Military Intelligence Architecture for the Brigade Combat Team

Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, July, 2000 by Jeffrey F. Violette, William J. Cater

Interoperability is the cornerstone to achieving information superiority on the battlefield. Architecture is the foundation in which to achieve it during the Army's transformation from platform-centric to network-centric warfare. Intraservice, joint, and coalition interoperability drives us to examine carefully how we build architectures today to meet these demands. The Intelligence Center's Directorate of Concepts and Doctrine (DCD) Concepts Division is addressing these requirements with respect to the Army's transformation by developing operational and systems architectures for military intelligence assets.

Architecture Defined

Architecture products implement the combat commander's visions and concepts by graphically documenting an organization's functions and requirements. Our mission is to develop and continually refine the operational and systems architecture for all MI assets, with a current focus on the Initial and Interim Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs).

Our architecture development efforts are under the auspices of the Army Enterprise Architecture (AEA). The AEA is an Army-wide information technologies (IT) architecture that describes the relationships among critical Army institutional processes and IT to ensure--

* Alignment of IT requirements with processes.

* Interoperability of Army, joint, and combined organizations and systems.

* Application and maintenance of the standards by which the Army evaluates and acquires new systems.

* Fulfillment of Clinger-Cohen Act [1] requirements to develop an enterprise-wide IT architecture.

The AEA has three major components (see Figure 1). They are--

* Operational architecture (QA) is the total aggregation of missions, functions, tasks, information requirements, and business rule in support of a warfighting function.

* Systems architecture (SA)--the physical implementation of the QA--is the layout and relationships of systems and communications.

* Technical architecture (TA) provides the technical guidelines for the implementation of systems upon which we base engineering specifications and assemble common building blocks and product lines.

The Challenge-BCT

Architecture Development

Developing a new organizational architecture from scratch to support an initial operating capability in December 2001 poses many challenges. All products must support the need to--

* Maintain a common operational picture (COP) for discussion.

* Capture increasingly detailed views of equipment deployment and interaction.

* Quickly adapt current products to reflect design changes.

* Rapidly affect the requirements determination and force design processes.

OA Development. For the first Initial Brigade Combat Team (IBCT-1), the development of architecture products began with the development of the draft concept. The Army's executive agent for OA, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Program Integration Office--Army Battle Command System (TPIO-ABCS), began building activity models and high-level operational concept diagrams to reflect the missions, functions, and tasks contained in the concept. TPIO-ABCS then staffed these draft products through the proponents and crosswalked them against mission threads to ensure accuracy. Even in draft, these products were invaluable to proponents for identifying inconsistencies and problems with the initial organization and its functions. An important product of the OA is the Information Exchange Requirements (IER) Matrix. IER matrices document what information needs to be exchanged, by whom, and the performance parameters (frequency, precedence, perishibility, etc.) of the information. It is important to recogniz e that the OA and SA are interdependent. Exaggerating or understating the performance parameters for information exchange between functions can have a extensive impact on an IER materiel solution and can cause a ripple effect throughout the entire process.

SA Development. Normally, SA development starts as soon as the OA defines the organizations. Given the compressed development schedule associated with IBCT-1, however, the Army is developing much of the SA in parallel with the QA. In lieu of an approved QA, we initially used the TRADOC "horseblankets" as a guide to how this unique organization would function and communicate. The Signal Center, as the Army's executive agent for SA, consolidated the proponents' input. We developed our SA in NetViz[R], a software package which lets the user "drill down" through many levels and allows the documentation of equipment at the platform level.

TA Development. The Joint Technical Architecture--Army provides standards with which information technology systems must conform. Eventually, we must develop a TA profile for each system shown in the SA to demonstrate adherence with applicable technical standards. U.S. Army Communications--Electronics Command (CECOM) is the Army's executive agent for TA.

Architecture Relevancy. For the MI portion of IBCT-1 the architecture views and data produced by the Intelligence Center are vital for conducting tradeoff analyses and identifying potential problem areas. In the cases discussed below, our architecture development efforts have provided a common framework to both identify problems and document alternatives.