By Anton Antomattei and Michael W. Parker
The 8th Army has been on a journey to achieve full operational capability, which required the ability to communicate with coalition partners anywhere on the Korean peninsula.
That meant enhancements to the Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System Korea (CENTRIXS-K or CX-K), a network for multinational information sharing. Project Manager Mission Command (PM MC) and the PM for Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) have addressed these requirements by inserting robust mission command and network technologies into the CX-K.
An enhanced CX-K network augments the 8th Army’s resources to carry out its overall field Army mission, to deter aggression against the Republic of Korea (ROK) or, should that deterrence fail, “fight tonight” as part of a combined and joint task force. As U.S. forces continue to retrograde from Afghanistan and rebalance resources to other theaters, including the Asia-Pacific, modernizing the 8th Army’s network and tactical mission command capabilities will support this strategic effort.
The 8th Army’s 2nd Infantry Division (2ID) Soldiers obtained training across the entire Korean peninsula on how to operate, maintain and administer the latest Mission Command systems available to their unit. These systems are an essential component of 8A’s mission to establish an adaptable and flexible command and control system that can execute mission command from both fixed and mobile nodes.
A NEW TACTICAL NETWORK
In 2011, PM MC, assigned to Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical (PEO-C3T), formed an assessment team and, with full support from 8th Army commanding general Lt. Gen. John D. Johnson, began working to evaluate the technical requirements to create a tactical network to support mobile command posts. PM WIN-T, also assigned to PEO C3T, was a primary member of the assessment team.
The CX-K mission command and network enhancement initiative supported the overall 8th Army Command Control Communications and Computers (C4) Modernization Campaign Plan, which required support in four areas: transport (network), data services, mission command capabilities, and interoperability with both ROK and reinforcing U.S. formations. The assessment team recommended that the CX-K tactical network be modeled after the Afghan Mission Network (AMN), which enabled each coalition nation to share information on a common network infrastructure. The CX-K tactical network and the AMN are the foundation for NATOs Future Mission Network effort.
Similar to the AMN model, the transport area of the coalition network required fielding of additional routers and switches in each of its WIN-T nodes to support CX-K in addition to the current Non-secure Internet Protocol Router (NIPR) and Secure Internet Protocol Router (SIPR)networks. Also, the mission command server architecture needed to fully support the 8th Army’s fight on the CX-K network (full unit authorization) and also support SIPR requirements on additional servers, again mirroring the AMN model. With that server architecture, the command would provide tactical data services with a point of presence for strategic network and global services and data.
Warfighter Information Network-Tactical Network (WIN-T) Increment 1 equipment, such as the Satellite Transportable Terminal (STT) and Battalion Command Post Node (CPN) Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System Korea (CX-K) coalition enclave, were fielded to the 8th Armyin July, 2012 to significantly improve the tactical infrastructure, thus allowing support to the Non-secure Internet Protocol Router (NIPR), Secure Internet Protocol Router (SIPR) and CX-K coalition networks.
INTEROPERABLE, UNTETHERED
To meet the CX-K interoperability requirements, PM WIN-T fielded a third network enclave in addition to the WIN-T Increment 1 equipment it had already deployed in South Korea. This equipment included the unclassified NIPR and classified SIPR network enclaves. The coalition network enclave is similar in design to the classified and unclassified network enclaves, so it was easily integrated.
PM WIN-T finished fielding the last of its coalition network enclave packages in South Korea in early July. It reused equipment and resources from previous requirements that were no longer needed in other arenas and leveraged those resources for the CX-K effort, yielding a cost avoidance of $5.876 million. With the new enclave equipment in place, the United States can take full advantage of its WIN-T Increment 1 systems in South Korea to quickly and seamlessly share voice, data, video and other information on the coalition network.
To support a proof of principle for the tactical domain, PM MC provided early fieldings of several servers to the 8th Army and its subordinate, 2nd Infantry Division (2ID), in time for Exercise Key Resolve 13. This combined U.S.-Korean military exercise is held annually in March. About 13,000 ROK and U.S. Soldiers participated in the exercise, which featured combined planning, mission command operations, military intelligence, logistics and other key military specialties.
By the end of the exercise, the 8th Army had demonstrated the ability to disconnect from the strategic infrastructure and operate its mission command network across its tactical WIN-T systems throughout the Korean peninsula, demonstrating untethered tactical CX-K capabilities for the first time.
The 8th Army’s 2nd Infantry Division (2ID) received new Mission Command clients, server stacks and consoles as part of the MC-13 hardware refresh and fielding. The 2ID rapidly fielded these systems for use across the Korean peninsula in conjunction with the Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System Korea (CX-K) upgrade.
The CX-K enhancement coincided with the recent scheduled upgrade of mission command systems, which included hardware refresh, upgrades to existing systems and new equipment and software fieldings. Throughout these planned fieldings, PMs MC and WIN-T ensured that the 8th Army maintained operational capability. Following the upgrades completion in July, the systems were available for use in the theater’s largest annual joint exercise, Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) in August. UFG employs computer-generated scenarios for more than 30,000 participants from the ROK, United States and other nations to prepare them for contingency operations in defense of the ROK.
The 8th Army C4I Architecture enhancements have set the conditions for future fieldings of PM MC’s systems, specifically, the Command Post of the Future (CPOF) 7.1 next generation software. CPOF is the commander’s collaborative and situational awareness system that processes and displays combat and sustainment information from other Army systems. CPOF 7.1 will support scalability (full theater in the same collaborative environment) and allow units to disconnect, continue to operate and reconnect to the network seamlessly. These capabilities, planned for the 2015 fiscal year (FY15), fully support the 8th Army in its role as a field Army conducting both its Army forces (ARFOR) and combined joint task force missions.
The Army remains on course in its modernization journey of 8th Army network and mission command capabilities. PM WIN-T continues to improve network capabilities to effectively share information both internally and with joint forces and coalition partners, while PM MC continues to provide enhanced mission command operational capabilities in the coalition environment. The partnership between the 9th Army and PEO C3T organizations has, and continues to be, the driving force to enable the 8th Army to “fight tonight.”
