Military Operations Go High-Tech

W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 6, 2000 -- Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean aboard a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier a young sailor is taken ill and has severe internal bleeding.

He needs immediate emergency surgery — there is no time to evacuate him to a hospital ashore.

The ship’s surgeon connects via video teleconferencing to Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington D.C., where the head of vascular surgery guides him through a lifesaving process.

A Marine Corps intelligence officer on routine deployment off the coast of Africa receives orders to assemble intelligence about unrest in a nearby nation. The Marines are ordered to begin preparing to evacuate Americans from the capital city.

The intelligence officer logs on to his shipboard computer and gets the latest information from the classified Web pages of the Defense Intelligence Agency and State Department.

Those are just two examples of how the Navy and Marine Corps say their planned five-year, $7 billion Intranet will reform military operations.

Today’s contract award to Electronic Data Systems Corp. of Plano, Texas, to establish and run a single integrated Navy-Marine Corps network is being characterized as perhaps the largest single government computer contract awarded outside the government.

For months, four key companies have battled for the initial five-year contract. EDS’s competitors were Computer Sciences Corp., of El Segundo, Calif., IBM Corp.of Armonk, N.Y. and General Dynamics of Falls Church, Va.

Getting Connected

After years of watching television pictures of high-tech Navy fighters sending their precision guided weapons through the tops of buildings in Iraq and Serbia, most Americans — even those who are computer junkies — probably do not realize just how antiquated some aspects of military computer networks remain.

Military personnel say simple matters such as network congestion often keep them from getting access to information. The new Navy Marine Corps Intranet is aimed at changing that.

“This is a system that will give us complete connectivity and linkage throughout the Navy and Marine Corps of our information systems and replace some 200 separate nets with a single integrated net,” said Navy Secretary Richard Danzig.

More than 360,000 desktops around the world could be connected onto the new system. “This is the biggest information contract that we know that’s been awarded anywhere,” said Danzig.

Voice, Video and Data

EDS’s team, which the company named “The Information Strike Force,” also includes Raytheon, MCI WorldCom, Cisco, WAM!NET, Dell and Microsoft. The team will provide the services for data, video and voice communications for the entire Navy and Marine Corps around the world.

According to Navy officials, their current networks are vulnerable to a variety of threats ranging from hackers to denial of service attempts because security standards and implementation can vary widely. The hope is the Intranet will solve that problem by using a unique security architecture and cryptologic mechanisms.

The Navy requirements for computer communications are much the same as any major international corporation. With a $90 billion total operating budget and 900,000 people, the Navy has dozens of bases and shore installations around the world and over 300 ships. At any one time, there are over 100 ships, and 88,000 sailors and Marines deployed around the world.

Some Disagreement

Historically, the Navy spends about $1.6 billion annually on information services and connectivity. Danzig believes most of the Intranet can be funded out of that budget because operations will be more efficient and streamlined, and fewer people will be required to run it.

But the project has not been without controversy. Members of Congress have been concerned that the Navy will be unable to fund such an expensive effort in the long run.

There have also been objections to contracting out to the private sector such a large piece of traditional government business.

But Navy sources say one of the key advantages of the Intranet is that as a user, the Navy and Marine Corps can finally start treating information services like other commodities and be assured of continuing to get the latest hardware, software and other equipment over the years to come.