Q&A: Major General Alan L. Cowles
IT Guardsman:
Supporting Joint Communications for Homeland Defense
Major General Alan L. Cowles
Director, Command, Control,
Communications and Computers (J-6)
National Guard Bureau
Major General Alan L. Cowles is serving as the Director, Command, Control, Communications and Computers (J-6) at the National Guard Bureau (NGB). In that post, he is responsible for making recommendations to the chief, National Guard Bureau, on all matters of policy, programs, operations, testing, fielding and utilization of all communication networks being deployed within the National Guard Bureau and the 54 states, territories and the District of Columbia.
A graduate of the University of Connecticut, Cowles was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force when he completed the Officer Training Squadron program at Lackland AFB, Texas. After spending three years on active duty as an air weapons controller, he joined the Air National Guard. In his career, he has held a number of air operations staff, communications and command assignments. He first worked as an air weapons controller in the Tactical Air Control System and then moved on to Combat Communications as a communications officer. Cowles has been a squadron commander, a group deputy commander and also the commander of the 253rd Combat Communications Group, Otis ANG Base, Mass. Prior to becoming the director, NGB-J6, Cowles was assigned as the Air National Guard assistant to the commander for the Air Force Command and Control & Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center, Langley AFB, Va.
Cowles was interviewed by MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly.
Q: First, can you take a moment to explain the “dual role” nature of the National Guard?
A: The dual nature of the National Guard—and exploiting the “dual role”—is strategically fundamental to what we are trying to do in the NGB J6/CIO office. I’ll discuss those activities in more detail later. I want to explain the “dual role” nature of the National Guard that is founded in the Constitution and, today, provides an important attribute for our war on terrorism.
First, let’s start with some historical background. The National Guard dates its inception back to the earliest days of the American colonies. Almost immediately after the first ships arrived on these shores, militias were created to protect the colonists and their homes. We are still doing that mission today.
Today, the National Guard is both a state militia and a federal reserve force. It serves under the command and control of the governor, but when mobilized for federal active service, it serves under the command and control of the president.
In its state role, the National Guard on a day-to-day basis is under the control of the governor of a state or territory. The governor can employ the National Guard in state active duty for many tasks that he or she deems appropriate, subject to the laws of the state. There is another status provided under Title 32 of the U.S. Code, where the governor remains in command and control of the National Guard but the federal government pays the personnel costs of employing them. This was the situation during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The National Guard was under the respective command and control of the governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in Title 32 status.
Now, there is also the role of the National Guard as a reserve force of the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force. The National Guard units deployed to Iraq are ordered into federal service under Title 10 and serve with the Army or Air Force under the command and control of the president as the Army National Guard of the United States and the Air National Guard of the United States.
This dual status, a unique attribute, is of special value to our war on terrorism. For example, a governor can call up the National Guard in state active duty status almost immediately in anticipation of, or in the event of, a natural disaster. The governor can then request the president to authorize duty under Title 32 to ease the cost to the state of employing the guard. This allows the National Guard to go into action at the earliest possible stages of an event—a critical requirement for our war on terrorism or a natural disaster. Additionally, the National Guard can perform law enforcement duty when under the command and control of the governor. This is not the case with federal [Title 10] troops who, under the command and control of the president, are subject to the restrictions imposed under the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits such duty.
The bottom line is that the unique “dual status” feature of the National Guard makes it a major resource for our war on terrorism.
Q: What exactly are the responsibilities of the J6/CIO for the National Guard Bureau?
A: Until recently the National Guard Bureau had separate CIO and J6 positions. It was only in May 2006 that the chief of the National Guard Bureau formally announced that the duties of both of these positions would be combined and assigned to one person, the J6/CIO. This was done for a number of obvious reasons, but also it aligns the bureau with other DoD organizations where those duties are consolidated.
As J6/CIO, I serve as the senior information technology official in the bureau and provide advice on those matters to the chief and other NGB senior management personnel. The Bureau is a joint bureau of the departments of the Army and the Air Force. It participates with the Army and Air staffs in the development and coordination of programs pertaining to or affecting the National Guard. The Army National Guard and the Air National Guard follow the IT standards and policies of their respective Army and Air Force CIOs. I ensure that information technology is managed for the National Guard Bureau in a manner that implements those policies and procedures while ensuring interoperability and avoiding duplication and redundancy.
Our office keeps a close watch on the Guard’s IT activities to ensure compliance with the Clinger-Cohen Act and the priorities established by the chief of the National Guard Bureau. By specific direction of Congress, we are required to ensure the integration of all Army and Air Guard information management to reduce duplication and redundancy between systems. This is one of our most challenging tasks, since the Bureau and state joint force headquarters are joint activities following both Army and Air Force IT standards and policies. Additionally, I represent the NGB at the various federal senior management IT meetings, committees, symposia and other institutional structures.
I monitor two very important mobilization and training IT programs for the National Guard: the Reserve Component Automation System [RCAS] and the Distributive Training Technology Project [DTTP]. Both of these programs are managed by the Army Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems on National Guard issues and concerns regarding these projects.
The NGB was created to be a channel of communications between the states and the departments of the Army and Air Force. Our office serves as the primary point of contact and advocacy for the National Guard joint IT requirements and concerns of the 54 states, territories and the District of Columbia, and serves as the lead in establishing policy, procedures and reporting for a joint, coordinated, integrated National Guard.
One of the key activities of the J6 is to assess joint C4 military requirements for the National Guard regardless of its mission status—that is, state active duty, Title 32 or Title 10—and recommend improvements. For homeland security activities and civil support, we provide validated C4 requirements, planning support and C4 operational guidance for the National Guard in the 54 states and territories.
Our major focus right now is providing the technical, programming and budgeting support for the National Guard’s Joint CONUS Communication Support Environment [JCCSE]. In concert with other stakeholders, we establish policies and guidance for JCCSE, including baseline controls, architectures and integration, configuration management, and capability fielding. Our goal is to ensure responsiveness, functional compatibility and standardization of subsystems within the JCCSE. It is important that JCCSE supports C4 for the employment of National Guard and active duty forces during domestic military operations regardless of their status: state active duty, Title 32 or Title 10. We want to see JCCSE developed as a community effort with the aim of achieving increased interoperability and the adoption of common standards
Q: What exactly is the Joint CONUS Communications Support Environment (JCCSE), and how does it align with and support these new roles and responsibilities?
A: Shortly after assuming the position of chief of the National Guard Bureau, Lieutenant General H Steven Blum transformed the bureau to respond to the changed national security environment. The transformation included reorganization of the bureau and the creation of a joint staff and the J6 position. The National Guard’s extensive, $2-billion IT network had been created under RCAS and DTTP. This IT infrastructure extended to more than 3,300 communities and included DTTP classrooms fully equipped with a video teleconferencing capability and other IT features. The network portion was called GuardNet and, along with the DTTPclassrooms, its purpose was to support administration, training and mobilization of the National Guard.
We realized that this IT infrastructure provided an excellent foundation for C4 in support of homeland security activities and civil support. And in fact, the DTTP classrooms had been used for command and control for special events such as the Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City. It fell upon the newly-created J6 position to exploit this capability. The J6, working with USNORTHCOM J6, determined that with some organizational, process and equipment enhancements, the National Guard IT infrastructure could provide the foundation for developing a Joint CONUS Communications Support Environment that would provide C4 for domestic wide-scale operations, particularly for a catastrophic event such as a terrorist attack.
In short, JCCSE is an operational way of viewing jointly the Army National Guard’s and Air National Guard’s IT structures along with other National Guard IT assets. The key point is that the JCCSE is simply our view of employing the existing ARNG and ANG networks along with other National Guard IT assets to support the added missions of homeland defense, homeland security, and civil support.
As Lieutenant General Blum has said, “JCCSE exists now.” Our response to Katrina validated the JCCSE concept. Of course, it has some gaps in its capability to fully support information sharing with USNORTHCOM, USPACOM and other federal, state and local entities. But the key point I want to make is that JCCSE is simply nothing more than another way of viewing our existing IT infrastructure and assets with the added operational mission of supporting homeland defense, homeland security and civil support. To be fully operational, we must fill in some rather substantial gaps, and it is our vision to address those gaps so that states have IT capability not only to mobilize, administer and train the National Guard, but also to have C2 for homeland defense, homeland security and civil support.
Q: How have events from September 11, 2001, through the 2006 hurricane operations impacted the National Guard’s roles and responsibilities in homeland defense and defense support to civil authorities?
A: In reality, the National Guard has performed homeland security as a constitutionally mandated responsibility for over 300 years. However, the post-9/11 mission environment has required that we upgrade and enhance our processes as well as some of our equipment so we can help achieve “unity of effort” among the many authorities involved in a homeland security incident or a catastrophic event. In the C4 arena, we have elected to develop a solution in partnership with USNORTHCOM under the JCCSE initiative.
I think it was 9/11 that precipitated the creation of the JCCSE initiative. It was that event, simultaneously involving more than one state, when the National Guard Bureau recognized that the Army National Guard and Air National Guard networks could play a significant role in supporting C4 for homeland defense—particularly catastrophic events. We recognized that this infrastructure could play an important role in supporting NORTHCOM, the governors and the Department of Homeland Security. We had IT assets in place that could also assist in providing interoperability, information sharing, and command and control that could assist the response and recovery for catastrophic events.
Lieutenant General Blum added these new operational C4 objectives to the existing mission requirements of mobilization, training and administration, and we called it the JCCSE. We had done some work on addressing these new mission objectives when Katrina and Rita hit. We had completed organizational and process changes that allowed the execution of all of the National Guard’s IT resources in this new C4 mission role. This proved to be very helpful in the National Guard’s response during Katrina and Rita, but also it validated the need to shore up some gaps in the JCCSE in order to fully support the new C4 mission requirements. Organizational and process changes helped in creating the JCCSE, but were not sufficient.
Q: What role does your office play in JCCSE?
A: Basically, we are responsible for the JCCSE initiative. We worked closely with USNORTHCOM to develop the JCCSE concept document, entitled “USNORTHCOM-NGB JCCSE Concept for Joint C4,” and this document has been signed by both the NORTHCOM J6 and myself. In concert with USNORTHCOM and other stakeholders, we established strategic plans, policies and guidance for JCCSE, including baseline controls, architectures and integration, configuration management and capability fielding.
We assess joint C4 military requirements for the National Guard’s domestic role in support of homeland defense, homeland security and defense support to civil authorities and catastrophic emergencies, and recommend improvements to C4 and associated policy and doctrine. We provide validated C4 requirements, planning support and C4 operational guidance to the National Guard in the 54 states and territories as part of JCCSE. Our goal is to ensure responsiveness, functional compatibility, interoperability and standardization of subsystems within the JCCSE. My office also provides technical, programming and budgeting support for the JCCSE to ensure timely and effective implementation of our C4 requirements.
Q: How would you rate the current capabilities of the National Guard’s C4 in supporting the homeland security and defense support to civil authorities’ missions?
A: As Lieutenant General Blum has said many times, the National Guard has very robust C4 capabilities that extend throughout all the states and territories. These capabilities have been effectively leveraged to support emergencies such as Katrina and Rita, and National Special Security Events such as the G8 Summit in Georgia, the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention.
It was the National Guard’s overwhelming response to Katrina that clearly validated that we have been on the right track in terms of the types and quality of C4 capabilities needed and the organization and processes that are required for JCCSE. However, it also brought home that in some areas, such as deployable incidentsite communications, we have shortfalls in terms of quantity. In Katrina, for example, we learned that there is the potential need to rapidly deploy C4 packages in multiple states for joint task forces and staging bases. These demands required deployable C4 assets in numbers greater than we could support.
Q: What C4ISR resources will the National Guard be able to deploy for its new mission of border control support?
A: Under the JCCSE umbrella, our goal is to provide the National Guard at the national and state level the C4 capability of rapidly and efficiently supporting the full spectrum of potential homeland defense activities and catastrophic incidents. By catastrophic incidents, I am referring to events like Katrina and Rita that result in mass casualties, damage or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale and/or government functions. These catastrophic incidents may result in sustained national impacts over a prolonged period of time and almost immediately exceed the resources normally available to state and local authorities.
This is more than a matter of acquiring and fielding equipment, but also of having the capability to know “real time” what National Guard C4 capabilities are available. We must be aware of and report all activities being performed by the National Guard during an incident. We will coordinate and execute our C4 mission by drawing rapidly and efficiently from the National Guard capabilities available nationwide.
Therefore, we anticipate no unique C4 system requirements for the border control mission that are not already provided within the capabilities of the JCCSE initiative. We will leverage the same assets that we have planned to use for all homeland defense missions and support to civil authorities, and we will provide these capabilities by leveraging what we have from throughout the nation.
Q: What are you doing to improve those capabilities?
A: Our main shortfall or gap in required capability is in the area of deployable C4 systems needed at the incident site. We actually began fixing that deficiency in 2004 by fielding a limited number of rapid-response C4 packages we called the Interim Satellite Incident Site Communications Sets [ISISCS, pronounced “eye sis cus”]. We deployed these sets in 11 states, and they proved critical to our Katrina response. We are currently using congressional supplemental funding to field an upgraded version of ISISCS that we call the Joint Incident Site Communications Capability [JISCC, pronounced “gisk”]. We are on track to have a rapid-response capability in all 54 states and territories within the next 12 months. The original 11 will also be upgraded to a JISCC capability, and the Air National Guard is providing a JISCC capability to its Theater Deployable Communications equipment.
Beyond the deployable communications issue, our primary focus is to ensure that we have the nationwide information-sharing capabilities that we need to plan, coordinate and execute the homeland defense mission and support the civil authorities. This means that we need to ensure that the Joint Operations Center at the Bureau as well as the centers at the joint force headquarters in each state have the required IT equipment and software tools to share information with our federal, local and state partners. We have recently developed and fielded a collaborative tool in a Web-enabled environment called the Joint Information Exchange Environment [JIEE]. The JIEE encompasses portal technology, a collaboration application and a geospatial mapping capability that will allow us to better exchange information and collaborate on mission planning. This software application also allows us to develop and share a common operational picture, not only within the National Guard, but also with USNORTHCOM and our other mission partners.
Equally important is our Joint C4 Coordination Center [JCCC], which is supported by both the 261st Signal Brigade of the Army National Guard and the 281st Combat Communications Group from the Air National Guard. This JCCC organization—whose value was proven to be critical in responding to the 2005 hurricane season—is a cornerstone of the JCCSE. The JCCC will give us the capability to quickly and efficiently leverage all the National Guard’s C4 capabilities on a nationwide basis, and distribute those resources in response to a terrorist attack, disaster response and other missions such as the recent border security mission.
Q: What are your priorities for the short term? In other words, what are you doing now to improve the C4 capabilities of the National Guard in responding to disasters like Katrina and Rita?
A: Earlier we talked about addressing the gap in required capability of deployable C4 systems needed at the incident site. We also want to ensure that we have the nationwide information-sharing capabilities that we need to plan, coordinate and execute the homeland defense mission and support the civil authorities. We also will need the Joint C4 Coordination Center, which gives us the capability to quickly and efficiently leverage all the National Guard’s C4 capabilities on a nationwide basis and distribute those resources in response to a civil emergency.
Another part of our short-term focus has been ensuring optimum preparedness for the 2006 hurricane season. By June 1, we had provided a minimum of one JISCC deployable communications system in each of the hurricane-prone states in the Southeast region of the United States, along with providing them the JIEE collaborative information-sharing software application. Fielding of these capabilities will continue until we have at least one JISCC in all 54 states and territories.
Additionally, we have taken action to better equip the JCCC facilities at the bureau’s headquarters as well as at the JCCC Support Element’s location at the Delaware National Guard facility in Smyrna, Del. In short, we are beginning to institutionalize the proven JCCSE C4 coordination capabilities that we used successfully during the 2005 hurricane season.
Q: What are your long-term C4 goals for the National Guard to meet its homeland security and defense support to civil authorities missions?
A: Our primary long-term C4 goals are all centered on maturing and permanently institutionalizing the planned JCCSE capabilities. First, we will be refining our operational processes for interagency information sharing. Second, we plan to extend information-sharing capabilities to encompass all of our mission partners enterprisewide, to include the capability to extend connectivity to the incident site. Third, we will ensure that our C4 infrastructure effectively supports the homeland defense mission and the civil authorities while conforming to DoD’s IT enterprise architecture. We don’t want to create “Guard only” solutions, and we want to try to be able to use the same capabilities for OCONUS missions wherever practical.
We also need to continue to develop our partnerships that include, among others, NORTHCOM, PACOM, DHS, other federal agencies and state/local entities. It is vitally important to the nation that we have the capacity to achieve “unity of effort” in an environment involving various authorities, and the National Guard feels it can play a major role in supporting and energizing that concept. Another goal is to continue to improve the JCCC until we have full visibility of all of our National Guard C4 assets. Since the Bureau is the channel of communications between the states and the secretaries of the Army and Air Force, this capability is critical to our desire to apply available C4 capabilities on a nationwide basis quickly and efficiently.
Q: What computer and communications technologies are most important for the National Guard in meeting its homeland defense/support to civil authorities missions?
A: We are very concerned about two major capabilities: reachback from remote locations or locations severely devastated, and interoperability, not only among deployed National Guard units from different states, but also with all parties involved in the event. Of course, these two capabilities lead us to our ultimate objective of assisting trusted information sharing among all partners. The technologies that support these major capabilities are varied—wireless solutions, Voice over IP and crossbanding for interoperability are just a few we are employing now. We will soon begin testing multi-level security solutions to determine exactly what our future requirements might be.
As framed within the JCCSE concept, our strategic intent is to establish a collaborative information-sharing environment that encompasses the national, state and local levels, and that provides the capability to rapidly extend that environment to a task force location or incident site anywhere throughout the United States and our territories. To achieve this, we cannot simply rely on our deployable assets, but must also leverage our available backbone network capabilities that interconnect our headquarters, armories and other key facilities nationwide. All of this must be accomplished so that we are fully interoperable with our mission partners.
Finally, it is also important to note that our focus is on more than solving communications hardware and software problems. The mechanics of the communications issues in JCCSE are important, but are basically only a pipeline. JCCSE is larger than just the pipeline. It embraces the capability to leverage our communications infrastructure to achieve “unity of effort” through effective interagency trusted information sharing. This is a process or culture issue as well as a technology issue. We will need to have robust automated collaboration and information-sharing software applications for common operational pictures available that assist and encourage a truly collaborative and informationsharing culture that is embraced by all partners.
Q: What are some of the other innovative IT-related projects involving the National Guard?
A: Virtually all of these activities mentioned earlier ultimately map to what we are trying to achieve under the JCCSE umbrella. However, one area we have not touched on is leveraging some of the very robust distance-learning capabilities the National Guard has nationwide. We have more than 300 classrooms geographically dispersed nationwide. I think we can better use these facilities to support National Guard and interagency personnel who are training for the war on terrorism, to include training on new C4 technologies that we may select for integration into JCCSE.
Q: What do you see as the chief accomplishments of your leadership so far?
A: Without question, it is the development and maturing of the JCCSE. This is a critical initiative for the National Guard and the nation. The National Guard is unique. It stands with one foot in Hometown, USA, and one foot in Washington, DC. Who is better positioned to assist in the interoperable connectivity and trusted information sharing between DoD, other federal agencies and state and local elements during a catastrophic event?
Related to this effort to build a viable JCCSE, we had to completely reorganize the CIO and J6 offices into a single office with shared goals and objectives, and that also was a very satisfying accomplishment for me.
Q: What are your most important goals for the future?
A: I want to see further development and implementation of the JCCSE. Associated with that goal is the responsibility to provide IT leadership and assistance to the states in creating this communications environment. We need to assist them in learning how to use and employ the tools that are being provided—to improve on their response to their state mission. Additionally, I see continued partnering. In the case of JCCSE, the old maxim holds: “The whole (JCCSE) is greater than the sum of the parts (state networks).”
We have come a very long way since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, but we are under no illusions about the challenges that lie ahead. We simply must continue our efforts to mature our DoD as well as non-DoD interagency partnerships so we can institutionalize what we have implemented in the near-term. If we fail to do that—and we do not intend to fail—we will not be successful over the long term in sustaining what we have set in motion. In order to focus on building and nurturing these partnerships, we must adopt integrated processes to build trust and interoperable C4 capabilities to communicate. Our intent is to take advantage of emerging DoD solutions as they become available, and use the solutions in JCCSE to that end. ♦
