Marines lead the way in use of voice over IP

Members of the Marine Corps are deploying combat systems that rely on Internet phones while Defense Information Systems Agency officials are still trying to develop a top-down strategy for the departmentwide use of voice over IP.

"The grunts are leading the way" in the use of voice-over-IP technology, said Col. Paul Ortiz, program manager for Marine air/ground task force command and control systems at the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va.

The Marines use voice-over-IP technology as an application on classified and unclassified intranets in field-deployable Unit Operation Centers (UOCs), Ortiz said. Officials have deployed nine UOCs to Iraq, Ortiz said, which operate with combat units such as the infantry battalion in and around Fallujah.

Officials at General Dynamics Corp.'s Decision Systems division in Scottsdale, Ariz., developed the centers, which provide commanders with 12 computer stations, servers and touch-screen displays. The UOCs are housed in tents and are field-deployable on one C-130 transport aircraft or two CH-53 helicopters, said Mike Fallon, Decision Systems' director for Marine Corps programs.

The UOCs' relatively small size for a command and control center is possible because of their converged voice and data network, which reduces the number of components a Marine infantry battalion or regiment needs to take to the field, Ortiz said. The digital switch unit, which handles voice-over-IP calls, is simply another server mounted in what he called a safari rack in a Humvee trailer.

The UOCs' converged voice and data network facilitates speedy communication between those at the command post and warfighters in the field, which can save lives on the battlefield, Ortiz said.

Besides using the UOCs' voice-over-IP system as a command post intercom and for making calls, he said, the Marines also use it as a point of entry into tactical radio networks.

Doctrine calls for those radios and their antennas to be placed on a hill far from the center to ensure that an enemy does not zero in on electronic emissions and attack the command center, Fallon said.

Until the Marines converted to voice over IP, an infantry unit needed to pack eight Humvee trailers with bulky coaxial cable to support all its remote antennas. Now, a Marine infantry battalion uses fiber-optic cable to support those antennas and can reduce the cable load to one-third of a trailer, Fallon said.

The fiber-optic cable carries radio traffic as voice-over-IP calls from the UOC to "antenna hill," where pigtails from the fiber-optic cable are plugged into the radios. The voice-over-IP signal is carried as a radio frequency signal to radio operators accompanying infantry units, Fallon said.

Ed Bursk, vice president of Global Crossing's government sales division, said he was not surprised by the Marines'

use of voice over IP in a tactical environment. He said it is already a proven technology with much more functionality than switched voice. Voice over IP, Bursk said, makes it easy to, among other things, make conference calls via the Internet

with anyone in the world at the push of a button.

General Dynamics won the UOC contract in April 2002 and delivered its first system a year later. The company has delivered 14 systems to date.