By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
Warrior had a great opportunity to talk to two Army expert weapons developers helping break through a new, cyber-hardened, mobile SIPR data network. The emerging Global Secure Network enables more secure, multi-domain and multi-national exchange of time sensitive war data.
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A matter of mere seconds can determine life or death in a high-intensity combat situation, yet US Army soldiers often need rapid, secure access to sensitive data during combat to prevail in an engagement. What if the critical and highly-sensitive classified data needed to destroy the enemy cannot get there fast enough? Expediting information flow and global access, while maintaining the requisite security, is the conceptual foundation of the Army’s emerging Global Secure Network effort. It’s a cutting-edge effort to secure, yet streamline data transmission to enable on-the-move access to sensitive data, using what developers call Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC).
Much of the critical, yet classified information needed by the Army travels on a secret network called the SIPRNet, a highly cherished protected database used to transmit combat relevant and operationally sensitive data. The concept of operation informing GSN, therefore, is designed to bring pervasive, ubiquitous and secure SIPRNet access and connectivity in real time across the world.
Soldiers can use laptops automatically connected to a number of possible networks wherever they go, yet while sustaining NSA encryption Type 1 standards engineered to protect the data.
“You eliminate the need for units to set up a static SIPR infrastructure. What you are getting with GSN is mobility. You can use CSfC laptops as long as they have access to a commercial or NIRPNET network, they have access to that secure data that may reside back in a data center. This eliminates the need to set up an infrastructure wherever they go, because GSN makes it possible to piggyback on the network that is in place there,” Lt. Col. Xkoshan Arnold, Product Manager for the Global Enterprise Network Modernization — Americas, (GENM-A), told Warrior in an interview.
Army GSN developers describe the effort in terms of an “unshackling” of end users from SIPR Cafes and dedicated spaces, enabling operations to be mobile.
The ability for disaggregated, mobile combat “nodes” to access otherwise “stovepiped” data is enabled by a global network of interconnected GSN hubs or centers. These dispersed nodes, which span the globe, are positioned in the Continental United States, North Carolina, Hawaii, Korea, Southwest Asia and Europe. They allow users to get on the SIPR network faster.
“Whether it’s a senior leader sitting in a hotel in Seoul Korea or an Army formation that’s been forward deployed to Poland, there are nodes globally allowing them to access data through any kind of network, whether its Low Earth Orbit satellites or commercial colorless networks, they will be able to access the closest CSfC node we have around the globe,” GSN Project Officer Mr. Rob Holloway, told Warrior in an interview “If I’m a soldier that is stationed in North Carolina and I am deployed to Europe, I will automatically be connected with the node that is in Germany which gives me great mobility and great multi-site connectivity.”
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University
