1. M2I2 Questions From OPNAV to Joint Staff J-6
Presented by:
Matt Shadeed
SPAWAR 52300
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Question 1
A. What does MPE mean to the maritime communities way of doing business?
Response from Joint Staff: In many ways MPE means no change to the way the maritime communities conduct operations. The Maritime forces (both US and other nations) are way ahead of other warfighting domains in MPE implementation both materiel and non-materiel. But, there are some deltas such as replication and placement of C4ISR capabilities that exist on SIPRNet for use on a mission network, i.e. GCCS-M, TBMCS, JADOCS, etc.
SPAWAR technical response: There is concerned about the requirement for a "...stack of equipment that can be tailored to support a specific mission with a specific set of mission partners”. Policies surround data management, particularly data at rest, may drive having multiple stacks of equipment. Loading virtual machines is "easy," however, meeting policy issues with relation to data storage may not be. In the past, we've swapped hard drives because policy said we could not store CMFP data on CMFC hard drives. Will this be relaxed for MPE? If not, how many spare hard drives/blade servers will be required?
There is a bona fide operational need for an episodic MPE, however, no such thing exists today. The challenges to setting this up will probably be greater on the policy and accreditation side than they will be on the technical side, but they will be considerable
MPE requires a mindset of “ops off SIPR!” SIPR and NIPR are governed by DoD and supported by
various agencies and offices. Commanders own their mission networks as operational sponsors. DAA for SIPR and
NIPR may not be delegated to Commanders, but a mission network (MPE) is not a strictly DoD governed environment.
The US must be willing to employ [releasable] US capabilities in non-US only network environments. The US already has approvals to do so in many cases, interpreting that approval and reciprocity across organizations is the MPE problem
to address. Exact numbers of servers, etc. will depend on the mission requirements.
Not correct, the Afghan Mission
Network is an episodic MPE
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Question 2
B. What do we (maritime community) have to do to our systems to take advantage of MPE's capabilities?
Response from Joint Staff: MPE is not a "thing" or a "box". It is a framework, or rather stated a collection of policies and rules to define use of existing US DOTMLPF and Policy capabilities in a non-US only environment as a peer with a specific set of partners.
SPAWAR technical response: The scope of the discussion in this answer has expanded greatly from basic collaboration tools such as , chat, and VoIP to specialized warfighting tools. Moving warfighting tools into the multi-national space can not be done without a great deal of pain. A more viable route is to try to get all nations to agree on a single tool, maybe working through NATO, but we all know that takes a very long time, even longer than what is required to stand up a new enduring CENTRIXS enclave. Alternatively, you could look for data standards that allow different tools to interoperate.
The US should leverage the work that has already been accomplished with the AMN. Currently,
there are releasable versions of tools that can be used in a MPE. Getting all to agree to a “single”
tool runs completely counter to MPE and concept of federation where everyone brings their own
equipment and tools to operate within a MPE. The US can not even get the Joint community to
agree on a “single” tool, so concur that interoperable data standards and processes is most
important, reinforcing the need for a viable Coalition, Interoperability, Assurance and
Validation (CIAV) capability.
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Question 3
C. What is the impact to the way the maritime community operates, trains, and equips?
Response from Joint Staff: No new skills required, just guidance and policy updates and an investment to have a parallel suite of C4ISR capabilities on a mission network.
SPAWAR technical response: There will be impacts to training and equipment, particularly if new applications and services are introduced (e.g. XMPP Chat). Someone will have to pay for the software, its accreditation, upkeep, configuration and training.
The answer that "no new skills will be required" is focused on the US sailor and under the assumption that the existing US national tool set gets ported to CENTRIXS/MPE. The impact to the coalition partners could be considerable
Navy concurred w/o comment on the XMPP standard in the Joining Instructions
If the mission network is established correctly, the mission environment should be completely transparent
to the sailor. The only real training is for Commanders to tell their sailors to “get the fight off SIPR!” And then, for
the sailor to routinely operate on the mission network (i.e. CENTRIXS).
“All commands reported needing training and additional CENTRIXS terminals, printers, and scanners to increase information flow and to enable collaborative planning. U.S. Forces must learn to function routinely on CENTRIXS networks in the coalition environment and by exception on U.S. only networks. U.S. reliance on SIPR chat, SIPR , SVTC, VOSIP, and PowerPoint briefs vice formal messages, operations orders and doctrinal communication channels also limited coalition integration.” BOLD ALLIGATOR 2012, Final Report
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Question 4
D. Does MPE affect acquisition for new HW/SW; integration into existing national systems, ship bandwidth considerations, maintain/sustain; etc.)?
Response from Joint Staff: Yes but not as much as one would think. For example, to have an e- mail server on a mission network requires a separate server and license. Same for a GCCS-M SAA server, although the licenses used for one may carry over to the other instance depending on how the license agreements are written. But a VDI or laptop or desktop can be repurposed to another network simply by changing the network connection and swapping out a hard drive. This has been common practice for every US Navy ship (and those of other nations) that has a mission network since Purchasing hard drives for each network instance is much cheaper than trying to slick or wipe a hard drive and keeps them available for re-use if the ship needs to reconnect to a previously used mission network environment.
SPAWAR technical response: The number of users on a ship on given Allied/Coalition enclave will not change but the amount of traffic generated by those users, on CMFP or MPE-X, will vastly increase as operations accelerate. Daily coalition activities are not done on SIPRNET (Pegasus excepted), as the Coalition has no CENTRIXS access.
There is a critical need to develop technical and policy solutions that free us from the need to physically swap hard drives. Virtual machines can be set up in a secure and segregated fashion, but possibly not so secure that it can be accredited. In a perfect world, a single CANES SECRET REL rack could be created and be able to be partitioned to support multiple mission secret enclaves at the same time. We should be able to flash these up as required, configure them automatically, populate them with data, and when it is time to tear them down, securely archive the data
Not sure what is meant by the “Coalition has no CENTRIXS access.”
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Question 5
E. There are currently multiple CENTRIXS-M enclaves providing support to the maritime community. How will these be transitioned to support MPE? When is this going to happen?
Response from Joint Staff: For now, CENTRIXS infrastructures are the technical and transport media that will be used to support employment of MPE framework/business rules to enable the USA to contribute US DOTMLPF to coalition missions. In effect these are already "MPE".
SPAWAR technical response: Glad to see that the current CENTRIXS enclaves are already "MPE." Just as COWAN morphed into CENTRIXS, so shall CENTRIXS morph into MPE. Fully support the use of the MPEs as the main warfighting network in an Allied/Coalition environment
Remember, MPE is not a box or a thing. MPE leverages existing capabilities to establish a federated mission
network with mission partners. MPE allows for the “repurposing” of CENTRIXS equipment to establish a
mission network. CENTRIXS is not evolving into MPE. MPE is the operational framework that allows for the
repurposing of CENTRIXS equipment to be used in a coalition arrangement for which it was not specifically
assigned.
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