by Capt. Bownyn Hutchins
HQ AIA/DOML
Kelly Air Force Base, Texas
| by Capt. Bownyn Hutchins HQ AIA/DOML Kelly Air Force Base, Texas |
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The intelligence community needs and depends on a robust intelligence communications infrastructure.
The Air Intelligence Agency is pursuing efforts to improve intelligence support to the battlelabs, including all Air Force units, by improving the communications support to the intelligence units.
These efforts include using Web-based technology, connecting to the Defense Information Systems Agency's Asynchronous Transfer Mode backbone and integrating network infrastructure upgrade efforts. This enables AIA to provide a flexible communications infrastructure to the battlelabs for intelligence support. When the Battlelab Communications Conference was held in February, members of the communications community gathered to discuss the communications requirements of the battlelabs. Minimum communications requirements for the Information Warfare Battlelab are to communicate with AIA and the Air Force Information Warfare Center, subordinate units, other battlelabs and Headquarters U.S. Air Force Battlelab Integration Division. These communications include electronic mail, file transfer, collaboration tools, telephone and Video Tele-Conferencing |
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HQ AIA, AFIWC and their subordinate units operate on a secure local area network at the Top Secret level that was extended into the Information Warfare Battlelab facility. The battlelabs and HQ USAF/XORBB will have access to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network and the Unclassified Internet Protocol Router Network.
The battlelabs are also making use of Intelink services. They use Web-based technology to produce, access and distribute intelligence information and allows sharing of data products across geographically disparate operations.
Intelink provides services at different classification levels. Top Secret information is restricted to the Intelink-TS. Secret information appears on Intelink-TS and Intelink-S.
Sub-nets for specific organizational uses like the AIA-Web are used to permit electronic publishing and distribution of information specific to their community.
Web technology's connectivity and ease-of-use make creating and disseminating information more efficient, but the proliferation of technologies and lack of standardization mean many systems are not interoperable.
To ensure the right intelligence gets to the right place at the right time, AIA began a project within the Intelink umbrella called Sensor Box.
Sensor Box bridges the gap between what AIA currently has and getting a seamless integration of all intelligence and non-intelligence sources by using existing government and commercial "off the shelf" software.
This effort explores integrating data retrieval, data translation and data visualization tools to retrieve and fuse data as text, imagery, video, audio, etc.
By integrating these technologies, Sensor Box makes the Intelink suite a more efficient capability without having to make changes to hardware, operating systems or legacy databases.
To access and fuse information from three General Military Intelligence databases, one image database and one equipment parametrics database using a templated query and web drilldown links without Sensor Box would require users to know where the information is, access the information one query at a time and merge the information manually into a comprehensive report.
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Users want to identify which data sources to search and second they want to know from where their data came. Sensor Box does just that. AIA will extend the Sensor Box to open up the Air Operations Center intelligence and operational data sources for the Joint and Allied warfighters who previously had no access. AIA also plans to partner with other intelligence agencies to build a Virtual Information Network consisting of several Sensor Box systems to provide seamless information transfer between the network of Virtual Information Servers. The Sensor Bus effort will provide a network capable of supporting the 21st century of intelligence requirements. |
This includes the transition to an all digital environment, use of multimedia data, collaborative computing, real-time and near real-time sensor-to-shooter intelligence and flexible, scaleable communications for future needs.
Sensor Bus will provide many advantages to AIA that will enable it to maintain the Air Force's core competency of Information Superiority. It will ease shortfalls such as deficient communications capabilities, lack of modeling and simulation capabilities, insufficient bandwidth and lack of an all-source, fused database.
Sensor Bus will implement new high-bandwidth technologies, such as ATM technologies, reducing dedicated circuit costs and leveraging economy of scale in purchase and maintenance, and will consolidate infrastructure architectures.
Sensor Bus is also addressing network management, network maintenance, upgrades, and training.
Information has become one of the largest weapons that a country possesses. With the advance of communications technology, the opportunities to exploit or defend against information superiority/information warfare have become one of the most important factors in a war or contingency.
AIA and its units must have an information infrastructure which allows us to keep our information superiority, providing essential information to the warfighter at the right time in the right place.
To provide a robust, worldwide, standard, flexible, scaleable and interoperable infrastructure will keep the Air Force on the leading edge of information superiority, eventually giving the warfighter the sensor-to-shooter technology which will be required in future conflicts.
Retrun to July 97