I then responded back to Ron:
Ron...
Thanks for this analysis. Here are some thoughts I'd have in response:
1. Maybe we need to think of communication devices such as smartphones as consumable commodities rather than hard investments since the technology that they use is so rapidly evolving. This is a good state of affairs since it gives us a chance to contribute and help shape, if we're playing and contributing within the smartphone community of practice, rather than just complain that they don't know what we need.
2. Rather than analyze soldiers who are adapting to the situation in which they find themselves, we might do well to consider their work an operational requirement: communication must be able to move between commercial and dedication communication nodes. Voice over IP is something that we could use with encryption that could give us a way to communicate that can secure all those packets. (BTW, have you seen the piece that says that Google is working to make their Android phone FISMA-compliant? See URL: http://socialbarrel.com/microsoft-wins-fisma-certification-saddened-by-google%E2%80%99s-gsa-contract-win/900/
3. Mission threads and use cases are useful when you're planning but when you're executing an operation, you need flexibility and opportunity. This is where Scott's point about "talk groups" comes in. The squad is one group; its leader is part of the platoon's group and so on. The Secretary and other "6000 mile screwdrivers" can only talk to their subordinates and could be blocked out of talk groups to which they should not communicate---as during the fire fight you mention.
4. Self-organization is what this endeavor is all about and it should serve as a guide for us....listen to the person closest to the firefight and then think about all the things that he might need so that he can have them intuitively, surprisingly just as what one finds using the iPhone! Tribalism is good in that it helps to define speciation just as dogs are different from cats and plumbers are different from electricians. The problem comes when they begin to think that the "way forward" is genocide...then we have to remind them about the ecosystem and the economy!
Thanks again....good thoughts!
r/Dave
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Ron Batdorf then chimed in with:
I have been told that soldiers (platoon/squad level) in the field are buying local wireless telephones in theater because they have local towers and can communicate better than their own phones and radios. As we all know voice over IP isn't new but many of us don't know yet but do now that it is being taken to a new level with HTML 5's current launch. So technology is moving fast towards even a more robust capability than what is being discussed here. I wouldn't invest too much money on this technology as it will be obsolete within a few months. Encryption is a feature within the new web browsers and having this linked to certain phone numbers sounds like another potential application for a smart person to develop.
Rules sets are good to have if they don't obstruct proper activity. But you only will know if you are doing proper activity if you are within a mission thread or use case scenario defined by DOTMLPF-P. So from where I sit if you are in a fire fight, you don't have a lot of options to consider; so I wouldn't be too concerned for the whole world listening in giving advice. We keep pushing Command and Control as a package deal and with networks processes Command moves to Commander's Intent and Control moves to execution activities directly related to platform specific affects...i.e. fire missions; and other similar targets objectives (lethal or non-lethal). The grey area is always the handoff between Command and Control but with CDR's Intent we humans should be developing new aptitudes' for self-organization. I think the Egyptians are starting to learn what self-organization really means and coming from a more tribal society this will be very difficult; maybe we Americans need a refresher course on this with our own democracy...we have our own tribal battles between Democrats and Republicans.
I have been told that soldiers (platoon/squad level) in the field are buying local wireless telephones in theater because they have local towers and can communicate better than their own phones and radios. As we all know voice over IP isn't new but many of us don't know yet but do now that it is being taken to a new level with HTML 5's current launch. So technology is moving fast towards even a more robust capability than what is being discussed here. I wouldn't invest too much money on this technology as it will be obsolete within a few months. Encryption is a feature within the new web browsers and having this linked to certain phone numbers sounds like another potential application for a smart person to develop.
Rules sets are good to have if they don't obstruct proper activity. But you only will know if you are doing proper activity if you are within a mission thread or use case scenario defined by DOTMLPF-P. So from where I sit if you are in a fire fight, you don't have a lot of options to consider; so I wouldn't be too concerned for the whole world listening in giving advice. We keep pushing Command and Control as a package deal and with networks processes Command moves to Commander's Intent and Control moves to execution activities directly related to platform specific affects...i.e. fire missions; and other similar targets objectives (lethal or non-lethal). The grey area is always the handoff between Command and Control but with CDR's Intent we humans should be developing new aptitudes' for self-organization. I think the Egyptians are starting to learn what self-organization really means and coming from a more tribal society this will be very difficult; maybe we Americans need a refresher course on this with our own democracy...we have our own tribal battles between Democrats and Republicans.
Scott Cooper then commented on Mike Gilman's note with:
My sentiments exactly Mike, Yet the Army is embracing the capability and running with it. Apparently, they want to have this capability in the field at the edge as quickly as possible. Hopefully someone there is working in the background to develop talk groups and selectable permissions that allow the engaged leader to select who gets to talk, that way although others can listen in, only the engaged team members can exchange information during a fire fight. Otherwise we'll have REMFs trying to run the engagement, and we've all seen how well that works (Desert One, 24 Apr '80) For staff work, the structured free exchange of information could prove useful, otherwise IMHO, it is a bridge too far.
My sentiments exactly Mike, Yet the Army is embracing the capability and running with it. Apparently, they want to have this capability in the field at the edge as quickly as possible. Hopefully someone there is working in the background to develop talk groups and selectable permissions that allow the engaged leader to select who gets to talk, that way although others can listen in, only the engaged team members can exchange information during a fire fight. Otherwise we'll have REMFs trying to run the engagement, and we've all seen how well that works (Desert One, 24 Apr '80) For staff work, the structured free exchange of information could prove useful, otherwise IMHO, it is a bridge too far.
Mike Gilman then emailed me with this:
Dave,
BLUF: "WAVE solves the problem by converting all communications into packets on the IP network, and using industry standard protocols - H.323; Session Initiation Protocol - and transport standards - Radio Transmission Control and Real Time Control Protocol."
But not really! Most of this effort has gone into morphing a neat technology but neglecting the business rules for use. If you remember when we first started using IWS, Groove, Infwork space, Net meeting, and the like, the business rules were typically overlooked and what we experienced was people stepping on each other's transmissions, folks hogging the mic promoting their agenda which forced the collaboration technology community to seek to structure the collaboration meetings.
Now if you change the context to a fire fight and have disparate parties listening in on the conversations, I dare to say that the Warfighter handling the situation does not want everyone in the world having both listening and transmitting capability when he is trying to deliver fire, maneuver, and keep his people from getting the butts handed to them.
A very good idea but devoid of operational input and the various contexts that would be optimal and those that would be a liability.
"All from the mind of Michael"
Mike G
Dave,
BLUF: "WAVE solves the problem by converting all communications into packets on the IP network, and using industry standard protocols - H.323; Session Initiation Protocol - and transport standards - Radio Transmission Control and Real Time Control Protocol."
But not really! Most of this effort has gone into morphing a neat technology but neglecting the business rules for use. If you remember when we first started using IWS, Groove, Infwork space, Net meeting, and the like, the business rules were typically overlooked and what we experienced was people stepping on each other's transmissions, folks hogging the mic promoting their agenda which forced the collaboration technology community to seek to structure the collaboration meetings.
Now if you change the context to a fire fight and have disparate parties listening in on the conversations, I dare to say that the Warfighter handling the situation does not want everyone in the world having both listening and transmitting capability when he is trying to deliver fire, maneuver, and keep his people from getting the butts handed to them.
A very good idea but devoid of operational input and the various contexts that would be optimal and those that would be a liability.
"All from the mind of Michael"
Mike G
WAVE of the Future
A recent article in Government Computer Week got me thinking about how command & control communication is being changed as a result of web-based smartphones. Here's the article:
WAVE of the future
Fifty people in Seattle have created a software package that is linking BlackBerry phones in the Pentagon to radios in Afghanistan. Joel Groen of Twisted Pair Solutions explains how it works.
March 01, 2011
In 2002, the co-founders of Twisted Pair Solutions held a meeting with a defense contractor to discuss possible uses for its Wide Area Voice Environment. Now known as WAVE, this software was originally developed for stock traders in the financial system, who wanted an alternative to keeping their phone lines constantly open to “hoot and holler” stock prices so they could be heard by everyone. WAVE shifted those group communications to digital Internet Protocol (IP) packets, which proved to be vastly more cost effective.
At the 2002 meeting, creative wheels began to turn, and soon the co-founders were introduced to members of the U.S. Coast Guard District 13 in Seattle, who were looking for a way to connect telephone-equipped shore-based personnel to ship based colleagues who were using two-way radios. Our co-founders said it could be done, and a week later they demonstrated it.
From there, we were introduced to the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Army, which is now the biggest customer for WAVE. The technology is also used widely by NATO and its members. Today, officials in the Pentagon with the correct network permissions can use their personal computers and BlackBerrys, for example, to listen to radio traffic in Afghanistan, and join in when necessary. We’re now working to deliver the same capability to Android users. When a user presses an on-screen or side button, he can talk on the selected voice channel, just as if he were carrying a radio. In short, WAVE gives smart phones a radio’s push-to-talk capability.
We believe this technology is about to have an even larger role as the U.S. military prepares to make widespread use of smart phones on the battlefield. Even with the rollout of smart phones, thousands of radios without IP capability are certain to remain in the battle zone, and soldiers equipped with those radios will need to be able to talk to smart-phone users. WAVE can provide this interoperability.
Developing and refining the WAVE software for the military required our engineers to identify real-world operational challenges and implement technical solutions.
For starters, we realized that military users were asking for a much larger and more robust version of the traditional bridge conference call used by businesses around the world. We also knew that the military could not accept the risk of single-point failures that are common to bridge calls. A dropped teleconference is an inconvenience to a business, but for the intelligence community or Pentagon, a voice outage could be deadly. The source of risk in those bridge calls is the digital signal processors that mix the audio at a centralized server. If that server goes down, everyone loses connectivity.
We knew we could not use a centralized system like that. We were able to adapt WAVE easily for the military because it is composed of software building blocks assembled around a simple concept: standardization of all communications across a common platform — the IP network.
To avoid single-point failure, our engineers created a distributed architecture managed by what we unofficially call the WAVE Engine. This software mixes the audio and provides Advanced Encryption Standard 256-bit encryption, which is approved by the National Security Agency. With the WAVE Engine software installed on numerous devices and servers, if one device should fail or be removed from the network, the other devices can take over. There is no single point of failure.
We saw a new opportunity as more government users began turning to BlackBerrys. For devices with plenty of processing power, such as PCs, the WAVE Engine could be installed under the hood while our Mobile Communicator software provided the user interface — the “Talk” button on a BlackBerry.
We discovered that the BlackBerry processors were not powerful enough to accommodate the WAVE Engine. We tried it, but the voice sounded choppy, which was unacceptable. Our engineers found a way around this problem by devising IP links to connect individual BlackBerrys to WAVE Engine software installed on fixed servers or in the cloud.
Traditionally, to connect the radio and smart-phone users, radio communications also had to be brought into the IP environment. We did this by allowing the software to receive the radio transmissions at numerous computer gateways and convert the transmissions into IP packets.
This worked well, but as our technology began to be used in Afghanistan and elsewhere, a new challenge arose. Blowing sand and geographic obstructions produced packet losses of 30 percent to 40 percent. We refined the software to manage this packet loss so that communications could continue even in such scenarios.
Beyond smart phones, WAVE is also valuable as a link between disparate radio networks, which is why it is on the NATO Approved Fielded Products List and we count the U.S. special operations community as a user. We also are seeking certification by U.S. Joint Interoperability Test Command.
Radios are still mired in the proprietary nature of legacy communications. Without a single protocol for radio communications, bringing disparate radio systems together has been a complex matter. WAVE solves the problem by converting all communications into packets on the IP network, and using industry standard protocols — H.323; Session Initiation Protocol — and transport standards — Radio Transmission Control and Real Time Control Protocol.
The reliance on software over hardware reduces expense and creates opportunities for network expansion. While radio communications enter through the gateways, any IP-enabled device such as a PC, smart phone or IP desk phone can be enabled with our Mobile Communicator software application. WAVE converts communications from every device into IP packets on a common channel. For devices that do not natively communicate using IP, such as radios or analog phones, the gateways serve as proxies.
Expansion of IP over the air using Wi-Fi, cellular data networks, WiMAX and others has expanded the reach of mission- critical voice applications. An officer communicating with a PC on board a plane flying at 30,000 feet can communicate with a soldier on the battlefield, seamlessly.
By linking so many different kinds of devices, a network can now carry not just voice, but also data and video packets between endpoints. A distributed intelligence network can now be created at the network edge. Using the IP network to distribute audio, data and video between software communications applications has other advantages. The software on each device mixes, transcodes and encrypts all of the audio. That means a soldier on the battlefield using a laptop can receive fully encrypted multimedia information from multiple sources over many channels via a satellite link. Because the software has the power to convert all of the information to a single stream using one of more than 20 encoder-decoder devices for compression, there is no longer a need for hardware-intensive digital signal processor-based audio mixing.
WAVE’s Supermode distribution technology acts as an overlay on the network to mask the discrepancies in multicast, unicast and mixed mode networks. The communications applications operate as if they are on a flat, multicast network. The WAVE Supernodes seamlessly route the traffic across the network. In addition, all WAVE systems are built from a few modular components and can be configured in numerous ways to meet the requirements of virtually any military.
Software communications applications like WAVE are revolutionizing the way militaries consider legacy investments, interoperability and mission-critical voice, data and video communications. Battlefield communications are no longer limited to the functionality of radio handsets. Rather, it is the power of software behind the scenes that can unite any device to another and make it possible for soldiers, commanders and governments to share vital information at the battle’s edge. This is what will change the cultural status quo and bring battlefield communications into a new era.
WAVE of the future
Fifty people in Seattle have created a software package that is linking BlackBerry phones in the Pentagon to radios in Afghanistan. Joel Groen of Twisted Pair Solutions explains how it works.
March 01, 2011
In 2002, the co-founders of Twisted Pair Solutions held a meeting with a defense contractor to discuss possible uses for its Wide Area Voice Environment. Now known as WAVE, this software was originally developed for stock traders in the financial system, who wanted an alternative to keeping their phone lines constantly open to “hoot and holler” stock prices so they could be heard by everyone. WAVE shifted those group communications to digital Internet Protocol (IP) packets, which proved to be vastly more cost effective.
At the 2002 meeting, creative wheels began to turn, and soon the co-founders were introduced to members of the U.S. Coast Guard District 13 in Seattle, who were looking for a way to connect telephone-equipped shore-based personnel to ship based colleagues who were using two-way radios. Our co-founders said it could be done, and a week later they demonstrated it.
From there, we were introduced to the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Army, which is now the biggest customer for WAVE. The technology is also used widely by NATO and its members. Today, officials in the Pentagon with the correct network permissions can use their personal computers and BlackBerrys, for example, to listen to radio traffic in Afghanistan, and join in when necessary. We’re now working to deliver the same capability to Android users. When a user presses an on-screen or side button, he can talk on the selected voice channel, just as if he were carrying a radio. In short, WAVE gives smart phones a radio’s push-to-talk capability.
We believe this technology is about to have an even larger role as the U.S. military prepares to make widespread use of smart phones on the battlefield. Even with the rollout of smart phones, thousands of radios without IP capability are certain to remain in the battle zone, and soldiers equipped with those radios will need to be able to talk to smart-phone users. WAVE can provide this interoperability.
Developing and refining the WAVE software for the military required our engineers to identify real-world operational challenges and implement technical solutions.
For starters, we realized that military users were asking for a much larger and more robust version of the traditional bridge conference call used by businesses around the world. We also knew that the military could not accept the risk of single-point failures that are common to bridge calls. A dropped teleconference is an inconvenience to a business, but for the intelligence community or Pentagon, a voice outage could be deadly. The source of risk in those bridge calls is the digital signal processors that mix the audio at a centralized server. If that server goes down, everyone loses connectivity.
We knew we could not use a centralized system like that. We were able to adapt WAVE easily for the military because it is composed of software building blocks assembled around a simple concept: standardization of all communications across a common platform — the IP network.
To avoid single-point failure, our engineers created a distributed architecture managed by what we unofficially call the WAVE Engine. This software mixes the audio and provides Advanced Encryption Standard 256-bit encryption, which is approved by the National Security Agency. With the WAVE Engine software installed on numerous devices and servers, if one device should fail or be removed from the network, the other devices can take over. There is no single point of failure.
We saw a new opportunity as more government users began turning to BlackBerrys. For devices with plenty of processing power, such as PCs, the WAVE Engine could be installed under the hood while our Mobile Communicator software provided the user interface — the “Talk” button on a BlackBerry.
We discovered that the BlackBerry processors were not powerful enough to accommodate the WAVE Engine. We tried it, but the voice sounded choppy, which was unacceptable. Our engineers found a way around this problem by devising IP links to connect individual BlackBerrys to WAVE Engine software installed on fixed servers or in the cloud.
Traditionally, to connect the radio and smart-phone users, radio communications also had to be brought into the IP environment. We did this by allowing the software to receive the radio transmissions at numerous computer gateways and convert the transmissions into IP packets.
This worked well, but as our technology began to be used in Afghanistan and elsewhere, a new challenge arose. Blowing sand and geographic obstructions produced packet losses of 30 percent to 40 percent. We refined the software to manage this packet loss so that communications could continue even in such scenarios.
Beyond smart phones, WAVE is also valuable as a link between disparate radio networks, which is why it is on the NATO Approved Fielded Products List and we count the U.S. special operations community as a user. We also are seeking certification by U.S. Joint Interoperability Test Command.
Radios are still mired in the proprietary nature of legacy communications. Without a single protocol for radio communications, bringing disparate radio systems together has been a complex matter. WAVE solves the problem by converting all communications into packets on the IP network, and using industry standard protocols — H.323; Session Initiation Protocol — and transport standards — Radio Transmission Control and Real Time Control Protocol.
The reliance on software over hardware reduces expense and creates opportunities for network expansion. While radio communications enter through the gateways, any IP-enabled device such as a PC, smart phone or IP desk phone can be enabled with our Mobile Communicator software application. WAVE converts communications from every device into IP packets on a common channel. For devices that do not natively communicate using IP, such as radios or analog phones, the gateways serve as proxies.
Expansion of IP over the air using Wi-Fi, cellular data networks, WiMAX and others has expanded the reach of mission- critical voice applications. An officer communicating with a PC on board a plane flying at 30,000 feet can communicate with a soldier on the battlefield, seamlessly.
By linking so many different kinds of devices, a network can now carry not just voice, but also data and video packets between endpoints. A distributed intelligence network can now be created at the network edge. Using the IP network to distribute audio, data and video between software communications applications has other advantages. The software on each device mixes, transcodes and encrypts all of the audio. That means a soldier on the battlefield using a laptop can receive fully encrypted multimedia information from multiple sources over many channels via a satellite link. Because the software has the power to convert all of the information to a single stream using one of more than 20 encoder-decoder devices for compression, there is no longer a need for hardware-intensive digital signal processor-based audio mixing.
WAVE’s Supermode distribution technology acts as an overlay on the network to mask the discrepancies in multicast, unicast and mixed mode networks. The communications applications operate as if they are on a flat, multicast network. The WAVE Supernodes seamlessly route the traffic across the network. In addition, all WAVE systems are built from a few modular components and can be configured in numerous ways to meet the requirements of virtually any military.
Software communications applications like WAVE are revolutionizing the way militaries consider legacy investments, interoperability and mission-critical voice, data and video communications. Battlefield communications are no longer limited to the functionality of radio handsets. Rather, it is the power of software behind the scenes that can unite any device to another and make it possible for soldiers, commanders and governments to share vital information at the battle’s edge. This is what will change the cultural status quo and bring battlefield communications into a new era.
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