Nearly six-and-a-half years ago, IT engineers were among the
first of the armed forces to arrive in Iraq when the war started.
They were also among the last to leave, after spending several
months winding down and collapsing the information systems that
people's lives had depended on during the fighting.
IS engineers must move quickly when they arrive in a conflict
zone, setting up networks and making contact with UK headquarters.
The systems they build and maintain will often be critically
important in the success of the operations and the safety of
personnel. IS engineers make up around 8% to 10% of the entire
armed forces, a fairly big proportion.
Modern warfare depends on sophisticated technology, such as
unmanned aircraft and robots. But it is not only these high-tech
gadgets that are important; reliable information is crucial, and it
is day-to-day information systems that provide this.
Technology has also made a difference to daily life for members
of the armed forces. They can
keep in touch with loved ones through
social networking sites,
Skype and web cameras - far easier than writing letters and
dodging the censors.
Systems from scratch
Military IT systems are complex, but have to be built from
scratch in often isolated and inhospitable locations. Rob Cogan, a
Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy and headquarters information
manager, says, "When you start, there is effectively nothing there.
You put up a tent or move into an old building. You have military
computers with you, and you set up a small local area network
inside the tent."
Officers also have a local server and use satellite
communications to link back to the UK's defence infrastructure.
Information is shared over the web and through shared
directories.
"As you get more troops on the ground you have to build other
headquarters," Cogan says. "They crop up all over the place. You
then have to link these together and link them back to the UK - so
you end up building a network. Then you start looking at specialist
systems for intelligence, administration, logistics and management
of equipment."
In Iraq, officers have been doing this in reverse as they get
ready to leave. The officers currently dismantling the systems are
from the Joint Force Logistic Component, a specialist group made up
from the Army, Navy and RAF. They have been sent to Iraq to make
sure all the kit and equipment comes home quickly and at minimum
cost to the taxpayer. Not only does IT equipment need to be
dismantled and removed, it plays an important role in helping to
co-ordinate the wind-down.
Careful management
Running IT systems in a war zone is not easy. People's lives
depend on the efficiency of some of the systems, security has to be
watertight, systems have to be totally reliable and some of the
time they need to be linked into other countries' or departments'
systems. It does not help that Iraq is hot, with temperatures up to
47°C, and dusty, making equipment maintenance difficult.
Lieutenant Colonel Jon Cole, a Royal Signals officer in the
Army, was sent to Iraq to oversee the IT and communications
network. He says, "We have to close down operations in a very
controlled way - we cannot just turn things off in one go. The
commercial systems, which need to be managed more carefully, tend
to be shut down first. The military systems are generally more
'rugged' and can be closed at the last minute."
According to Cole, a lot of the systems have evolved and
degraded over time. "A lot of the equipment degrades here because
it is very hot, and you have to fight very hard to keep it
dust-free," he says.
Cogan adds, "We simply cannot afford to keep pace with every
technological advance. Very few companies can. However we have a
structured procurement programme that embraces new technology on a
rolling basis to meet our requirements. At the moment, what we have
works, and works well."
Security is paramount
Among all the challenges the engineers face, security is one of
the biggest. There are multi-layered security measures to deal with
different levels of threat. The internet, which plenty of people
need access to, is open source. At the other end of the spectrum
are computer systems that hold secrets. "We cannot have a single
computer that enables all military activity to work, or a single
set of applications, because there are so many diverse tasks. We
have to use multiple applications and systems to keep the security
side of things spread out," Cogan says.
During the war, security was made even more complicated by the
need to link some systems up to US or German systems. Officers
tackled the problems using both practical measures, such as the
physical location of servers and equipment, and technical measures,
such as specialist equipment that spreads information between
different security domains.
Testing systems on the ground is not easy either, says Warrant
Officer Ian Hurst, foreman of signals information systems. "Most of
the systems we use are IP-based, which is challenging because you
have to package, shape and present the IP information in a format
that different systems can understand. The interoperability
problems do not present themselves until the systems are deployed,
so we have to manage and maintain things when they are being used
on the ground."
Hurst says engineers need a unique and broad set of skills. "The
people on the ground need to be experts," he says. "They have to
work with minimum supervision in fairly isolated locations. The IT
staff who work on these systems tend to be multi-faceted. We need
them to be masters of many different trades, including Microsoft,
Cisco and IP-tunnelling."
Decommissioning systems
Officers and soldiers began winding down operations in March
this year. It has been a gradual, controlled process.
As well as the physical equipment, information assets needed to
be recorded, collected, returned to the UK or disposed of. Most of
the military's electronic information is held on five main systems,
plus four smaller Lans. All of this has to be processed and sent to
the right people, and then the equipment has to have all
potentially sensitive information removed.
It has been a long process - but not quite as long as the
six-and-a-half years it has taken to get to this stage.
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