thedrifter
09-25-07, 03:11 PM
Marines Spread SWAN’s Wings
By Erin Flynn Jay
http://www.military-information-technology.com/images/ThisIssue/11_8_Art1.jpg
With an emphasis on interoperability with Army and other communications systems, the Marine Corps’ Support Wide Area Network (SWAN) program is providing warfighters in Iraq and elsewhere with robust, beyond-line-of-sight communications.
With an emphasis on interoperability with Army and other communications systems, the Marine Corps’ Support Wide Area Network (SWAN) program is providing warfighters in Iraq and elsewhere with robust, beyond-line-of-sight communications for a broad spectrum of information services including video, multimedia, data and imagery.
The SWAN program is acquiring this equipment through the Army’s World-Wide Satellite Systems (WWSS) contract, which is intended to provide communications systems that are capable of overcoming existing and projected bandwidth constraints for Department of Defense transformation programs worldwide. WWSS is available to support all federal communications missions, including disaster relief and homeland security efforts.
The Marines started out in 2004 doing all their contract work with DataPath for their version fieldings in Iraq. DataPath worked side by side with the Marines to launch the SWAN programs that year. General Dynamics won the latest contract in December 2006.
“Now we’re fielding what we call SWAN D systems to all the Marine Expeditionary Units [MEUs] and to I Marine Expeditionary Force [MEF], II MEF, and III MEF Major Subordinate Commands [MSC],” said Major David Joseforsky, SWAN project officer.
The SWAN D systems are being employed worldwide with the MEUs. Joseforsky said they would shortly be fielding the last two MEUs, which will complete the SWAN D fieldings to every MEU. “By November 2007 we will have fielded SWAN to all three MEFs in the Communications Battalion, Marine Logistic Groups (MLG), Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW) and the Division,” he added.
DataPath and General Dynamics SATCOM are the Marines’ two main integrators. DataPath designs and delivers satellite and wireless communications networks around the world, while General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies is a supplier of emergency, strategic and tactical SATCOM ground terminals for reachback and range extension.
“DataPath is a sub to General Dynamics on the SWAN D contract for the SWAN D v3 trailers,” Joseforsky said. “The trailers that we’re fielding through General Dynamics are subbed to DataPath. Those are the same trailers the Army has been buying for the Joint Network Node [JNN] program. DataPath has been providing the Army the same trailers, and we’re buying the same ones for the Marine Corps units as well.”
Joseforsky said that both DataPath and General Dynamics SATCOM have been doing a very good job with all the SWAN fieldings over the past three years. DataPath did the bulk of the Urgent Universal Needs Statement (U-UNS) fieldings from 2004 into 2007, and then General Dynamics began its work this year with SWAN D.
Interoperability Focus
SWAN originated in 2004, when Joseforsky took over. The Army’s Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications Tactical, based at Fort Monmouth, N.J., helped the Marines build up their architecture. The Marines have been trying to make the SWAN program as interoperable as possible with the Army’s JNN.
That’s the reason why the Marines have been having a lot of success today with Army-Marines interoperability between JNN and SWAN. The Marines are keeping in touch with what the Army is doing, updating the Army on their progress on SWAN and trying to maintain that interoperability with tech refreshes. So far the Marines have had great success in interoperability, with few serious technical challenges.
The Marines were doing U-UNS fieldings since 2004 but are now transitioning to a program of record in 2008. They submitted a Program Objective Memorandum (POM)-08 initiative, and Joseforsky said they should be getting presidential budget funding in 2008 through 2013. Officials are waiting for the 2008 budget to be approved with the exact level of funding.
The Marines are establishing the SWAN program within all Marine MSC units as a system they can use in their inventory for exercises, deployments or contingencies. It’s another communication system in their toolkit in addition to what they already have.
The Marines started out using commercial Ku bandwidth quite heavily for SWAN. They’ve been able to put their bandwidth provider, Arrowhead, on contract and establish worldwide commercial Ku bandwidth portability. Whenever a unit wants to train in CONUS or in the PACRIM area out of Okinawa, they have base pools of bandwidth there that the units use. In Iraq, the Marines have another pool of bandwidth specifically for SWANs in Iraq. “They use the CONUS and PACRIM pools of bandwidth for training, and when we need to use the equipment in another location worldwide for exercise or contingency support, we’re able to port the bandwidth from those pools within 14 days in normal operations or within 48 hours for emergencies,” Joseforsky said. “We’ve had a lot of success with the worldwide deployable bandwidth, especially with the MEU deployments the last year. Having this portable bandwidth is critical to the support of the SWAN equipment.”
The SWAN D v3 trailer is the satellite transportable terminal on a trailer, which is a mobile platform the Marines have introduced into the program identical to the JNN trailer. “That is the cornerstone for SWAN now and really completes the network, not only for the Marine Corps and their communications capability but also the interconnectivity to the Army and other services,” said Eric Wright, vice president of business development at DataPath. “The Marines have been able to leverage off of the Army SATCOM JNN suite, and that same system has been introduced and is a major part of the SWAN program.”
It’s the Marine Corps’ entry into the net-centric war front. “The real magic of this stuff is making it work wherever it goes for long durations under any circumstance in travel,” Wright said. “That’s basically what DataPath does as an integrator of this equipment.”
“We’ve done a good job of having SWAN tech support reps onsite to assist the Marines at Camp Pendleton, Camp Lejeune, Okinawa, Japan and Iraq,” Wright said. DataPath has been doing new equipment training since 2004 with the Marines and often does follow-on training. DataPath has employees on site permanently to be able to help with exercises and training. The firm provides 28 people in Iraq to support the SWAN systems that are there.
Flyaway Terminals
General Dynamics SATCOM has received three delivery orders for satellite communications terminals that are being used in the SWAN program.
Under these orders, the Marines requested quantities of General Dynamics Warrior 120 (1.2 meter) and Warrior 180 (1.8 meter) VSAT flyaway terminals and 2.4-meter trailer-mounted terminals for quick-setup tactical communications. DataPath provides the 2.4-meter terminals.
The contract runs until 2011 and has a total potential value of $160 million if all options are exercised.
“We have worked closely with our customer and with DataPath to ensure that technically we meet the requirements of the contract and so far we have delivered everything on or ahead of schedule,” said Chris Buck, director of government programs for General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies. “Anything we can do to support our armed forces, we feel privileged to be able to do that.”
“It’s been very fast paced, but we’ve kept up with the pace and effectively supported the Marine Corps, I believe,” added Dan McCarley, senior engineer for General Dynamics SATCOM.
The Warrior terminals deliver the robust IP infrastructure demanded by the Marines today. Whether it’s for mission critical applications or to improve communications efficiency and effectiveness, Warrior terminals provide the right level of support including virtual private networks, continuity of operations, mobile access, multicast delivery, video streaming and more.
General Dynamics SATCOM says the Warrior terminals, which can operate across C, X, Ku and Ka bands (Ku and Ka for SWAN) and different access techniques, meet the challenge of network-centric operations, conforming with Transformation Communications Architecture requirements to allow Joint Forces Command and international forces to communicate with compatible systems.
Buck pointed to two aspects that make the Warrior product line special: commonality across the line and modularity. “It doesn’t matter if you have our Warrior 120 or Warrior 180 or any other Warrior products,” he said. “They contain common control and graphical user interfaces—that makes it user friendly for the people using our systems. It also helps in the training aspect. You do not have to train on a number of terminal types. It’s the same across the board for all our terminals.”
The second piece is modularity. “Dependent upon the user’s wants and needs, we can package these things differently to meet their requirements,” Buck added. “We take weight into consideration—the lighter our offerings are, the better for the commercial and military market. Our angle is to design our products so you don’t have to be an expert in communications in order to use them—that includes the set-up and the operations.”
Worldwide Bandwidth
In October 2006, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) chose Arrowhead Global Solutions to provide the Marine Corps with commercial satellite capabilities to expand its communication reach worldwide. The task order has a one-year base, and options until 2011.
Arrowhead will provide bandwidth availability, portability and mobility globally. The Marine Corps’ ability to use commercial satellite capacity is supporting missions in the United States, Europe, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central Asia. The bandwidth has been optimized to meet requirements such as satellite link availability, frequency range, look angle, polarization and response times.
To meet the growth, Arrowhead has developed strategies to assist the Marines in long-term planning and bandwidth optimization. SWAN comprises deployable Ku-band VSAT terminals that utilize time division multiple access and frequency division multiple access technologies.
“The requirements were constructed in a unique way; we didn’t see this before—bandwidth portability around the world,” said Michael Shakarji, chief technology officer at Arrowhead. “Based on the requirements, [the Marine Corps] has two pools of bandwidth they are going to rely on—one of them is the CONUS pool, whereby bandwidth can be ported from CONUS to Europe, Southwest Asia or Central Asia on very short notice. This is the first pool of bandwidth.”
“The other one is PACRIM, whereby you can take the bandwidth from the Pacific region, let’s say from Japan, to anywhere in that region,” Shakarji said. “Those regions would be Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, and we’ll go all the way to Thailand, Indonesia and Australia. The bandwidth will be [the Marine Corps’]; they can move it anywhere they want and after the mission is complete the ported bandwith comes back into the base pool of bandwidth.”
Arrowhead had a unique understanding of what the Marines’ requirements were, Shakarji said. “We negotiated for a long time with all the satellite carriers out there to see which ones would comply with the portability. We finally came up with one vendor who said they would provide portability around the world. We set up an agreement that complies with all the performance parameters that the Marine Corps required.”
By Erin Flynn Jay
http://www.military-information-technology.com/images/ThisIssue/11_8_Art1.jpg
With an emphasis on interoperability with Army and other communications systems, the Marine Corps’ Support Wide Area Network (SWAN) program is providing warfighters in Iraq and elsewhere with robust, beyond-line-of-sight communications.
With an emphasis on interoperability with Army and other communications systems, the Marine Corps’ Support Wide Area Network (SWAN) program is providing warfighters in Iraq and elsewhere with robust, beyond-line-of-sight communications for a broad spectrum of information services including video, multimedia, data and imagery.
The SWAN program is acquiring this equipment through the Army’s World-Wide Satellite Systems (WWSS) contract, which is intended to provide communications systems that are capable of overcoming existing and projected bandwidth constraints for Department of Defense transformation programs worldwide. WWSS is available to support all federal communications missions, including disaster relief and homeland security efforts.
The Marines started out in 2004 doing all their contract work with DataPath for their version fieldings in Iraq. DataPath worked side by side with the Marines to launch the SWAN programs that year. General Dynamics won the latest contract in December 2006.
“Now we’re fielding what we call SWAN D systems to all the Marine Expeditionary Units [MEUs] and to I Marine Expeditionary Force [MEF], II MEF, and III MEF Major Subordinate Commands [MSC],” said Major David Joseforsky, SWAN project officer.
The SWAN D systems are being employed worldwide with the MEUs. Joseforsky said they would shortly be fielding the last two MEUs, which will complete the SWAN D fieldings to every MEU. “By November 2007 we will have fielded SWAN to all three MEFs in the Communications Battalion, Marine Logistic Groups (MLG), Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW) and the Division,” he added.
DataPath and General Dynamics SATCOM are the Marines’ two main integrators. DataPath designs and delivers satellite and wireless communications networks around the world, while General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies is a supplier of emergency, strategic and tactical SATCOM ground terminals for reachback and range extension.
“DataPath is a sub to General Dynamics on the SWAN D contract for the SWAN D v3 trailers,” Joseforsky said. “The trailers that we’re fielding through General Dynamics are subbed to DataPath. Those are the same trailers the Army has been buying for the Joint Network Node [JNN] program. DataPath has been providing the Army the same trailers, and we’re buying the same ones for the Marine Corps units as well.”
Joseforsky said that both DataPath and General Dynamics SATCOM have been doing a very good job with all the SWAN fieldings over the past three years. DataPath did the bulk of the Urgent Universal Needs Statement (U-UNS) fieldings from 2004 into 2007, and then General Dynamics began its work this year with SWAN D.
Interoperability Focus
SWAN originated in 2004, when Joseforsky took over. The Army’s Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications Tactical, based at Fort Monmouth, N.J., helped the Marines build up their architecture. The Marines have been trying to make the SWAN program as interoperable as possible with the Army’s JNN.
That’s the reason why the Marines have been having a lot of success today with Army-Marines interoperability between JNN and SWAN. The Marines are keeping in touch with what the Army is doing, updating the Army on their progress on SWAN and trying to maintain that interoperability with tech refreshes. So far the Marines have had great success in interoperability, with few serious technical challenges.
The Marines were doing U-UNS fieldings since 2004 but are now transitioning to a program of record in 2008. They submitted a Program Objective Memorandum (POM)-08 initiative, and Joseforsky said they should be getting presidential budget funding in 2008 through 2013. Officials are waiting for the 2008 budget to be approved with the exact level of funding.
The Marines are establishing the SWAN program within all Marine MSC units as a system they can use in their inventory for exercises, deployments or contingencies. It’s another communication system in their toolkit in addition to what they already have.
The Marines started out using commercial Ku bandwidth quite heavily for SWAN. They’ve been able to put their bandwidth provider, Arrowhead, on contract and establish worldwide commercial Ku bandwidth portability. Whenever a unit wants to train in CONUS or in the PACRIM area out of Okinawa, they have base pools of bandwidth there that the units use. In Iraq, the Marines have another pool of bandwidth specifically for SWANs in Iraq. “They use the CONUS and PACRIM pools of bandwidth for training, and when we need to use the equipment in another location worldwide for exercise or contingency support, we’re able to port the bandwidth from those pools within 14 days in normal operations or within 48 hours for emergencies,” Joseforsky said. “We’ve had a lot of success with the worldwide deployable bandwidth, especially with the MEU deployments the last year. Having this portable bandwidth is critical to the support of the SWAN equipment.”
The SWAN D v3 trailer is the satellite transportable terminal on a trailer, which is a mobile platform the Marines have introduced into the program identical to the JNN trailer. “That is the cornerstone for SWAN now and really completes the network, not only for the Marine Corps and their communications capability but also the interconnectivity to the Army and other services,” said Eric Wright, vice president of business development at DataPath. “The Marines have been able to leverage off of the Army SATCOM JNN suite, and that same system has been introduced and is a major part of the SWAN program.”
It’s the Marine Corps’ entry into the net-centric war front. “The real magic of this stuff is making it work wherever it goes for long durations under any circumstance in travel,” Wright said. “That’s basically what DataPath does as an integrator of this equipment.”
“We’ve done a good job of having SWAN tech support reps onsite to assist the Marines at Camp Pendleton, Camp Lejeune, Okinawa, Japan and Iraq,” Wright said. DataPath has been doing new equipment training since 2004 with the Marines and often does follow-on training. DataPath has employees on site permanently to be able to help with exercises and training. The firm provides 28 people in Iraq to support the SWAN systems that are there.
Flyaway Terminals
General Dynamics SATCOM has received three delivery orders for satellite communications terminals that are being used in the SWAN program.
Under these orders, the Marines requested quantities of General Dynamics Warrior 120 (1.2 meter) and Warrior 180 (1.8 meter) VSAT flyaway terminals and 2.4-meter trailer-mounted terminals for quick-setup tactical communications. DataPath provides the 2.4-meter terminals.
The contract runs until 2011 and has a total potential value of $160 million if all options are exercised.
“We have worked closely with our customer and with DataPath to ensure that technically we meet the requirements of the contract and so far we have delivered everything on or ahead of schedule,” said Chris Buck, director of government programs for General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies. “Anything we can do to support our armed forces, we feel privileged to be able to do that.”
“It’s been very fast paced, but we’ve kept up with the pace and effectively supported the Marine Corps, I believe,” added Dan McCarley, senior engineer for General Dynamics SATCOM.
The Warrior terminals deliver the robust IP infrastructure demanded by the Marines today. Whether it’s for mission critical applications or to improve communications efficiency and effectiveness, Warrior terminals provide the right level of support including virtual private networks, continuity of operations, mobile access, multicast delivery, video streaming and more.
General Dynamics SATCOM says the Warrior terminals, which can operate across C, X, Ku and Ka bands (Ku and Ka for SWAN) and different access techniques, meet the challenge of network-centric operations, conforming with Transformation Communications Architecture requirements to allow Joint Forces Command and international forces to communicate with compatible systems.
Buck pointed to two aspects that make the Warrior product line special: commonality across the line and modularity. “It doesn’t matter if you have our Warrior 120 or Warrior 180 or any other Warrior products,” he said. “They contain common control and graphical user interfaces—that makes it user friendly for the people using our systems. It also helps in the training aspect. You do not have to train on a number of terminal types. It’s the same across the board for all our terminals.”
The second piece is modularity. “Dependent upon the user’s wants and needs, we can package these things differently to meet their requirements,” Buck added. “We take weight into consideration—the lighter our offerings are, the better for the commercial and military market. Our angle is to design our products so you don’t have to be an expert in communications in order to use them—that includes the set-up and the operations.”
Worldwide Bandwidth
In October 2006, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) chose Arrowhead Global Solutions to provide the Marine Corps with commercial satellite capabilities to expand its communication reach worldwide. The task order has a one-year base, and options until 2011.
Arrowhead will provide bandwidth availability, portability and mobility globally. The Marine Corps’ ability to use commercial satellite capacity is supporting missions in the United States, Europe, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central Asia. The bandwidth has been optimized to meet requirements such as satellite link availability, frequency range, look angle, polarization and response times.
To meet the growth, Arrowhead has developed strategies to assist the Marines in long-term planning and bandwidth optimization. SWAN comprises deployable Ku-band VSAT terminals that utilize time division multiple access and frequency division multiple access technologies.
“The requirements were constructed in a unique way; we didn’t see this before—bandwidth portability around the world,” said Michael Shakarji, chief technology officer at Arrowhead. “Based on the requirements, [the Marine Corps] has two pools of bandwidth they are going to rely on—one of them is the CONUS pool, whereby bandwidth can be ported from CONUS to Europe, Southwest Asia or Central Asia on very short notice. This is the first pool of bandwidth.”
“The other one is PACRIM, whereby you can take the bandwidth from the Pacific region, let’s say from Japan, to anywhere in that region,” Shakarji said. “Those regions would be Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, and we’ll go all the way to Thailand, Indonesia and Australia. The bandwidth will be [the Marine Corps’]; they can move it anywhere they want and after the mission is complete the ported bandwith comes back into the base pool of bandwidth.”
Arrowhead had a unique understanding of what the Marines’ requirements were, Shakarji said. “We negotiated for a long time with all the satellite carriers out there to see which ones would comply with the portability. We finally came up with one vendor who said they would provide portability around the world. We set up an agreement that complies with all the performance parameters that the Marine Corps required.”