REDEFINING THE NETWORK
In the face of potential peer and near-peer threats, the Army needs dynamic and flexible network re-provisioning capabilities to reflect changes in mission and assigned units.
Additionally, the network will need to have a fallback to compensate for degraded network emergencies, when the tactical network systems on the battle- field can’t “talk” to the remote network routing controller. To offset these scenar- ios, software-defined networking solutions will need to incorporate capabilities such as initialization data products and basic router configurations that reside locally, which the tactical network system can leverage until stronger network connec- tions to the remote intelligent routing controller are restored.
THE SEARCH FOR TAILORED SOLUTIONS Under an other-transaction authority rapid acquisition process, which lever- ages Soldier feedback, experimentation and prototyping, the Program Exec- utive Office for Command, Control and Communications – Tactical (PEO C3T) is experimenting with commercial software-defined networking technolo- gies at its integration facilities at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Addition- ally, in late September, supported by the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry, the Army assessed proto- type software-defined networking and software-defined wide area network- ing software loaded onto the unit’s new at-the-halt tactical network hardware (fifth-generation technical insertion proto- types that the unit is currently piloting), at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Results from
120 Army AL&T Magazine Winter 2020
this experimentation effort are helping to inform software-defined networking design decisions and use cases—a set of possible sequences reflecting how users will employ the capabilities.
As the efforts evolve, PEO C3T plans to leverage an open-standard design for
easy integration—and to avoid
proprietary designs or commitment to particular vendors—to spur innova- tion while keeping costs down through increased competition. System developers from the Army acquisition and research communities are working closely with industry to ensure that they understand the degraded signal challenges in the Army’s network, which are much greater than in commercial networks, as well as other specific objectives so that they can provide us with more tailored solutions. Tese objectives include:
• Assisting the Army in rapidly provi- sioning tactical network nodes. Software-defined networking exper- imentation has shown decreased provisioning time, especially when paired with virtualization and contain- erization, which further reduces the overall data size and speed of provisioning.
• Supporting rapid unit task reorga- nization. The Army needs dynamic, f lexible re-provisioning to ref lect changes in mission and assigned units.
This functional gap extends beyond the traditional software-defined networking capabilities and needs to allow for the tailoring of each tactical network device.
• Optimizing routing in the tacti- cal network. There is a need for software-defined networking to behave opportunistically. Because of the Army’s degraded network challenges, software- defined wide area networking solutions must enhance the network when the remote network controller is available, and enable nodes to operate indepen- dently when it is not available.
• Simplifying network manage- ment. Experimentation reveals that centralizing and automating network conf iguration changes makes it easier for the network node opera- tors on the ground. However, network management, including configuration changes, can still be quite complex for the centralized signal Soldier team to execute. There is opportunity to auto- mate many of these functions.
• Increasing security in the tacti- cal network. The Army is looking at software-defined networking to assist in rapid cyber response through central- izing the ability to conduct changes to security policy, patching and config- urations to support defensive cyber operations. This would enable Soldiers at the remote centralized controller location to send out patches or updates throughout the entire network.
Te Army understands that to receive better, more tailored solutions from industry, it needs to share open appli- cation programming interfaces and use cases in areas that could potentially be supported by commercial off-the-shelf products. Tese include interfaces for accessing initialization data; integrating to
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