real-time status
conditions of hundreds of thousands of assets, from foot patrols to
attack helicopters, in 256,000 or more colours. It looks like
chaos, but it isn't.
That is because the scenario being played out over the next 10
days has been in planned and executed over the past eight months as
the vehicle for the latest
Coalition Warrior
Interoperability Demonstration (CWID09).
CWID is where the MoD and military test the very latest
information and communications systems from UK civilian and defence
suppliers under the most realistic conditions possible outside an
actual battlefield.
RAF wing commander Mike Wilson, CWID09's project manager, says
the exercise tests five main areas: support for commanders;
managing battles; sharing information securely among stakeholders;
how to assure the quality of the information; and reducing the risk
of the total deployed information management system.
Some 20 suppliers have offered 26 major systems for test. About
a third of the systems have already been ordered or deployed, like
the
Bowman battlefield communications system.
A key part of the exercise is to ensure proposed new systems can
interoperate with legacy systems, Wilson says.
They also had to work with the many stakeholders' different
information systems. It was very complex to do this securely, with
appropriate control over who has access to the information, as well
as defend users and the information against the enemy.
CWID has also looked at seemingly non-military applications. One
such application, systems integrator Logica's Aurora, helps to
allocate and manage radio spectrum in a given area. Most countries
manage spectrum according to plans negotiated at the International
Telecommunications Union's World Radiocommunications
Conference.
Some, like Afghanistan, do not have a secure grip on their
frequencies, says Andy Hill, Aurora's project manager. Others may
have their radio communications disrupted by earthquakes, tsunamis
or even enemy jamming. Aurora helps identify sources that
interfered with legitimate users and take counter-measures.
Battle commanders could use Aurora to allocate spectrum and
prioritise traffic dynamically for limited periods in defined areas
to enable operations, he says. But civil authorities or even the
Metropolitan Police could appropriate frequencies to deal with
civil disasters such as the July 2007 London bombs or temporary
events such as the London 2012 Olympics.
Another application suitable for non-military use is the Agile
management information system from EDS. This collects information
from scores of independent underlying systems to create a
commander's real-time dashboard view of operational situations.
EDS has developed a demonstration system based on the football
world cup to be held in South Africa next year, and the Met is
considering the system for the 2012 Olympics.
Data security firm Symantec has a range of both commercial and
specialist software designed to secure both the terminal and the
information it is connected to against attack and unauthorised
use.
According to Symantec's John Ellis, information warfare issues -
such as the distributed denial of service attack against Estonia
and espionage attacks - are on the rise. These threats, added to
the complexity of the interconnected networks, make it tough to
ensure only legitimate users have access to the information to
which they are entitled. To achieve this, rigorous enforcement of
identification and access control policies are required, he
says.
Defence system developer EADS now has a working versions of
Ectocrypt for both data and voice encryption, which it launched in
early 2009. The firm's Norman Bain says the devices allows firms to
create secret networks with up to seven levels of secrecy, even
using public communications networks. EADS plans to extend
Ectocrypt next year to provide secure voice over IP.
All of this is supported by a portable, containerised
datacentre, which powers the entire headquarters, complete with
virtualised servers, storage, communications and power supply. Just
the thing to have up your sleeve when climate change makes a
disaster recovery plan mandatory.