Military needs to improve info sharing with allies, Navy official says

The U.S. military must improve its ability to share information with allied forces in order to win the global war on terrorism, a top Navy information officer told defense officials and industry representatives Wednesday.

"We really have to figure out a way that's not too cumbersome, not too expensive, that we can interoperate with our coalition partners," said Vice Adm. Richard Mayo, director of Space, Information Warfare, and Command and Control, during a Navy League conference on sea, air and space capabilities. "The way we do it today reminds of me how you would look after playing a game of Twister. It's that hard."

About 30 of the Navy's 316 massive ships currently are stationed near Afghanistan in the Sea of Oman. Those 30 ships are fighting Taliban and al Qaeda forces in conjunction with roughly 70 military ships from various allied countries.

The Navy obtains much of its real-time information through the Defense Department's Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), but a national policy prohibits coalition partners from accessing that classified system. But Mayo said the Navy has been experimenting with "various equipment and servers" to share crucial war fighting information with allies.

"The global war on terrorism has really reinforced to us that we really need to get serious about coalition interoperability," Mayo said.

Another serious priority for the Navy--and the Defense Department--is protecting the high-tech assets that have enabled the U.S. military to wage a highly effective "network centric warfare" campaign in Afghanistan. "Networks are absolutely key to the prosecution of our war today," Mayo said. "We have an information advantage that we can never relinquish."

Navy vessels rely on satellite transmissions, for example, for wireless communications, global positioning capabilities, and intelligence gathering. "We are winning the global war on terrorism by virtue of what we get from space," Mayo said. "We in the Navy, and we in the Department of Defense, need to start thinking about space control as a very important issue. We need to protect what we have, and deny it to the adversaries."

Mayo said the Navy also must remain vigilant in protecting its critical information systems from "all kinds of intrusions" aimed at crippling the U.S. military's network centric warfare capabilities.

"I can't emphasize enough how important information assurance and the protection of our networks is," Mayo said. "It's growing in importance every day."