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Defense leaders push interoperability agenda

By Wyatt Kash

ORLANDO—The convergence of military video, voice and data that led to the successful June 2006 air strike that killed al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq epitomizes the progress and the shortcomings the military faces in making its information systems interoperable, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Peterson at this week’s MILCOM conference.

While commanders increasingly are able to make tactical decisions from real-time air reconnaissance and ground intelligence, “The ability to do dynamic planning isn’t there,” said Peterson, chief of warfighting integration and chief information officer, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force.

Peterson said the average time it takes to respond to “time-sensitive targets,” measured in minutes, is in the “low teens.” Yet “67 percent of that time involves manual communication because we’re not fully interoperable.” On the positive side, he cited the ability to identify and redirect two F-16s in the closing minutes of the decision to attack. But in ensuring those aircraft were replaced in action, “We still (had to) have people entering data from yellow sticky notes” instead of having drag-and-click notification.

Part of the interoperability challenges the Air Force and the Defense Department continue to face, Peterson said, lies with building common vocabularies around the data that needs to be discovered, accessed and exchanged across the “300 systems we use.”

To that end, Air Force officials, at the direction of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, have been participating in a series of working groups to build data vocabularies, Peterson said. The efforts are expected to yield improvements in flight planning and scheduling, and in speeding up the process for identifying the immunization status of troops about to be deployed. They are also expected to yield a new user-reconfigurable financial system dashboard in February designed to make it easier to monitor spending obligations and commitments relative to plans.

Peterson was one of a number of high-ranking military officials discussing ways to improve interoperability within the military at the three-day event, sponsored by AFCEA and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Defense IT



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