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home > March/April 2007 issue > article
Data sharing with coalition forces needs top-level push
By Dawn S. Onley
Editor
The Military Services need to get better at sharing information
with coalition forces, according to panelists at a recent
conference sponsored by AFCEA International.
“We need to encourage
and foster interoperability in
an overall strategy to allow
our coalition partners to be
a part of our network,” said
Dennis Bauman, joint program
executive officer for the
Joint Tactical Radio System.
“There is no advantage to
the United States to keep secret
what we develop on
JTRS if we truly want to promote
interoperability.”
Bauman said his office is
going through the process
of answering the National
Security Agency’s security
concerns and restrictions
that are preventing coalition
interoperability. JTRS officials
are hoping the Multifunctional
Information Distribution
System program, which five
nations are developing, will be a template
for how other programs can be
developed with coalition help and
support.
“We have a strategy to move forward
to allow us to fully share our technology,”
Bauman said during the AFCEA
West 2007 panel discussion.
Vice Adm. Mark Edwards, deputy
chief of naval operations for communications
networks, said one way he plans
to push the idea of coalition interoperability
is to increase the Navy’s support
for the global Combined Enterprise Regional
Information Exchange System,
which is for multinational informationsharing
networks.
“We will put more money into that,”
Edwards said.
The underlying issue preventing increased
coalition interoperability is
lack of trust, said Gerald DeMuro, executive
vice president of information
systems and technology at General
Dynamics.
“It’s a matter of trust, and this needs
to be at a very high level” at the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, DeMuro
said.
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