Report: Army network tests failed to adequately assess mobile operations
By
Bob Brewin
Large-scale Army battlefield network tests last summer did not include mobile operation scenarios and did not feature robust attacks against the networks, the Defense Department's test organization said in its annual report to Congress.
The ambitious six-week Army network integration evaluation at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., last summer, which had 3,800 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team put battlefield systems through their paces, cost $67 million, or roughly six times more than previous tests. The benefits from the larger tests remain unclear, said Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department's director of operational test and evaluation, in his annual test report submitted to Congress in January.
The report said the Army tested 25 experimental systems in the summer of 2011, the expense of which stressed the service's evaluation capacity.
In addition, the Army should develop operational scenarios in future evaluations, the report said. Last summer, brigade and battalion tactical operations centers and company command posts operated from fixed sites and were dependent on a fixed-aerial tier of 100-foot towers and aerostats to establish network connectivity.
In future tests, the Army should place a greater emphasis on scenarios that require commands to move around the battlefield and establish and maintain mobile, ad hoc networks. "Both of these are desired Army network characteristics that have not been demonstrated to date," the report said.
And while the summer 2011 evaluation did involve tests of electronic warfare and computer attacks, the report said future tests should include a "robust information operations opposing force."
Paul Mehney, a spokesman for the Army system of systems integration directorate, said in an email that the service cut the number of systems it plans to evaluate at another network integration evaluation this spring, which in turn will reduce overall test costs.
The May 2012 evaluation also will focus on mission command-on-the-move capability and include a large number of mobile communication equipment, including systems in the aerial tier, routers and multichannel radios. More than one third of the testing priorities will concentrate on mobile operations and soldier connectivity, Mehney said.