Software developer PacStar recently announced it is nearing the complete delivery of 6,000 licenses of its IQ-Core Software for the Army's WIN-T Increment 1 program.
In a related announcement, officials at the Portland, Oregon, company said PacStar has begun to integrate its solution into the National Security Agency's Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) Program to bring classified data more readily to the wireless command post.
PacStar’s product consolidates network management capabilities in an increasingly complex command post environment.
"As [the Department of Defense] deploys more and more technology out at the edge, it is often created by multiple vendors — a router from one vendor, a wireless system from another vendor — and they all have different user interfaces," PacStar Chief Technology Officer Charlie Kawasaki said. "This provides a single, intuitive view into multiple networking systems at the tactical edge."
PacStar has been delivering networking tools to WIN-T Increment 1 since an initial contract award in 2013. Total awards to date stand at about $9 million. The company began rolling out the present 6,000 licenses in February in support of a broad range of general system management tasks, including the management of routers, switches and firewalls.
The company said its internal testing shows markedly improved efficiencies in command posts where the network management software is implemented. In trials that included both an Army signal brigade and civilian users, operators were able to complete device configuration, backup, and analysis two-and-a-half times faster using PacStar, versus traditional management tools. These were set up on a secure virtual private network (VPN) tunnel 10 times faster with nine times fewer errors and 20 times fewer requests for support.
"This makes it intuitive and easy for network comms operators to set up the equipment quickly, to monitor its performance and to make sure that security configurations are correct," Kawasaki said.
The move to provision classified wireless networks under CSfC is in line with the Army’s push to incorporate wireless capabilities into the command post.
In its Command Post 2025 Concept of Operations (CONOPS) document, the Army describes a central role for secure wireless networking. Such capabilities "will reduce initial setup and teardown times, increase mobility and agility, and reduce complexity. Ongoing server and network transport consolidation efforts will also improve mobility," the CONOPS stated.
While commanders may be eager to achieve classified capabilities on wireless networks, this remains for many an ambitious goal.
"Wireless is still very new for most organizations, and these challenges are not completely solved. So we see more and more pieces of security technology being added to the mix, which just adds that much more complexity to the command post," Kawasaki said.
This may be especially true when it comes to the NSA’s CSfC requirement, which mandates dissimilar redundancy. That is, in order to avoid possible security gaps, systems are required to implement solutions from multiple vendors in areas such as VPN and public key infrastructure. The rule allows for the use of commercially available technologies, but also introduces a level of complexity.
On one hand, "this is a huge benefit for the war fighter, who now gets to use off-the-shelf smartphones to access classified information," Kawasaki said, noting that the policy also makes good technical sense. "If one vendor happens to have a flaw, it is extraordinarily unlikely that the other vendor has the flaw at the same time."
But such high levels of security always come with a tradeoff.
"The downside is that the communication specialists have to learn two separate systems from two separate vendors. So you have a significant amount of added complexity in making that work," he said.
PacStar’s solution aims to bridge that gap. "We have created wizards so that whatever you are using on the back end, the user interface remains very similar, so operators don’t have to grope around trying to figure out how to make the system work," Kawasaki said.
The company expects to begin initial fielding exercises at command posts shortly.
