The Army's Program Executive Office for Command Control Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T) focuses on tactical communications, particularly on disseminating information through mission command systems. Traditionally, this has meant radios, but the PEO-C3T portfolio is evolving, according to Program Executive Officer Gary Martin, who oversees the PEO-C3T's  more than $2 billion dollar portfolio.

Martin recently sat down with Senior Reporter Amber Corrin to talk about what's next for tactical radios, expeditionary communications equipment and the future of the Network Integration Evaluation.

RELATED: Army PEO C3T Gary Martin keynotes C4ISR & Networks Conference on May 26th. Click here for more information. 

C4ISRNET: You've made some pretty significant contract awards and acquisition moves lately. Tell us about what you're buying and why.

GARY MARTIN: The newer programs — the ones that are occupying most of our time now — we will start from the ground and build up. In terms of tactical radios, about a year ago we awarded a contract for hand-held radios called a Rifleman. We are completing now our customer testing, on the back end of that, and then we will position ourselves for an operational test later this year. That is a competitive contract — two vendors — and then after the operational test, we would go into production.

We also very recently, in the beginning of the year, awarded our Manpack contract. For that, three companies were awarded a contract to provide radios for qualifications and customer testing. Once we have completed that over the course of the next year, then we are going to go to the operational test and determine which one or two or three will get fielded. That we will decide after testing — and that will be a new capability for the Army.

C4ISRNET: The latest Network Integration Evaluation — 16.2 which was held in April at Fort Bliss, Texas — is where you're testing out critical new capabilities. Can you talk more about those capabilities and how progress is going?

MARTIN: We have a couple of systems under evaluation this year. The first is our WIN-T [Warfighter Information Network-Tactical] Increment 3, which is principally a network operations-improvement capability, as well as improvement to our satellite waveform, the network-centric waveform. So that [was] all down at Fort Bliss, being integrated, going through training, and testing, then we [were] in the formal test as part of the NIE.

We have two new programs that are in the middle of testing and fielding. One is the Enroute Mission Command and Control, or EMC2. That is providing a fixed satellite antenna on a number of C-17 aircraft with a roll-on/roll-off mission command suite so that the global response force can actually leave stateside and continue to do command and control, and get updates while in flight.

Then we have the Transportable Tactical Command Communications, or T2C2, which is a transportable satellite communications capability for early-entry operations. So these are for first responders, in terms of the mobile response force — the 101st and the 82nd [airborne divisions] and the infantry units. The vehicles they have today with the WIN-T assets are too big to airlift, and so this provides an expeditionary, small, portable system that they can bring on with them on a military aircraft or a commercial aircraft. It provides the ability to provide command post operations for early-entry operations. We just awarded that contract about four or five months ago [at the time of the interview], and we are in the middle now of getting ready for testing and qualification. The operational test will be next year. So those are the newer products.

Gary Martin, the Army PEO C3T is seen at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, Sept. 22, 2015. (Daniel Woolfolk/ C4ISR & Networks)

Gary Martin, the Army PEO C3T is seen at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

Photo Credit: Daniel Woolfolk/Staff

C4ISRN: What are some of your goals in launching and rolling out these and other newer programs? What are you looking to improve upon and, looking down the line, how will it help the soldier on the battlefield?

MARTIN: That is the new stuff we have for the mission, command application side. We started fielding the Joint Battle Command and Control, or JBC-P. That is the next evolution of the [previous Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below communications platform], or Blue Force Tracker. We have gone through operational tests, and we have three [brigade combat teams] that have been fielded, and we will continue to field the Army here, as part of our capabilities set fieldings over the course of a number of years. From a mission command perspective, we had at NIE this year the Command Post Computing Environment; that is part of our common operational environment. That is version 1.1 — it's the first iteration that we are looking to evaluate for early fielding. So that is in collaboration with the PEO for Intelligence Electronic Warfare and Sensors. They bring in the intelligence capability, we have the operations capability, and we are going to collapse the systems onto one common infrastructure, the tactical server infrastructure.

Today if you go into a [tactical operations center], you have multiple different server suites, different hardware configurations. We are going to converge all of that into the same common hardware so we can get down to one system administrator and reduce the manning required to manage that infrastructure in the tactical operations center.

So that will have its first user assessment at NIE and then the Army will make a decision later this year if we field an early capability of that.

Those are the big things that we are working on; everything else is improvements to the network. Simplifying the time it takes to configure, initialize, deploy the network; improving the capability to do things over the air rather than manual entry at the device. In much of the network today, you take the load device, you got to go to every box, load the keys, load the presets; we will be able to do that over the air in about a year. We have got early portions of that demonstration at NIE this year, to validate that, and in about a year, we will be fielding new capabilities. That will really take off a lot of the burden our soldiers have today in the manual touch time it takes to get this network up and running.

C4ISRN: You mentioned simplification. Simplifying the network was a major area of focus for your predecessor, Maj. Gen. Daniel Hughes. Is that something you're continuing to work on?

MARTIN: It is still a major thrust for the PEO. We have made some progress. I'll give you a couple of examples.

The soldier network extension terminal is part of WIN-T. About a year ago, the initial systems that we fielded had about 11 different screens that you had to go through to initialize the system. That now has one: Turn it on, hit one button, and it configures so the amount of time and effort, and training has been significantly reduced for that particular terminal.

What we are going through now, with the over-the-air program that we are doing at Fort Bliss for the NIE radios, that is all part of simplifying the lower tactical Internet. We have a capability called ODIN [On Demand Information Network]; we are testing the first portion of that at Fort Bliss, as well, with the intent to field in 2018. That is the ability for radios to sense what other networks are around them that they might be able to join. If they do not have the presets, they can request it, much like your cell phone today. If you enter the lobby of the hotel, they will tell you there is a Wi-Fi link, you get the password, so you can connect. This will allow users to also be able to sense other networks and join them automatically. Today, that would take a tremendous amount of time to do that.

WIN-T is deploying the Rapid Vehicle Provisioning System, which is configuring all of the 60-plus nodes of WIN-T within a brigade combat team. Today, to do all that it is a matter of four or five days. With RVPS, which we are going to field next year, we take that configuration time to a few hours and significantly cut the touch-time soldiers have to take to get this work done. We have got a number of initiatives between now and '18 and '19 to continue simplifying, make the network far more automatic and self-initializing that manual efforts in the past.

C4ISRN: You're moving a lot of technology in the field, team by team, brigade by brigade. Inevitably some of it becomes obsolete before you can get it out there. How do you avoid technological obsolescence and falling behind the curve?

MARTIN: You do not avoid it; you've got to roll it into your strategy. For example, a lot of the stuff we use are commercial products. If we did nothing, at some point, if you look at Cisco, Brocade, Microsoft — at some point Microsoft 10 is going to come out, right? At some point, the Army has to migrate to Microsoft and if we do not, we do not get any more tech support on the old systems. So we are forced to keep up with current state because the IT industry will not continue to maintain and support the legacy stuff forever. We have planned upgrades throughout the cycle. The stuff we fielding next year for WIN-T is an enhancement over what we fielded two years ago.

The biggest challenge on the acquisition side is what is the right amount of testing? How much do you have to test when it is commercial stuff, doing the same functions, but it is the newest version of what industry had two years ago? Right now, we are working through with the test community what the right amount of testing is without having to retest everything again. Our plans right now is roll with technology — every couple of years you have to roll in the new versions of Cisco routers, and now we are virtualizing stuff so we can get it smaller in size, packaging. The necessary evil of the C4ISR community. The technology rolls so fast, if you do not do anything about it, you get left behind.

In the modernization scheme that we are in today, the Army has got some real challenges on resourcing. We are equipping about two brigades per year with what we call the capabilities set fielding: that has WIN-T, the tactical radios, the mission command updates. And at two brigades a year, it will take until 2030-something to field the entire Army.

C4ISRN: What would be your ideal solution to these kinds of problems?

MARTIN: Nirvana for me would be that the soldier turns it on and does not have to do anything other than use it. That's not necessarily an easy thing to do. Think about your office environment: I'm sure you've got a network, you have people that maintain desktop support, keep the network going. If it goes down, you call the help desk and someone comes and helps. That same technology is what it is in WIN-T and in the field. We ruggedize it, shrunk it down, painted it green or tan, bolt it on the vehicle — but it is the same technology.

Here is the big difference: They have never moved the network when you are building. It is always connected. No one moves stuff around. Your IT team is well-seasoned, they are experts in the IT field, they have been doing it for a number of years and they do not have to do anything other than wait for a call if it goes bad and react. We are asking 19-, 20-, 21-, 22-year-old kids to do that kind of functionality on a network that is mobile, packaged in the vehicle, has to be reconfigured and has to be initialized. They don't wait for the call that it's gone down; they are the ones that have to bring it up. It is complex stuff. Training and proficiency is the challenge that the Army has, and the units are stressed right now in getting enough training time to practice this stuff at home station to maintain their skills. When they've got the expert trained, he gets reassigned to the next unit, a new guy that replaces him, and you start all over.

Today, with about 20 percent of the Army fielded, the likely case is a soldier coming to the unit probably did not come from a unit that was already equipped with the same capability. They are coming in having to learn new stuff; they already went to the school, but they are not going back to the school, they have to learn it at their unit. That is a challenge for the Army. Simplifying it is still the end-state, right, get to the point where they can turn it on, press a button, and hopefully, the stuff self-initializes. Hopefully, we can get the burden of the manpower intensive operations off of them.

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