System-of-Systems Thinking
ARMY LIFE CYCLE COMMAND CHANGES ITS CULTURE TO FOCUS ON THE WHOLE AS OPPOSED TO SPECIFIC PRODUCTS.
The term “stovepiping” refers to a mindset that does not expand beyond one’s own program or capability. To combat this, the Army Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command (C-E LCMC) is asking its personnel to think and function beyond stovepipes. Senior leaders have indicated that less stovepiping will reduce the creation of redundant systems and lessen the technology gaps among the many team command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, sensors and reconnaissance systems.
“We’re trying to change culture here,” said Colonel Harold Greene, Project Manager for Battle Command (PM BC). “We’re trying to take away the mentality that it’s all about ‘my product’ and get people to think that it’s about the capability provided by the system-of-systems [SoS]. And that requires a change in thinking.”
An SoS is a larger system that consists of a group of smaller capabilities. Greene emphasized that integration of systems and staff will yield improvements for both taxpayers and warfighters. PM BC’s systems rely on capabilities or organizations that span across the C-E LCMC. Like other C-E LCMC leaders, Greene requires his staff to think in terms of an overarching SoS, rather than a single product.
Aside from the technical challenges that have arisen during the efforts to change culture, “the far bigger problem is getting people to think about the whole as opposed to specific products,” Greene said.
HOLISTIC COMMAND
PM BC created PM Tactical Battle Command (TBC) to help people begin to think holistically. Formerly PM Maneuver Control System (MCS), PM TBC reflects a core battle command system that interfaces with a number of products and links warfighters to the common operating picture or digitally shared battlefield view. Changing the organization’s name from PM MCS to PM TBC avoids false representations that MCS provides a single capability.
MCS is a centralized system that a commander uses as a workstation to track friendly forces. It is used for planning, monitoring the progress of war and facilitating the military decision-making process.
The name change also reflects the duplicate capabilities of TBC’s main elements—the core server infrastructure, publish and subscribe engine, MCS, Command Post of the Future (CPOF) and the Web portal.
“Frequently, more than one PM would be developing a similar capability simultaneously because they didn’t know what other PMs were doing,” Greene said. “So, not only was it inefficient, but it also created interoperability problems because ‘A’ didn’t know what ‘B’ was doing. So we said, ‘Let’s put it all together in one place and give ourselves a core that makes sense.’”
CPOF is a digital collaboration tool that provides commanders with a realtime battlefield picture showing data embedded onto a map. That information can be quickly moved into a 3-D view or sorted and analyzed in tabs. It also allows for “white boarding” and Voice over Internet Protocol communications.
TBC’s server consolidation initiative saves about $2 million per division in hardware costs. Even more savings will take place over time because field support is no longer required for the servers as they are consolidated.
“As an example, there are five main components that TBC is fielding that came from five separate offices that designed five separate support strategies and all had field support representatives out there,” Greene said. “Now, we’re reducing the amount of hardware—I believe we’ll get around a 40 percent reduction in server hardware costs per division. We’re reducing the amount of field service support and it’s physically smaller because we’re sharing assets now. The units don’t require as many generators to run them. You don’t need as much cooling, space or weight when you deploy to a theater of operations.”
The SoS concept’s goal is to provide warfighters with one seamless system used on a single server, much like what is used in an office environment. Warfighters of the past were accustomed to accessing different systems on a variety of terminals. They still separately use the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System to calculate fires, All Source Analysis System (ASAS) for intelligence and MCS for maneuvers.
“That’s not how you do things on your desktop [in an office],” Greene said. “You don’t go to a different computer to do word processing, Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel. They’re different applications that you access through a common client laptop or desktop computer. That’s where we’re trying to go.”
Efforts are underway to move each function to a single network, where a common client is used to access that functionality. “The desktop or laptop will be multifunctioning and the functional capability will be on the network—not on each individual computer,” Greene said. “If a commander using a terminal to plan fires logs off and an intelligence officer logs on, the terminal will be configured with capabilities for intelligence.”
TACT-PAK
PM BC physically demonstrated the SoS concept in April 2006 at Fort Dix, N.J., when it took three of its own systems and consolidated them onto one server stack called Tact-Pak. This allows individuals to use all three systems—the Battle Command Sustainment Support System (a digital logistics tool used to track ammunition, equipment, food and water), ASAS-Light (an intelligence system that displays information used to track the enemy) and MCS—with only one laptop. Tact-Pak is a leap for an Army that requires most systems to have a dedicated terminal, and an improvement for warfighters who previously used grease pencils and acetate maps to plan missions. And, of course, the use of less hardware and software will save taxpayer dollars in the long run.
Tact-Pak uses a clustered machine that imports an image of a system, processes it and turns it into a virtual machine. Once a machine is virtualized, it can be cloned. Without logging off, a soldier can remove his or her Common Access Card-like token device from one terminal, insert it into a separate machine and the system will recall the exact point where they last left off. “The whole idea of using a thin client is that you have that flexibility,” PM BC computer engineer Kenneth Lee said. “You aren’t tied to a particular machine.”
PM BC is assigned to the C-E LCMC’s Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications Tactical (PEO C3T). ♦
