ARMY AL&T


JTMN implementation team members include LTC Nanette Patton, U.S. Army Medical Department (AMEDD) Deputy Chief Information Officer for Business and Theater Systems Integration and the project’s sponsor; LTC Alfred Hamilton, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Medical Chief Information Officer and the project’s operational sponsor; Salvatore Granata, project lead for Product Manager Defense Wide Transmission Systems (PM DWTS), part of the Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems Project Office, Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS); MAJ James Morrison, Task Force 44 U.S. Army Medical Command (MEDCOM) G-6, who represented the medical community in Iraq; MAJ Jack Leech, Health Information Systems Officer (HISO) for Combined Joint Task Force-101 in Afghanistan; MAJ Dan Bridon, HISO for Task Force 30 in Afghanistan; 1LT Peter Winkel, Task Force Medical J-6; and Liz Snyder, Project Manager for PM DWTS’ prime contractor DRS Technologies Inc.


The Telecommunication Problem


The need for the JTMN emerged when Hamilton went to Iraq and Afghanistan for 60 days in 2007 and visited military health care facilities and providers throughout the theater. He asked the providers a simple question: what information technology support did they need to help them provide the best medical care possible?


“We went through their concerns and a picture emerged,” said Hamilton. That picture clearly showed that the existing in-theater telecommunication infra- structure was not sufficient to support critical medical situations. It took an average of 4.5 hours to transmit a single full-body CT study of traumatically wounded service members from one medical facility to another, and more than an hour to transmit a single digital


52 APRIL –JUNE 2010


JTMN implementation team members are shown after winning the DOD CIO 2009 Team Award at the Pentagon Oct. 28, 2009. Left to right: Salvatore Granata, project lead for PM DWTS; MAJ James Morrison, Task Force 44 MEDCOM G-6; LTC Alfred Hamilton, CENTCOM Medical Chief Information Offi cer; Liz Snyder, Project Manager for PM DWTS’ prime contractor DRS Technologies Inc.; LTC Nanette Patton, AMEDD Deputy Chief Information Offi cer for Business and Theater Systems Integration; and 1LT Peter Winkel, Task Force Medical J-6. (Photo by Jessica Wainwright.)


chest X-ray. In many instances, patients being evacuated would reach the next echelon of care before transmitted medical data and images got there.


Hamilton captured all this information in a Joint Urgent Operational Needs Statement (JUONS) that he wrote, in which CENTCOM identified the requirement for a SATCOM capabil- ity using very small aperture terminals (VSATs) with sufficient bandwidth to expeditiously transmit critical medi- cal data and images. In response to the JUONS, the JTMN project started in October 2008 with the JTMN imple- mentation team, including members who collaborated from worldwide locations such as Fort Monmouth, NJ; MacDill Air Force Base, FL; Falls Church, VA; Germany; Kuwait; Iraq; and Afghanistan.


The JTMN Solution The JTMN implementation team’s solution included modifying existing VSATs in theater to handle greater bandwidth capacity, repurposing VSATs no longer needed in Iraq for use in Afghanistan, providing additional VSATs throughout the theater, and upgrading the Landstuhl, Germany,


hub to link the network back to CONUS. The team successfully achieved initial operational capability for the system in March 2009 and since then has been working to expand and improve the system.


Patton noted that the team overcame multiple obstacles in implementing the project, including time zone challenges, a 100-percent turnover of key project personnel, contracting delays, trans- portation issues, supply chain failures, and satellite bandwidth shortages. She called the experience “the best of times and the worst of times. Overcoming all those obstacles—that’s why it was the worst of times—and working with the team—that’s why it was the best of times,” Patton said.


One significant obstacle that the team overcame was the failure of an aging satellite providing temporary Ku bandwidth for the JTMN until the launch of a new satellite. “There are only so many birds [satellites] over Afghanistan, and everyone is trying to use them,” explained Granata. “These satellites were not meant to last as long as they have, and we’ve had three instances where the orbit of a satellite


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