Q & A with Rear Adm. Kendall L. Card Director, Command Control Systems NORAD-USNORTHCOM J6

CHIPS, Jan-March, 2008

Rear Admiral Kendall L. Card assumed the position of Director, Command Control Systems, North American Aerospace Defense Command/U.S. Northern Command (NORAD/ USNORTHCOM) J6, July 28, 2006.

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CHIPS first had the pleasure of talking with Admiral Card at MILCOM 2007 in late October. MILCOM, sponsored by AFCEA International, is a forum for bringing together military, government, industry and academia professionals to share knowledge and build relationships in the fields of communications, information technology, intelligence and global security.

Rear Adm. Card was a member of a top-notch panel of military leaders that addressed the policy, technical, procedural and operational issues standing in the way of joint and coalition interoperability. As the NORAD/USNORTHCOM J6, a naval aviator and former commanding officer of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), Admiral Card has a keen understanding of what true interoperability can do for the joint force. So I asked him to discuss his mission with CHIPS Nov. 1, 2007.

CHIPS: Can you talk about your job at USNORTHCOM?

Rear Adm. Card: Essentially, I handle anything that has electronic movement or is C4 (command, control, communications, computers) equipment in and outside the headquarters, and I coordinate for the AOR (area of responsibility). The NORAD, a bi-national command between the U.S. and Canada, mission is three-fold: aerospace warning against air threats; aerospace defense of the AOR; and maritime warning. USNORTHCOM has the missions of homeland defense as well as defense support of civil authorities (DSCA) in times of crisis.

I have about 300 people in the J6 (C4 systems) that work with me to ensure we have the connectivity for the leaders and staff. Homeland defense requires a command and control mission, but the DSCA mission requires a communication and coordination mission.

CHIPS: Do you work with agencies outside of NORTHCOM?

Rear Adm. Card: Yes, we do. If we are talking about a terrorist threat, we work with many in the intelligence field in the United States.

In addition to that, we also have what we call an interagency need to share. We have 60 different organizations represented by liaison personnel here at headquarters--everyone from the Red Cross--to the Department of Homeland Security and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

NORAD is a bi-national command, and we have many Canadians here as part of the headquarters in addition to the interagency groups. We have a Canadian political adviser as well as a U.S. political adviser, and we have a liaison officer from Mexico.

There are about 1,500 folks in the headquarters that work together every day to ensure that we have the connectivity through the entire interagency group as well as through the Canada and Mexico interagency groups. They typically funnel their efforts, like we funnel our interagency efforts, through the Department of Homeland Security and folks at Emergency Preparedness Canada.

CHIPS: There was a lot of discussion by the panel about the different authorities under Title 10, Title 32 and Title 14. Are the roles for each of these agencies clearly defined so that when you are in the disaster recovery mode the various agencies are synchronized to do what they need to do?

Rear Adm. Card: Yes, we are synchronized, but there is still room for improvement. I think improvements have been made, I would say 100-fold. When Hurricane Ernesto moved up the East Coast, the response from DHS, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and all the organizations in DHS was tremendous.

During Katrina, the National Communications System in Emergency Support Function 2, (ESF 2), was activated. The coordination between the National Communications System, NORAD and NORTHCOM for spectrum and coordination is usually proprietary, but the commercial sector was happy to share information about their infrastructure in New Orleans, Louisiana and Mississippi.

They were happy to share that information in crisis response, but our coordination wasn't what it should have been then. We have since made improvements and have a National Communications System liaison officer at headquarters that provides me with essential and immediate information.

We have moved the communication coordination timeline from days down to minutes. For instance, the National Guard is deploying folks all the time, and we are continuously watching and coordinating with the Joint C4 Coordination Center (JCCC) in Smyrna, Delaware, to ensure that we know what they know, and they know what we know.

We also work continuously with FEMA about where their emergency deployable cell towers are and ours. All of ours are completely interoperable. In terms of how we would go into New Orleans today and deploy emergency cell towers to bring temporary communications in that area, we are light-years ahead of where we were during Katrina.

In how we would coordinate all our emergency response vehicles, we are light-years ahead of Katrina. We have the ability to capture full-motion video over an area to get an initial assessment of the area (IAA). It involves coordination between the National Guard, DHS and NORTHCOM to get aircraft over the area and having the communication means to get that information into the air through our communication pipes to be passed to people who need that information to respond appropriately.