Increasing military contracts

T exas newspapers reported in November that information technology services giant, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), was in trouble because the Pentagon was behind by $1.8 billion in payments on a multi-billion dollar contract it has with the Plano based company. But it’s unlikely this setback to EDS will kill the project nor buck current trends of massive DOD contracts awarded to Texas companies and, perhaps more important, increasing Pentagon spending in the area of information technology.

The $6.9 billion deal, awarded in October 2000, established EDS as the primary Department of Defense contractor—among whose partners includes Dell Computers—responsible for developing a Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). This intranet is the backbone for what’s called the Information Strike Force, a system that will ensure real-time worldwide transmission of voice, video, and data services to 400,000 sailors and marines.

The Pentagon’s delay in payment may not entirely be their doing. Earlier this year after both the House and Senate’s Armed Services Committees had taken a hard look at the EDS project, reported Washington Technology , Congress set rigorous testing and performance milestones as conditions for continued NMCI funding.

But these types of hurdles probably won’t slow the pace of dramatic increases in Pentagon spending over the next years. Given that 10 of the top 100 corporations that receive DOD contracts are headquartered in Texas and that 50 of them have subsidiaries or divisions here, Texas industry will likely continue to receive large military contracts.

For example, one year after the EDS contract award, Lockheed Martin Aerospace, located in Ft. Worth, in partnership with Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Systems, headquartered in Dallas, and BAE Systems, with facilities in Austin, was awarded $19 billion to continue work on the Joint Strike Fighter. The new jet will complement existing fighter jets for the Navy, will replace the Air Force’s F-16, and will replace other fighter jets used by the Marines and UK’s Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

What may be telling, more than the sheer magnitude of DOD contract awards, is the nature of the new work that’s now being funded. The Navy Marine Corps Intranet being built by EDS, Dell, Microsoft, Cisco, and others, and the concept of the Information Strike Force, are both manifestations of a new way of thinking about warfare within the Navy and within the entire U.S. military establishment—one that emphasizes information superiority and reliance on information technology.

Speaking before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Research and Development in February 2002, the Navy’s Rear Admiral Kenneth D. Slaght, Commander of the Space and Naval Warfare Command (SPAWAR), discussed both the Navy Marine Corps Intranet and the Information Strike Force within the context of the broader concept of Network Centric Warfare (NCW). He defined NCW as “a visionary joint concept where a warfighter can instantly access any piece of information across a secure worldwide network, anywhere, anytime, in order to direct weapons on target.”

EDS’s intranet project is just the Navy’s practical application of the Network Centric Warfare framework. Each branch of the military is in the midst of a similar “transformation” involving the application of networked information technologies—a transformation also driving changes among traditional weapons manufacturers. Texas military installations, research centers, plus weapons and software industries are all involved.

Network Centric Warfare first emerged in articles and books published in 1998, but quickly became a center-piece of U.S. military strategy by 2001. Among those who helped to push forward NCW theory and practice is Fred Stein, who until 1998 was a Colonel in the U.S. Army. Since then he has worked for the MITRE Corporation at its Ft. Hood field site. The MITRE Corporation is a federally-funded DOD research and development center jointly headquartered in Massachusetts and Virginia.

“Network Centric Warfare is a concept that exploits the advances in Information Age technology to connect battle space entities, read that current aircraft, ships, tanks, and intelligence sensors to each other as well as to command and control centers,” Stein said in a recent interview. “The effect of this rich networking of platforms is to vastly increase the Warfighter effectiveness of both the new ‘network’ of sensors and engagement platforms as well as the combat potential of the individual platform. What happens is the operational tempo is increased, accuracy is enhanced, survivability and lethality are increased.”

NCW has its roots in the 1990-91 U.S. war against Iraq, in what many call the first Information War. That engagement saw the practical application of C4ISR—Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. Satellite imagery, reconnaissance planes, remote commanders, pilots in the air and soldiers on the ground were linked by communication networks to deploy “precision” munitions on Iraqi targets.

Texas military installations supported Operation Desert Storm. Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene sent B1 Bombers, while Ft. Hood and Ft. Bliss sent ground troops. After the Gulf War, Texas military installations continued to support Information Warfare development. By the mid 1990s, the Air Force, under the auspices of the Air Intelligence Agency, was operating an Information Warfare Center at what was then Kelly Air Force Base (now at Lackland Air Force Base) in San Antonio.

“The Center’s mission is to develop, maintain, and deploy information warfare/command and control warfare capabilities in support of operations, campaign planning, acquisition, and testing,” states the MITRE Corporation’s web site. “It acts as a single focal point for intelligence data and command and control warfare services, providing technical expertise for computer and communications security.”

The MITRE Corporation has made important contributions in Texas to Information Warfare and its newer derivative NCW. The Air Force Information Warfare Center has been one of the largest customers of the MITRE’s San Antonio field site. According to the company’s web site, MITRE staff supported development of the Center’s Battlelab and oversees development of “prototype information warfare concept tools.” At the Ft. Hood field site MITRE’s Fred Stein supports the Army’s transformation into a digital force through his position as Department Manager of C3 Battlefield Systems.

Stein addressed the SMi Group’s Fourth Annual Network Centric Warfare in London September 2002. His conference bio says he works within Ft. Hood’s Central Test and Support Facility, where it “provides him the opportunity to interface directly with the Army as it digitizes its force and moves toward the Future Combat Systems.” The company’s annual report says MITRE is “helping the Army develop ad hoc command and control networks of small, mobile computers, such as wireless personal digital assistants and laptops.”

Stein, along with David Alberts and John Garstka, wrote a book in 1998 called Network Centric Warfare. That same year, Garstka co-authored an article with retired Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, called “Network Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future.” Gartska and Cebrowski said NCW “derives its power from the strong networking of a well-informed but geographically dispersed force. The enabling elements are a high-performance information grid, access to all appropriate information sources, weapons reach and maneuver with precision and speed of response.”

NCW and its synonym “transformation” became enshrined in U.S. defense strategy on September 30, 2001, just weeks after the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. That day the DOD issued its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a report required by Congress, which said “U.S. military dependence on information is unprecedented and growing. This is particularly true in light of the Department’s transition to network-centric warfare.” The QDR called for the establishment of an office within the Department of Defense that would help to “transform” the military. On November 26, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, calling him the “father of network-centric warfare,” announced the appointment of Cebrowski as the Director of a new Office of Force Transformation. Later, Cebrowski’s colleague Garstka joined that office as the assistant director for operational concepts.

Throughout the past year Rumsfeld has pushed the “transformation” agenda. At an August 2002 town hall meeting at Ft. Hood he stressed its importance, reported the American Forces Press Service. The most populated U.S. Army base, Ft. Hood is an appropriate venue for this subject. Starting as an Experimental Division called Force XXI in 1995, Ft.. Hood’s 4th Infantry Division, became the Army’s first digital division in 2000. The core technology is the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade-and-Below (FBCB2) system. The DOD says that FBCB2 provides the Army’s digital force with “on the move, near real-time situational awareness and command and control information.”

TRW has been the primary contractor for the FBCB2 system and other functions of the new digital army. But Ft. Hood has also received help from Texas’s two big universities, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M. Both are part of a joint program called University XXI that is helping with “software agent technology, knowledge representation, artificial intelligence, and modeling and simulation.” Funding from the U.S. Army Directorate of Integration increased from $1.8 million in FY2001 to $2.8 million in 2002.

The University of Texas at Austin is involved in another project for the digital army. In June 2002 it was one of 30 to receive a contract for work on Future Combat Systems (FCS), a joint program between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Army. The program “will define the concept design for a new generation of deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable, sustainable, and dominant combat systems,” according to DARPA. “A collaborative system of networked sensors along with manned and unmanned platforms are key FCS enablers.” Boeing and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) are the lead integrators on the project. UT Austin will work on “propulsion, suspension, and tractive system technologies.” Another Texas company, CyberNet in Plano, was contracted for “planning and decision aids.”

Providing research and development for the Department of Defense is nothing new for the University of Texas at Austin. Its Applied Research Laboratories (ARL), one of six DOD-managed University Affiliated Research Centers in the country, has worked for the DOD since World War II. In August 2001, the DOD awarded ARL $291 million for a range of research areas including “command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence, as applied to information warfare, modeling and simulation, synthetic forces testing, electromagnetic instrumentation and innovative computer and software development.”

The Information Systems Laboratory, one of ARL’s divisions, includes NCW on its research agenda. It is also part of a university consortium researching “complexity management to better understand, mitigate, prevent and devise more effective ways to cope with complex situations and events that can become threats to U.S. national security.” These threats include asymmetric warfare and cyber terrorism. ISL is also coordinating research for “command and control of state agencies and first responders for Homeland Defense.”

Outside of the Texas military installations and the private and university research and development centers, the rest of the work on NCW is performed by the traditional weapons industry and the not-so-traditional software industry. Cycorp Inc., is an artificial intelligence software firm in Austin. The company has been providing software support, as part of a team of 18 DARPA contractors—including MITRE and MIT—to design the Command Post of the Future (CPOF). This program, according to DARPA, “has developed tools that radically improve a commanders’ understanding of the tactical situation on the ground.” The key to this new command post is the BattleBoard—basically a wireless web tablet connected to the battlefield local area network (LAN)—that can be used to “maintain full situational awareness and collaborative planning capability.” The Army and Marine Corps will eventually use this technology.

Two North Texas companies, Northrop Grum- man’s Integrated Systems and Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems are traditional weapons manufacturers that have invested heavily in the NCW concept. As early as January 2000, Frank Marchilena, then president of what was Raytheon’s C3I Systems, told Washington Technology that, “Network-centric warfare is our biggest growth area.” That division later merged with Raytheon’s ES Tactical Systems to become Network Centric Systems. The new business “develops and produces network centric solutions that integrate sensors, systems and secure communications to manage the battlespace and airspace.” The parent company is headquartered in Massachusetts and is among the top five defense contractors in the country.

Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Systems describes itself as an “aerospace systems integration enterprise” with expertise in airborne surveillance and battle management, early warning, airborne electronic warfare, and air combat aircraft. It is an example of a growing number of “integrators” benefiting from the current military transformation. The company says it is integrating its “capabilities for emerging network-centric warfare concepts.” The division takes pride in its Global Hawk, an autonomously controlled unmanned system. Vice President Carl Johnson said in June 2002 that the Global Hawk had achieved 1,000 flight hours assisting the Air Force over Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom.

The combined use of unmanned air craft in conjunction with ground troops was one of many “firsts” in the Afghanistan conflict, according to Ben Moores an industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan. In an article “The Dawn of Network Centric Warfare?,” published just after Operation Enduring Freedom, Moores concluded that the “ ‘prophets’ of network centric warfare” were right. Moores’s analysis of U.S. forces in Afghanistan was that “information superiority through the application of network centric warfare allowed US forces to lower the sensor to shooter loop time considerably which had a marked effect on the way the war was fought.”

Fred Stein is one of the “prophets” mentioned by Moores. Stein, in a recent interview, said there were many instances of NCW being applied in Operation Enduring Freedom. “For example, a link from Special Forces to Navy Air Craft to Air Force C2 Aircraft to B52 was established on the fly resulting in an extremely effective air to ground support mission,” Stein said. “As a concept all the U.S. Services have been experimenting and exercising NCW for several years to better understand and exploit it as a new method of conducting war. NCW is the key to the revolution in military affairs like that of the German Blitzkrieg of WWII.”

The United States is preparing to fight a war against Iraq. Ft. Hood’s 4th Infantry Division, the first digital army, will likely be on the front lines. Other NCW technologies and forces from Texas and the nation will be deployed. Like Afghanistan, Iraq will be another live test for new warfighting concepts and an opportunity for fresh innovation. But none of this changes the nature of war or why the United States fights wars. A question to ask is: who will gain from a U.S. war on Iraq? Most Iraqis will not, especially the ones who become “collateral damage.” Most Americans will not, especially if the war pushes the economy into a tailspin. But the weapons manufactures will gain, as will all the engineers, software developers, policy makers, and lobbyists who support them. In the end, Network Centric Warfare may be a “revolution” in military affairs, but it may also just be a flashy marketing concept designed to channel more taxpayers’ money into weapons research, development, and manufacture, part of the seemingly never ending cycle of procurement and deployment in the military economy.