An interoperability road map for C4ISR legacy systems - Opinion

Acquisition Review Quarterly, Wntr, 2002 by John A. Hamilton, Jr., Jerome D. Rosen, Paul A. Summers

Modern military operations require interoperability. The Department of Defense (DoD) has made tremendous interoperability gains over the last few years. Unfortunately, without a way to assess the status of interoperability throughout the department, it is difficult to quantify this progress. Although interoperability issues are persistent and visible, the number of interoperability successes is easily overlooked. Most systems developed today meet the interoperability requirements that were specified in their operational requirements documents (ORDs). The application of a set of metrics addressing this domain would shed more light on the situation and highlight the successes of the many agencies that have labored to produce interoperable systems. Effective metrics would enable the services and agencies to make informed decisions about the allocation of scarce resources to solve interoperability in already fielded systems.

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The pejorative use of the term "legacy system" often occurs when communications and computer systems are described. This is unfortunate because many fielded systems are performing well and meeting or exceeding their original specifications.

"C4ISR" refers to systems that are part of the Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance domain. The C4ISR domain is one of four domains for which the Joint Technical Architecture specifies a domain annex. C4ISR is defined in the Joint Technical Architecture (JTA; Defense Information Systems Agency, 1999) as those systems that

* support properly designated commanders in the exercise of authority and direction over assigned and attached forces across the range of military operations;

* collect, process, integrate, analyze, evaluate, or interpret available information concerning foreign countries or areas;

* systematically observe aerospace, surface or subsurface areas, places, persons, or things by visual, aural, electronic, photographic, or other means; and

* obtain, by visual observation or other detection methods, information about the activities and resources of an enemy or potential enemy, or secure data concerning the meteorological, hydrographic, or geographic characteristics of a particular area.

The JTA specifies a minimal subset of interoperability requirements. It is becoming trite to say that the JTA is necessary but not sufficient to achieve interoperability. Interoperability is a hot-button issue and it certainly should be. However, as Col. Thomas Andrew, U.S. Air Force, has observed, "There is a lot of inter-operability out there. Many C4ISR systems do interoperate quite well together." As the Commander of Defense Information Systems Agency's (DISA's) Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITO), Col. Andrew is in a strong position to speak with authority, since he has the responsibility as the DoD's sole certifier of joint interoperability for systems.

The continued accelerated advancement of information technology ensures that fielded systems do not have the latest and greatest capabilities. The revolution in military affairs is rapidly accelerating the rate at which requirements change, but the essential question should be does the fielded system meet mission requirements?

The revolution in military affairs is built on software. The rapid linking of disparate weapons and command systems is done via software. Therefore, a significant number of interoperability issues are software-based. Laymen commonly think of software in terms of application software. More often than not, interoperability issues dealing with passing targeting data from a sensor platform to a weapons platform (sensor-to-shooter) involve low-level software to include firmware. Firmware is essentially software-reprogrammable chipsets.

Rapid technological advances have also fueled the revolution in business affairs. Innovative solutions are sought to accelerate the fielding of new technology. Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software is widely touted as the silver bullet for speeding the delivery of updated software to the field. Unfortunately, there are no COTS products for purely military applications such as embedded weapons systems. Even with application software, some commercial products produce interoperability problems because they are designed to be proprietary closed systems.

DEFINING THE PROBLEM SPACE

Given the enormous number of C4ISR systems in use in today's armed forces, it is critical that we understand clearly which systems are being addressed by our approach. This section establishes the scope of the problem with which this article will concern itself.

When systems are fielded from outside the DoD acquisition process, interoperability responsibility for these systems is also outside the DoD acquisition commands. In this paper we discuss C4ISR interoperability for systems that have been fielded through project managers (PMs) and program executive officers (PEOs).

Our general approach is to narrow the field to C4ISR systems; ensure that these systems have interoperability requirements; and ensure that we focus on combat requirements. We discuss each of these elements in greater detail, and suggest a methodology for arriving at the "right" list of systems.