General Mark Milley, the US Army Chief of Staff is a go getter and a man in a hurry. He has initiated number of measures like acquisition of equipment and improvement in their communication network - Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T), the Backbone Of The U.S. Army's Tactical Network
Today’s soldiers expect to have network access anywhere, anytime. With the General Dynamics-built Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T), commanders can communicate on-the-move and soldiers can have their voices heard, their texts received, and their location displayed on a map.WIN-T is the U.S. Army’s tactical network backbone providing secure voice and data communications for soldiers on the battlefield without the need for fixed infrastructure.
The US Army may not have stealth fighters or nuclear submarines, but it’s a high-tech organization all the same. Even walkie-talkies are digital and networked nowadays. From the foot soldier navigating the front lines with GPS, to the drone taking pictures overhead, to the officer making plans at the command post, to the supply clerk ordering spare parts back at base, a modern army depends on a complex network of computers sharing data over land lines and radio waves. But land lines can be cut, radio waves can be jammed, and computers can be hacked—especially if you’re up against the Russians. In their unofficial invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces routinely shut down Ukrainian communications, leaving units isolated, deaf, and blind. They triangulated the sources of Ukrainian transmissions so they could target devastating artillery barrages.
The Army is “taking a hard look” at its flagship tactical communications network after receiving more negative reviews from the field, said Chief of Staff Gen Mark Milley. He listed several issues plaguing the WIN-T: it is too complex to operate in combat conditions, it is not as transportable as it needs to be and it is not completely secure from cyber intrusions. Milley sees the current systems as too vulnerable to jamming and hacking, too big a target for artillery, and too immobile for rapid maneuver. Those are tolerable weaknesses against the low-tech Taliban or Islamic State, but crippling in a high-intensity war against Russia or China. Milley faces the risk that, in the next war, the US Army’s communications will get shut down — as the Ukrainian Army’s networks were in 2014, paralyzing them against the Russian invasion. He looked at the Russian threat and decided that Army networks weren’t up to it. A generation fighting low-tech guerrillas in Afghanistan and Iraq had left the Army with a digital backbone deeply unsuited to fighting a sophisticated nation-state. There had been billions invested in Army networks since 9/11, but in the urgency of constant combat, they’d grown with different systems slapped together to meet different needs and then kludged into submission. The network depended on a legion of contractor field service representatives and a mountain of heavy equipment, all installed at a large, stationary bases—completely incompatible with a war of maneuver in eastern Europe. The network emitted radio signals at high power in all directions—easy for Russian antennas and artillery to zero in on. The network wasn’t designed to withstand serious electronic or cyber attack—favoured weapons of the modern Russian military. Perhaps worst of all, at least some commanders were using the network to micromanage their subordinates—a path to disaster in mobile warfare, as the French army of 1940 could tell you.
So this spring, General Milley ordered a comprehensive review of the Army’s networks. What the Chief of the Army originally thought might take “four to six weeks” has turned into a massive effort involving not just the military but extensive outreach to Congress and industry. Milley briefed congressional committees on progress and met personally with major contractors to get their input on the art of the possible, kicking off a series of Army-industry roundtables.He spun off a separate but related review of electronic warfare—both the defensive systems that protect US networks and offensive systems that jam an adversary’s.
Gen. Mark Milley shared in his posture hearing in May, “the character of war does change on occasion. And one of the drivers – not the only driver – is technology.” In other forums, he has elaborated that “we have new insights into the character of future conflict, and we have had glimpses of what our Army and its Soldier must be ready to do in the coming decade.” Shifts in the character of war offer an opportunity: if we can anticipate or at least recognize them, we can adapt proactively, maintaining or regaining overmatch and forcing competitors to react to us.
Over and over, Milley and other Army leaders mentioned one essential: speed. In a world where Moore’s Law doubles computer power every 18 months, you can’t afford an acquisition cycle that took 15 years to field new technology. Cybersecurity in particular has to be updated constantly or it becomes obsolete. Speed is a problem for all four armed services, but the Army especially has a poor track record on high-tech programs, from the cancelled Comanche stealth helicopter to the cancelled Future Combat Systems. FCS, in particular, struggled with the complexity of the mobile network it was trying to build. As a result, while the Army isn’t a low-tech service, it does face a higher bar of skepticism when it asks Congress to fund high-tech systems.
Some fixes won’t take any new technology at all—just retraining on old techniques. Cold War soldiers learned to maintain radio silence, or at least cut conversations short, when they didn’t want the Russians to pick them up. They learned to position antennas behind hills, so the Soviets couldn’t detect their emissions, or well away from other assets, so a barrage targeting the transmissions wouldn’t destroy everything and everyone else. All these tactics must be updated for the modern age. At the same time, however, an army in the field may need to discard some bandwidth-hungry luxuries of modern networks: live video from drones, video teleconferencing,and massive packets of PowerPoint slides. The junior officers who’ve been digitally micromanaged with these tools might even say good rid
WIN-T increment 1 was fielded to the entire Army between 2004 and 2012. An increment 1b upgrade was developed to improve cybersecurity. Increment 2 is focused on mobile users, and was approved for full rate production in June 2015 by the Defense Department. It has so far been fielded to 14 brigade combat teams and eight division headquarters. WIN-T increment 3 is in development, and one of its key features will be “ease of use.”
Meanwhile, a letter signed by 176 House and Senate members was sent to Milley asking for the program to be accelerated. “I'm not going to accelerate it until I'm convinced it will work in combat against the enemies of our country that may be coming in the future,” Milley insisted. “That's kind of where we stand right now. But I owe you and this committee and others a rigorous review within about four to six weeks.”
How bad is it? At a hearing of the House Armed Services air and land subcommittee Army Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, Army Chief Information Officer/G-6 said this: “
Current Network Challenges The network evolved over the past 16 years to address numerous challenges, including a common operating picture that could not be shared among all formations at echelon, data storage and transport challenges, warfighting systems that lacked the ability to work together, Unfortunately, our current network is too complex, fragile, not sufficiently mobile nor expeditionary, and one that will not survive against current and future peer threats, or in contested environments. We find ourselves where our network is not user-friendly, intuitive, or flexible enough to support our mission in the most effective manner and demands a heavy reliance on industry field service representatives to operate and sustain these systems. In addition to the emerging threats, we have also seen a commercial innovation explosion that accelerated at a rate with which our standard acquisition process could not keep pace. Future adversaries are not inhibited by the same processes, allowing them to better exploit new technology to their advantage.
Readiness Challenges Based on the emerging threat and the explosion of technology, we are seeing a change in warfare of the future.
Network Assessments. Over the past year, the Chief of Staff of the Army led an assessment of the Army’s network and modernization plans. These network assessments involved all four network mission areas – the Enterprise Information Environment Mission Area, Intelligence Mission Area, Business Mission Area and the focus of today’s testimony, which is the Warfighting Mission Area. The Army conducted this internal assessment in parallel with the study directed by Congress on the Army’s tactical network, which was carried out by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA). The findings of the internal Army assessment were corroborated by the IDA study as well as feedback from Department of Defense testing agencies, combat training center rotations, joint exercises, and feedback from operational commanders. The internal and external assessments have revealed high risk challenges that we feel must be mitigated to enable our Army to “fight tonight” against peer adversaries. These findings documented significant challenges across four broad areas of network governance, requirements, acquisition, and innovation, which continue to negatively affect the Army’s ability to provide its Warfighters with simple, intuitive, resilient and protected network enabled capabilities.
Specifically, in the area of governance, the assessments revealed that the lack of a single Army network integrator has resulted in multiple “stove-piped” mission command systems and networks, with multiple, duplicative and non-integrated information technology programs. The assessments noted an emphasis on technical specifications, rather than clearly defined operational requirements leading to disconnects between the acquisition community and the operational force. Our current acquisition process does not allow the Army to rapidly acquire and integrate emerging capabilities, allowing the warfighter to keep pace with technology and stay ahead of the evolving threat. This prevented the Army from effectively leveraging the exponential growth of investments by commercial industry partners over the past decade and capitalizing on the robust Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation (RDT&E) capabilities of our Joint partners. Additionally, the extensive developmental and operational testing required for programs of record has prolonged development and delayed delivery of network-enabled capabilities.
Finally, in the area of innovation, the assessments found that the Army is not capitalizing on industry best practices and must increase integration between developers and operators. This lack of direct engagement with the actual users of the network-enabled capabilities has reduced the Army’s ability to assess and provide immediate feedback to the acquisition community in order to influence the development of improved solutions to network challenges.
Army Network Priorities. As the Army has looked at developing its new network path forward, we have focused on four priorities: command posts, tactical network transport, mission command systems, and interoperability. For command posts, the new path will seek to improve survivability and mobility. For tactical network transport, the Army will take steps to integrate multiple network transmission paths into a unified transport layer to increase survivability against evolving electronic warfare threats. For mission command systems, the Army will take steps aimed at delivering a common operating environment through a unified mission command suite of systems and applications.
New Mission Command Tactical Network Path Forward. After comprehensive senior Army leadership consideration and review of potential alternatives, the Army’s new network modernization path forward will be to halt programs that do not remedy operational shortfalls identified by internal and external assessments, fix those programs required to “fight tonight” and then pivot to a new acquisition strategy of “adapt and buy” that allows for rapid insertion of new technologies. This requires us to leverage industry best practices by creating and enforcing a standards-based open architecture that is both coherent and flexible enough to define standards while not limiting possibilities for insertion of new technologies; and alignment to new governance, acquisition reform, testing reciprocity, innovation venues, and initial ‘adopt and buy’ capabilities.
The Army will maximize available Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) and available solutions to improve the survivability and mobility of command posts. We will incorporate solutions to increase survivability against electronic warfare and cyber threats. The Army will also deliver coalition and Joint radio gateways with access to tactical data links aimed at integrating air-to-ground communications to improve Joint and Army interoperability and close air support. The Army’s pivot to an “adapt and buy” acquisition approach will enable us to deliver a “future state” network to counter the high-end threats and to keep pace with technology. This new approach will help us leverage proven Joint, Special Operations Forces (SOF), and industry solutions that are readily available.
The future network must be built with real-time feedback from Soldiers on the ground and immediately address jamming, cyber, electronic warfare, power and spectrum consumption, joint and interagency interoperability, and air-to-ground communications shortfalls. In the near term, the Army will focus on a less-complex tactical network, moving complexity to the enterprise, freeing up Soldiers to focus on warfighting tasks rather than integrating information technology. This improves current network capability that includes satellite communications, network mobility and security, tactical radios, mission command applications and Position, Navigation and Timing capacity.
The Army left lawmakers shaking their heads when they announced they plan to shut down the controversial WIN-T program — except they aren’t really shutting it down: They’re going to keep buying it for a year. They’re also planning to buy other hardware and software that’s not 10 years out of date, as much of the current network equipment is. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain blasted Army leaders for WIN-T performance setbacks and questioned how it is possible that these issues are now surfacing after the Army already invested $6 billion in the program. Congress appropriated $552 million for WIN-T in fiscal year 2017, and the Army is seeking $420 million for 2018.
Major General James J. Mingus U.S. Army Mission Command Center of Exelence blamed the troubles on the sheer size of the program. High-tech systems that require frequent updates are hard to manage when they are as large as WIN-T
Industry experts said WIN-T has suffered from the slow pace of development and production, and the Army’s inability to keep up with the speed of innovation in the IT world.
Turner and other lawmakers asked if the Army knew what system it will move to in the future. “What are you pivoting to?” he asked. “And what you described was a process, not a destination, not a system, not a procurement program. So, and with all due respect, I believe that the answer is, you don’t know, right?”
Crawford conceded that the Army does not yet know the answer to that question.
“The answer is we do not have an objective system,” the general said. “If there were an objective system on the shelf, sir, we would be trying to go and purchase that objective system.”Lawmakers also asked if the Army has an alternative system for on-the-move mission command capability.
“The alternative system for on-the-move mission command — between now and fiscal year 2022, we have a system called Joint Battle Command Platform,” Crawford said. “It’s actually one of the preferred at the maneuver level — systems and our formations for on-the-move mission command.” The service plans to field JBCP to the entire force between now and fiscal 2022, Crawford said.
As the hearing wrapped up, Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Massachusetts, told Army officials that she is still not satisfied with what she heard in the hearing. “Even after testimony today I still feel that your way forward is half-baked, not fully developed and overly optimistic,” she said. “My father used to have the saying, ‘You may not be right but you’re positive.’ And in essence I think you’re being very positive, but it’s not clear that the way forward is actually right.”
To streamline, the Army is targeting tools and technology that are less complicated and easier for soldiers on the ground to operate. It’s a problem Crawford and other Army leaders acknowledged has taken a long time and concerted effort to attempt to fix.
Other key areas of emphasis involve toughening troops against interference with satellite communications, including through more use of tropospheric transmission capabilities that extend the network and enable communication amid loss of satellite communication. And then there’s the push to simplify and restructure command posts themselves, making them lighter, more mobile and less susceptible to enemies intercepting signatures and communications that reveal soldiers’ locations.
“Peer adversaries have been developing [capabilities] — not just electronic warfare and cyber — with the ability to link sensor to shooter. They’re able to sense us and link to direct and indirect fire capabilities that can kill. Survivability of the command post is based on real threats and the realization that while fighting 16 years of combat, our peers have also gone to school on us and developed capabilities that put us at significant risk if we don’t mitigate that risk.”
If we see the situation in Indian conditions most of the issues are similar in nature. Look at the different projects undertaken by Indian Army's Director General of Information Systems. A total budget of Rs 90000 crores ( a wild estimation) to be delivered in 2025 and beyond when the technology will be obsolete. Look at the time span the different projects are taking. Is it acceptable?
In 2007 my Army Commander once told me, If I was the Chief I would go to Bangalore, meet the three head honchos of Indian Silicon Valley, ask them this is what I require, get a timeline and fund requirement and hand over the projects of DG Info System to whoever is selected. Period.
Though it looks too simplistic, but somebody has to catch the bull by the horn as Gen Milley has done. Do we have it in us to show the guts to do it.
You guess is as good as mine.
Israel has become a prominent defence partner for India in recent times. A string of defence deals between the two countries have benefitted Indian companies seeking advanced manufacturing technologies and Israeli companies looking at new defence markets. Israel has also been able to provide the Indian armed forces with weapons which it could not directly buy from its usual defence partners – Russia and US.
The recent statement, post the meeting between the Pak foreign minister, Khawaja Asif and the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, included a comment indicating concerns about the future of Pakistan’s government. This announcement was made after inputs began flowing of a growing rift between the polity and the army, which holds sway over the country. The statement aimed to support the civil establishment and was possibly signalling a warning to the army to stay away.
Gen. John W. "Mick" Nicholson settles into his wood-paneled office inside the American-led military headquarters in Kabul. It's lined with plaques, pictures and ceremonial swords.
The escalating tensions over North Korea have brought the United States closer to war on the Korean peninsula than at any other time in decades. Yet Washington is just as likely as Pyongyang, if not more likely, to initiate the first strike — and would almost certainly use nuclear weapons to do so. Such a strike may be the only way to decisively end the North Korean nuclear program, but its incalculable effects would extend far beyond the devastation and destruction in Korea. 
The security software firm Kaspersky has become the focal point in an escalating conflict in cyberspace between the United States and Russia.
Of all the parties involved in the Korean missile crisis, the most difficult to read is China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s almost daily platitudes about the need for a peaceful resolution do little to reveal what China’s real interests and objectives are – and what they are is multiple and conflicting. At one level, China is concerned with the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula. China doesn’t want Pyongyang to have nuclear weapons, and it doesn’t want the peninsula to unify. But at the same time, what happens on the Korean Peninsula also affects China’s relationship with the U.S., and despite the deep economic ties between the two countries, from Beijing’s perspective that is a relationship defined ultimately by fear and mistrust.
North Korea is once again vying to hold the top spot among the most pressing and nerve-wracking global security crises of the moment. Although it is entirely reasonable to be concerned about how to respond to an aggressive and erratic state developing ever more powerful nuclear weapons and longer-range missile delivery technology, it is actually extremely dangerous to confine policymaking on North Korea to the immediate nuclear crisis. 
Antivirus programs just aren't cutting it any more, with developers finding it impossible to keep up with the rapidly changing threats. But there is a white knight on the horizon, says tech expert Dr Christian Stevenson, who explains how machine learning and artificial intelligence will drive cyber-security in the near future.
“The urgency of now is upon us,” Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford told reporters and aides to explain why the Army would act and get things fixed. That was the message from the generals and civilians leading the Army’s network efforts who appeared in an unwieldy panel yesterday. (The Army loves to put these panels on. They seem to be a reflection of the service’s approach to acquisition: throw good people at it from multiple parts of the bureaucracy and hope they can all make sense of it.) It was a message similar to the one they delivered to a very skeptical Congress late last month. And it was a message was greeted with skepticism from myself and other media who have heard the Army make similar claims for at least five years.
Toxic leaders don’t just appear on the scene, they develop over time- and we are the ones that create them. Yep! It’s partly our fault as leaders because we fail to properly counsel them as they move up the ladder.
THIS is not really a book about the future of warfare, with all that might imply in terms of exotic technologies that will transform not only the character of war, but, some believe, even its very nature. Lawrence Freedman does indeed discuss the impact of cyber-attacks, artificial intelligence and machine learning on the conflicts of the future. But that is not his main purpose. The clue is in the title. The author, arguably Britain’s leading academic strategist, examines how ideas about how future wars could be fought have shaped the reality, with usually baleful results.
Dr. Robert H. Latiff retired from the U.S. Air Force as a major general, is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Notre Dame, and is the director of Intelligence Community Programs at George Mason University’s School of Engineering. His book, Future War, looks at how future technology will change virtually every aspect of war as we know it and how we can respond to the serious national security challenges ahead.
Deployed appropriately, any of the more modern submarines can strike the United States with nuclear missiles. The Type 096 can strike the U.S. from secure areas near China’s coast. The Pentagon currently believes that China will build around eight SSBNs in total, giving the PLAN the capacity to maintain multiple boats on continuous patrol. Much depends, however, on whether China shifts its overall nuclear posture from minimal deterrence to active pursuit of secure second strike capability./arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/AVEXA26HFFDRZLB2GB7DASB3VE.jpg)
One of the most important components needed in the coming years by the cyber operations community within the Pentagon is its own cyber firing range.
Tough North Korea rhetoric from the U.S. administration continues. Major South Korean media increasingly talk as if U.S. air strikes are likely, and theexpert community seems increasingly resigned to them as well. Despiteconstant criticism of his incendiary language, President Donald Trump continues to suggest that major action against North Korea is imminent—most recently by suggesting that we are now in a period of ‘calm before the storm.’
The heated rhetorical exchanges between Washington and Pyongyang have once again fired public interest in Korean war scenarios and the Korean information war.
“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.” Every scholar of international relations knows this formula uttered by the geopolitics pioneer Halford Mackinder almost a century ago. While the geopolitical center of gravity may have since moved towards the Asia-Pacific, these words still apply to security and stability in Europe.
The defining epithet of the Age of Trump is “globalist.” This is the all-purpose term of abuse that the president and his most fervent supporters hurl at anyone who dissents from their populist agenda. During last year’s campaign, Donald Trump tweeted that the choice was “between Americanism” and Hillary Clinton’s “corrupt globalism.” His former strategist Steve Bannon, who thinks that “the globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia,” was said to call economic advisor Gary Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, “Globalist Gary.”
A few years ago, a Heritage Foundation analysis argued that the sine qua non of a superpower was the ability to fight two major campaigns in different regions of the globe nearly simultaneously. That same report noted that reduced defense investment and a decade of counterinsurgency campaigns had left the U.S. military unprepared to do so.
A 2,200-kilometer road trip across Europe with a Stryker brigade combat team takes a while. It takes even longer if the convoy sits, sweltering under the summer sun, waiting for paperwork to be stamped at border crossings both international and municipal.
Defending Indian airspace from any potential Chinese aerial challenge or intrusions in the future with the proliferation of stealth aircraft in the region, will be eventualities that the Indian Air Force must contend with.
ARLINGTON: Want to sell information technology to the US Army? Then you need to write this down: Paul.A.Ostrowski.mil@mail.mil. That’s the email of the generalseeking industry’s input — historically something of a struggle for the service — as the Army reviews and overhauls its networks.
North Korea's hackers have been accused of carrying out some of the most audacious cyber attacks of the past few years, from siphoning millions of dollars to stealing state secrets. Analysts say cyber capabilities have become a key asset in North Korea's war chest, used for a wide range of purposes including hacking adversaries like South Korea and pilfering money.