Pentagon Pursues Cross-Domain, Inter-Service Intelligence

By Kris Osborn

Operating on the Distributed Common Ground System intelligence database.

The system, known as DCGS, gathers, integrates and organizes information from more than 500 sources for analysts looking to interpret combat data, assess terrain information, receive SIGINT feeds, monitor sensor input and collect other kinds of ISR information. The system is used widely among the military services and other government agencies that share intelligence.

At the same time, developers want to harness both government and private sector innovations to improve upon some of the segmented or stove-piped information generated by the intelligence database.

As a result, the current cross-domain effort seeks to secure and exchange intelligence information across various military service systems and within individual networks and databases themselves, program managers and developers explained earlier this year at a Northern Virginia Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association event.

“We want a cross-domain solution capability,” said Capt. Mark Kempf, DCGS-N (Navy). We need to create a way to manage information across enclaves – from top secret all the way to unclassified, he said. “Merging this from an analyst’s perspective is going to be critical.”

Kempf explained that this effort, aimed at helping analysts access all the pertinent information, should include data-tagging to ensure that data can be successfully exchanged both vertically and horizontally across and within networks utilized by DCGS.

“We want an agile development process where we pull in pieces and work within the processes so we can develop technology more quickly,” said Kempf.