GCN: Pacific Command is planning to build a brand new state-of-the-art command and control headquarters at Camp Smith. What are the details?
BRYAN: We are building a new Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC) headquarters that we will break ground on in 2000 and occupy in 2003. Were very proud of it. The building were occupying right now was built as a hospital in World War II. CINCPAC has made great utility of the facility, but buildings get old.
Its been 50 years now in this building, and what were looking for is an opportunity for this big, busy command of ours to occupy a state-of-the-art command and control headquarters that will be a model for C2 headquarters in the 21st century. We are benefiting from the R&D efforts of the Office of Naval Research, and the procurement, acquisition and systems integration expertise of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.
The C4 piece of the new headquarters will cost $25 million. When youre building a major, unified command headquarterslike we arethats not very much money. But its a sufficient amount of money.
Theres a great program ongoing at SPAWAR called Command Center of the Future. If that meets our needs and satisfies our vision of what we believe our command center ought to be, why would I want to respend money to copy the same work thats already been performed in San Diego at SPAWARs Systems Command? Its very futuristic in its use of video and visual technologies, including 3-D displays used to envision situational awareness.
Clearly, the centerpiece of the command center of the future is this idea of being able to provide accurate, real-time representation of the situation in a given area. We also have our own vision of the what we call the virtual staff of the future, which includes not only our own headquarters but the components headquarters.
If were talking about a deployed joint task force, the expert for the local resupply ammunition capacity may be a Marine Corps major sitting on the Marine Forces Pacific staff. That major needs to be integrated, from a technology and business process perspective, with other headquarters to answer questions from other staffs. Thats how I view the virtual staff of the future.
Were about to move with the Navys Pacific Fleet to a more modern future. Our next step will be asynchronous transfer mode to the desktop with a standard configuration of 400-MHz PCsvery fast, very powerful state-of-the-art machines. We will be adding not only the normal data services that PCs provide but also videoconferencing capabilities.
I believe that the addition of video and visuals to staff officers will be the most revolutionary advancement in staff processing that weve seen since e-mail. We are also creating an archiving capability to do the kinds of browsing that we need in a knowledge-based environment.
To have a knowledge-based environment, you need a source for people to find that knowledge.
The ability to research vast amounts of information and get good answers fast to tough questions will be the business process of collaborative planning.
GCN: The command is also creating a theater C4 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance coordination center that will provide around-the-clock bandwidth management for all command networks. What is the status of that project?
BRYAN: I think of myself mostly as a field soldier. As a combat signal officer, I became accustomed to walking into my command post and having arrayed before me a complete and up-to-date representation of exactly what the health of the network is: a situation awareness display of the network.
I still have a need to know what the health of the network is. Right now, people know what that health is, but I have to go out and collect that information. We dont have a central reporting facility to which all our networkssensors, switches, undersea cables, satellitesreport. All of these bits and pieces collectively form the C4ISR situation awareness.
Weve coined the phrase theater C4ISR coordination center. The word coordination is important because in my job I dont need to track what is already being tracked somewhere else.
The Defense Information Systems Agency manages and controls long-haul and certain Defense Department-wide networks on our behalf. Space Command operates the major satellite systems for us. The Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station provides a tremendous amount of communications support to our headquarters here on Oahu.
GCN: Does the command establish its own standards for hardware and software?
BRYAN: We abide by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff policy guidance.
The Joint Technical Architecture is our encyclopedia of standards. We also follow the Defense Information Infrastructures Common Operating Environment as defined by DISA and endorsed by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence.
We accept the JTA and DII COE as the gospel, and we do not endorse technical standards that are not captured within those two constructs. But, as far as the systems architecture for the PACOM theater of operations, we do need to contribute. I have a division here whose primary responsibility is systems architecture work.
We dont need to create technical standards; theyre there. Creating systems architectures, at least to the level of detail where we show how things fit together, is an important contribution that we can make.
Systems architectures are the blueprints, and in every theater the blueprint is a little different. Theres no way that DOD can have a system architecture to serve as a single solution.
GCN: Do you have a standard software configuration for your PCs at the headquarters level?
BRYAN: Yes. We have a pretty standard environment. We use a combination of Microsoft Windows NT, Exchange and Outlook. Our headquarters now has centralized acquisition. We are the ones who buy the machines and the software for everybody to use, and we maintain configuration control.
GCN: As a joint unified command, how does your office ensure interoperability between the different services?
BRYAN: Interoperability is difficult on the joint side. But interoperability on the coalition side of the equation is as difficult, perhaps even more. The spectrum is central to interoperability on the coalition level.
Spectrum is a national resource to which every nation is giving a lot of attention because of increasing competition for spectrum resources. Those parts of the spectrum that are most highly sought are the ones becoming the most crowded.
GCN: How are the commands year 2000 efforts going?
BRYAN: I was pleased when I arrived here this past summer to see that this command was addressing Y2K aggressively. We just activated a year 2000 task forcewith the deputy commander in chief taking the leadsituated in our command center that is doing the operational evaluations and contingency planning.
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