Army to revamp, simplify mobile command posts.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

To hear Army leaders describe it, assembling the typical mobile command post is organized chaos.

They comprise a mishmash of different operating systems and applications, most of which require their own monitors or servers. There is little interoperability. A small cadre of field service representatives--civilian contractors--have to stand by to ensure that everything runs smoothly, or worse fly halfway around the world just to install updates.

"We have an enormous amount of systems that fit into an Army command post. ... a huge amount of systems, resources and people that go in to setting them up and operating them," said Phillip Minor, deputy director for the common operating environment at the office of the assistant secretary of the Army acquisition logistics and technology.

The Army now has a goal to revamp and simplify the posts by 2019 called the command post computing environment project, Minor said at the Milcom conference in Baltimore. That will require changing a system that has somewhere near 30 different computing systems for 30 different applications managed by about five different program managers.

To tackle this problem, the Army is in the beginning stages of radically changing the way it acquires, maintains and uses information technology and software. Part of this effort is creating the "common operating environment," a streamlined and simplified software backbone that every application will ride on, Minor said.

The common operating environment will be interoperable, but divided into three categories: mobile handheld for dismounted troops, mounted for vehicles and aircraft and command posts. Each category will have its own program manager.

"If I develop IT for a dismounted soldier, I have different considerations than I would if I'm developing IT for a major command center," Minor said.

The command posts are a ripe target for the Army to radically alter, other leaders said at the conference.

"It's as if every time you bought software at Best Buy, you bought a separate computer to go with it," said Mike McCaffery, chief of tactical applications at the Department of the Army, G-8.

For a decade during the two wars, money was no object. If a new application could help save lives, it was purchased and integrated into the command post. Contractors were flown to remote spots to install all the equipment. Soldiers were taken away from their regular duties to sit in classrooms for 40 to 80 hou

rs to learn to operate the new...