Dod and Disa: Are We on the Right Path to Achieving Net-Centricity and Ensuring Interoperability?

Federal News Service February 11, 2004 Wednesday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREAT AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: DOD AND DISA: ARE WE ON THE RIGHT PATH TO ACHIEVING NET- CENTRICITY AND ENSURING INTEROPERABILITY?

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE JIM SAXTON (R-NJ)

LOCATION: 2118 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.P. M. EST

WITNESSES:

JOHN P. STENBIT, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR NETWORKS AND INFORMATION INTEGRATION, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE;

LIEUTENANT GENERAL STEVEN W. BOUTELLE, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER/G6, UNITED STATES ARMY;

MAJOR GENERAL MARILYN QUAGLIOTTI, UNITED STATES ARMY, VICE DIRECTOR, DEFENSE INFORMATION SYSTEMS AGENCY;

REAR ADMIRAL THOMAS E. ZELIBOR, UNITED STATES NAVY, DEPUTY FOR C4 INTEGRATION AND POLICY;

DAVID TILLOTSON III, DIRECTOR, C4I, SURVEILLANCE AND RECONNAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE AND ASSESSMENT, OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR WARFIGHTING INTEGRATION;

BRIGADIER GENERAL JOHN R. THOMAS, UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS, DIRECTOR COMMAND, CONTROL, COMMUNICATIONS AND COMPUTERS

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REP. RICK LARSEN (D-WA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, my return indicates the value of showing up and I mean --

MR. STENBIT: We appreciate it, sir.

REP. LARSEN: (Laughs.) Sure. Well, I'll ask some questions. My first question is a general question and I'm not sure that it's answerable as much as it's maybe reemphasizing the point of this hearing today and why the chairman sought to call it, so I'll ask it rhetorically I suppose. But then I have a follow up that I think is a specific question that is maybe answerable.

The rhetorical question is this: at what point could, say, the admiral give the generals' presentation? And at what point could Mr. Tillotson give General Thomas' presentation to us today? In other words, just how much are you all coordinating to the point where someone else's work is-that you know another service's work so well that we can be assured that the steps that Secretary Stenbit is coordinating on the GIG is in fact becoming that integrated? That's the general sort of rhetorical question.

MR. STENBIT: Ask him.

REP. LARSEN: All right. Well, since I'm saying the word "general," General, you get to go first.

GEN. BOUTELLE: I think, of course, some of it depends on your background and how you've come up. But at the highest level we probably could do it today, as long as we're talking about at the technical-at the joint architecture level and major programs. Now, as you peel the onion back on any individual service, you'll find varying levels of knowledge. We work very closely with-I do, with ESC Hanscom Air Force, very closely with the Marines, because they're another ground combat arms. I couldn't peel the admiral's back as close I could peel ESE Hanscom's and the Air Force's back. But at the highest level, you'll probably find pretty good commonalties today of names of major systems and how they work.

REP. LARSEN: And how they work.

Admiral?

ADM. ZELIBOR: Yes, sir. I'd agree with that. And, you know, at the upper level, we're doing that today. And there's an effort that was started about six to eight months ago where we were doing C4ISR integration talks at the high level. And it initially started with just the Navy and the Air Force, and we were focused around the time sensitive targeting thread. But now the Army and the Marine Corps are also involved in that. As a matter of fact, General Boutelle and his group will be hosting the next one. We are trying to break down the language barrier so we understand what are the things more at-the individual programs that really are affecting this. So I think we're on that path to do that. Exactly what you said.

REP. LARSEN: Yeah. Anyone else want to offer?

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REP. LARSEN: Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I want to ask a question that's probably, first, most appropriate for Secretary Stenbit and perhaps for General Quagliotti regarding legacy systems. In someone's testimony, they mentioned exactly how we're planning to take care of legacy systems. We've talked about how-I use another analogy, the GIG is a sort of a sun around which each individual world revolves and you visit the GIG in order to get to the next world and talk between each other. I think we've established that analogy, certain in terms of the highway system.

But if you have these legacy systems down the organization, within each organization and you're having to then-it sounded like-I thought I heard you, it sounded like you're going to be centrally reprogramming these systems to be able to travel from place to place. What is the cost of doing that and do you lose the effectiveness of creating that integrated system that we're trying to get to through this reprogramming of legacy systems?

In other words, if the Navy's legacy systems and the Army's legacy systems are so different, so old and so different, how do you get them to catch up with where everyone else is higher up the chain? Let's have the secretary first for an overview.

MR. STENBIT: I don't think you should think of it as higher up the chain. I think it's happening at the bottom as well as-actually probably faster at the bottom than it is at the top. The secretary doesn't have a computer in his office, to my knowledge. But it's inverse with age, it's okay. (Laughs.)

Your question is an extremely good one. We are not going to be able to replace all of the Defense Department's electronics gear instantaneously. So what we're talking about is the process at the leading edge of this business, which is what we're going to do this year with the money we have. We're going to emphasize moving towards net-centricity and we're going to de-emphasize moving forward on other kinds of systems.

That doesn't allow us to just junk them all instantaneously. As a matter of fact, probably, quite a lot of the discussion that will go on between the department and the Congress will be over how much-because we are risk averse. You know, we have to go out and fight wars.

So how much are we going to put into legacy even though we know that there is a better world out there is an important attribute. Our goal is to get to the future as fast as we can. Once we're there, we're going to have to adjust to look backwards to people who didn't go as fast as we did. Let's pick our allies is a great example. I talked about that in our statement. We can't do operations without allies and they're not going to be anywhere near as fast as we are about moving forward.

So, even when we are in the forward leaning posture, we're going to have to learn to look backwards. The good news is the technology allows us to emulate. So you can make an IP thing look like a voice circuit.

In fact, Voice over IP is exactly that. You can't make a voice circuit look particularly like a data-centric network. So your point is exactly correct. Part of the force that is net-centric will do better, be able to perform better than the part that is in the legacy world.

But there have always been parts of the force that have a better tank or a better airplane than some other part. So it's the same general problem. The only good part about that is that these are commercial standards so that everybody can get with the program, I think, easier than it would have been in some highly complex way. I think each service is going to deal with this differently.

GEN. QUAGLIOTTI: If I could add to what the secretary just said, it's that we have an active program in DISA to review everything that we are spending money on with an eye towards killing those things that we no longer need to spend money on and putting the money toward network centric solutions. And I think that you have to have an active program. It has to be a detailed review of everything that you're doing to make sure that you are reorienting your whole organization toward a network centric solution. And you really have to aggressively go after it because people who own programs are very proud of what they do and they don't want to give them up. So it has to be a leadership issue of really going after it.

MR. TILLOTSON: I think one way to look at it is you have to cut the R&D off of the legacy programs first and ruthlessly. The procurement is second.

REP. LARSEN: This is still a follow-up question. This is yet another analogy. I'm sure the admiral will appreciate this. There is a scene in "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," where they are actually going around the Cape. And I forget which mast breaks off but one mast breaks off and there is one of the sailors on it and it's dragging the boat back. It won't let the ship go forward. At some point, they make a decision. They're going to cut this mast loose and in this case, lose a sailor. But they have to do it to move forward.

At what point then-have you thought through it-at what point, you know, you cut the mast loose on some of these legacy systems so that we can move forward?

MR. TILLOTSON: I think the secretary hit the nail on the head. Each of the services is looking at their programs through a capital investment planning process to make those very decisions, based on what we need to achieve, based on what functions we need to maintain, based on which of those systems are critical. Which can I immediately jettison altogether because they're simply duplicative.

Which can I cease R&D on? Because although I have to maintain it, I don't have to make it any better, and those that I have to unequivocally have to maintain. And we're all pretty seriously pinning things into those categories and saying, these are the ones I'm targeting to move forward, these are the ones I'm targeting to hold, and I'll cease R&D but at least I've got to maintain.

And then the good news is there's probably enough out there-enough chaff out there that we can go-and I think Admiral Zelibor had some very good statistics from when the Navy put things on the table, but we do as well say, I've got X number of systems doing the same thing. I can just start by making some of those go away. So a detailed capital investment planning process or portfolio review, which is what we're calling it in the Air Force, from the CIO level down, across all the activity base, is really the way we're tackling this problem, to free up-to address and free up the resources to move forward. And I would reinforce General Quagliotti's point. This is not a bottom-up process.

REP. LARSEN: Not a what?

MR. TILLOTSON: Not a bottom-up process. This part of the process is very much leadership top, down. Within the Air Force, this group, this team is being headed right now by the Air Force CIO and the DCS warfighting integration. We report out directly to the chief and the secretary on this matter. And there aren't a lot of in- betweens about it.

REP. LARSEN: Right. Anybody else want to comment?

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REP. LARSEN: General, did you want to comment?

GEN. BOUTELLE: Just a quick one. And the resourcing, you know, we just put together this week-I was working on OIF2 for Iraq. We still have 20,000 radios out there I had, when I was a second lieutenant 33 years ago. But we stopped buying them, waiting for the JTRS. So you make a-first of all, it's a long buy when you buy as many as you do for the Army.

The second is a lot of your major platforms you just can't throw away. The M1A2 tank is not a bus tank. The M1A2 SEP is. The Chinook CH-47 hasn't got a bus in it, but when it goes through recap, we'll probably bus it. So the major end items like that doesn't make much difference because you know you're not going to build a new tank today or next year or probably in the next 20 years, so you end up recapping those, bringing those on. And in some cases, you wait for a future system. So there's a lot of things you go through, and we're all going through our program by program to decide what to do by each one.

REP. LARSEN: Mr. Chairman, some more questions for Secretary Stenbit.

Could I?

REP. SAXTON: Okay, sure. But make them quick, if you can.

REP. LARSEN: First off-actually, I'll boil it down to one question. This is either a softball or a curveball. I don't know. Sort of the $100 --

MR. STENBIT: I only have one eye, curveball's a hard one.

REP. LARSEN: -- $100,000 question. What you've heard today, is any of this a surprise to you?

MR. STENBIT: No. The issue is that we're in transformation. That means we're accelerating change. The obvious nature of how great it's going to be at the other end is gathering steam quite a lot. And I was very gratified to hear the chairman's opening statement, which quite clearly put us both on the same side of that.

We're going to someplace which is good. Now we're going to discuss how we're going to get there. There are all kinds of complexities. We are not going to do it the same way. It's not appropriate that the Army do it exactly the same way the Navy does, because there are specialties.

But at the big picture-and even at the little picture, because of this fundamental commercial soundness, I am very confident that this evolution is well underway and is going to do quite a job. No, I'm not particularly surprised. Some of the detailed stories are interesting.