COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Police and fire officials responding to a wildfire decide they need more assistance. A call is made to the state’s National Guard. Then, through a request by the governor, a call is made to the Department of Homeland Security or Department of Defense, and through DoD, to U.S. Northern Command. As more and more assistance is dispatched to the scene, a problem is discovered: although the state and local officials all use similar radio frequencies, military radio frequencies used by the National Guard and active duty military responders are different. Add to that the differences in operational pictures developed by the use of different civilian and military technologies and responders realize that no one is working from the same plans or even talking via the same channels, even though they are all responding to the same disaster.
Because of efforts like the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration 2008, the scenario above is well on its way to resolution. CWID is an opportunity for the military, interagency partners such as FEMA, state and local governments and even international partners to collaborate with industry to test and develop technologies designed to resolve technology or communication gaps such as those in the example above and recommend their purchase and deployment to assist in resolving interoperability challenges.
CWID is a Joint Chiefs of Staff demonstration, managed and overseen by U.S. Joint Forces Command. USNORTHCOM manages the Homeland Security/Homeland Defense (HS/HD) portions of the demonstration.
“It’s an opportunity for our warriors to get their hands on technologies that many of our commercial partners have been developing so that we can get a chance to assess the military utility of those technologies,” said Rear Adm. Janice Hamby, USNORTHCOM’s Command and Control Systems Director.
“From the NORTHCOM perspective, (we are looking for) those kinds of technologies that can help us work with a very diverse range of partners as we go about our mission of Homeland Security, Homeland Defense, and Civil Support.
“We need to be able to talk to state, local, tribal and federal responders to incidents, so we need tools that can give us the interconnection; that lets us connect our command and control systems with their command and control systems,” she added.
Hamby explained that command and control systems, although the phrase sounds grandiose, could be as simple as a way for a military responder on the ground to connect with a civilian authority via something as simple as a hand-held radio in order to receive orders as to what his or her next action should be in an emergency response situation.
At USNORTHCOM, CWID demonstrated several collaborative technologies, such as Centrix Cross-Enclave Requirement, networking software which “melds” multiple networks into one apparent network, such that a user is able to find and use any data needed without the difficulties of cross-network logins and data transfer.
Another technology connects communications systems via a computer-based software interface. Using the Radio Interoperability System, responders can connect civil and military radio networks, cellular phone communications and even Voice Over Internet Protocol into one communications network, seamlessly transmitting voice communications between the differing frequencies and networks.
“In essence, we’re looking at how we can share information with each other.” Hamby said. “What are the technologies that will help us do that, so that the decision makers, the folks who are trying to plan a response and work a response can have the best situational awareness of what is taking place, where the problems are, what kind of capabilities they have with which to respond and how can they get the word out so that they can get those capabilities where they are needed?”
One graduate of the CWID program now actively in use is the Situational Awareness Geospatial Environment system, an unclassified system that allows both military and civilian response personnel to log on and view, input or update disaster assessments such as flooding or wildfires into a common operating picture which can be shared between incident command centers as well as national command centers.
Technologies assessed during CWID operations must either provide a new capability or improve an existing capability. The demonstration is focused on command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) technology. USJFCOM uses CWID to target information technologies that address combatant commander capability gaps and warfighter requirements, while assisting with coordination and development of technology transition decisions.
USNORTHCOM is the combatant command responsible for Homeland Defense and Defense Support of Civil Authorities.