By OTTO KREISHER

Otto Kreisher is the national security reporter for Copley News Service.

The Navy and Marine Corps have been preparing for the 21st century by developing an information technology (IT) system that will tie all of their bases and commands together in a single high-capacity network that provides unprecedented speed, flexibility, and security for online communications and other IT systems of the two services.

The network, called the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), will be one of the largest and most expensive IT projects ever--serving about 450,000 workstations at nearly 300 commands and bases at a cost an industry expert said could exceed $15 billion.

The project's program manager at the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command said that the Navy expects to complete the contract process for the massive and complex project in an unimaginably short time that would make it the "poster child" for the revolution in business affairs. The impetus for the sweeping project, said Joseph Cipriano, the Navy's program executive officer for information technology, is the realization that "in this information world, we find that the speed of decision-making is directly related to how quickly you can access information."

The performance and survival of organizations "has always depended on how quickly they can make decisions--that has certainly been true of warfighting, and it is true in business as well," Cipriano said in an interview. "What NMCI does is break down some of the barriers that have been in place that keep people from getting the information when they need it," he said.

Personnel Benefits

While the planned intranet offers Navy and Marine leaders a quantum improvement in their ability to make both warfighting and business decisions, it also will provide major benefits to the individual Sailor and Marine. "They will have information at their fingertips on pay and benefits ... [as well as] instant access to training so they can advance in rate [and] do their jobs better," Cipriano said. With the same system and equipment in use throughout the Navy Department, Sailors and Marines will not have to learn a new process each time they change duty stations. They also will find instant help to resolve any problem on the intranet because the system's contractors will be required to maintain the network and ensure continuous data flow, he said.

"And they will be able to talk to family and friends easily from almost anywhere in the world, without some of the problems we have now," Cipriano said, referring to the limited e-mail and video message capability now available on some ships and at a number of shore activities.

A key problem the new intranet must overcome is that the current IT system consists of many separate networks serving the Navy's major systems commands, the supply system, individual bases, and local areas, according to Vice Adm. Robert J. Natter, deputy chief of naval operations for plans, policy, and operations.

The current system is inefficient and impedes the sharing of information among the various Navy Department entities, Natter told representatives of about 250 IT firms at a 7 July 1999 industry briefing. These multiple and dissimilar networks require extra resources to operate, maintain, and integrate; operators and technicians, he said, must therefore be trained on multiple system designs.

Another major concern, Natter said, is that there is "inadequate security" for some of the Navy's current networks. The differing levels of capability, and of security, in the existing IT systems "drive network operators to the lowest common denominator," he said.

An Enterprisewide Solution

Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig said that the naval services' "commitment to Network Centric Warfare, sound investment practices, information assurance, and the revolution in business affairs demands that we rapidly address these interoperability problems on an enterprisewide basis." The solution to those and other problems, Cipriano told the industry group, is "a Department of the Navy enterprisewide network capability that provides end-to-end, secure, and assured access to the full range of voice, video, and data services."

The NMCI will be an integrated system that improves work, training, and quality of life for every Navy and Marine Corps service member and civilian employee, permits rapid technology upgrades, provides increased capability at equal or lower cost, and ensures enhanced security, Cipriano said.

The new intranet will unite all Navy and Marine Corps base and local area networks and other IT nets within the continental United States and Hawaii and connect them to the fleet through the teleport on each ship, he said. Compatible high-performance equipment aboard ship will be provided under the IT-21 (Information Technology for the 21st Century) program, Cipriano told Sea Power. The NMCI also will be linked to the rest of the Defense Department and to the nation's regional commanders in chief through the Defense Information Services Network, Cipriano said.

NMCI "will do for our shore establishment what IT-21 is doing for our afloat forces,'' said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jay L. Johnson. "It will provide improved information technology to all naval activities and help us move toward more effective support for our networked warfighting forces."

Marine Corps' Goals

For the Marines, the new intranet will support a "seamless information continuum" that will extend "from the supporting establishment to the fighting hole," Brig. Gen. Robert Shea, assistant chief of staff for C4I (command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence) at Headquarters Marine Corps, told the industry group. It must provide "plug-and-play interoperability" in all environments, Shea said, including joint and coalition operations; it also must be flexible enough, he said, to handle conditions ranging from peacetime operations to major theater war, and be able to quickly adapt to emerging requirements.

NMCI contractors must provide special "ruggedized laptops" for some Marine units, Cipriano said, because "the Marines take their PCs with them when they deploy--the same computers they use in garrison they will use on the ship, and also in the field when they land." The bottom line, officials said, is that the NMCI "must be a force multiplier that enables Marines and Sailors at the tip of the spear to accomplish their mission."

Improved information security is another key requirement of the new system, the program officials said. It must allow Navy Department personnel "to share knowledge worldwide with those who need it, when they need it, and with no one else," Natter said. Protecting crucial information could be a major challenge because the program envisions that one network will carry everything from the personal e-mail messages of service members to highly classified intelligence data, combat orders, and wartime decision-making video conferences among officials.

The bidding contractors can decide how they will provide the required security, Cipriano said. They may decide to provide separate channels for secure and unclassified data, or to encrypt the classified information, he said. "We find that our security concerns are not that much different from what banks, stock exchanges, and others that use the internet have," Cipriano said.

December 2001 IOC

Despite the scope and complexity of the NMCI project, the transition to the new intranet must not interrupt department operations, Navy officials told industry. Cipriano said the Navy hopes to award a contract by this June, just over a year from the first approach to industry, with initial operational capability targeted for December 2001.

To execute a contract of this size in that time--a fraction of the normal decade-long Pentagon procurement cycle--the Navy will use "the commercial method," Cipriano said. "By DOD standards, it's very fast. By commercial standards ... it's not so fast." Because the project team spent a great deal of time talking to business officials who buy similar services, the NMCI request for proposals (RFP)--released in December--is not like the usual Pentagon procurement RFP, Cipriano said. "It's performance-oriented. It's fixed-price." The Navy is telling prospective contractors that "you don't get paid until you provide the service," he said.

The contract also will be based on "best-value" considerations--which means that bidders could trade off some of the proposed requirements for a lower cost, Cipriano said. "We haven't had anyone tell us it can't be done," he noted.

"It's huge," said Michael Kush, the defense-sector director for the Government Electronics Industry Association's annual survey. "It definitely has an element of complexity," he said, but the industry is convinced that "it is absolutely doable." Kush estimated the potential cost at $15 billion or more over the life of the contract, which runs for five years with an option for three more.

Minimal R&D Required

Another reason why the Navy can expect the project to be completed so quickly, Cipriano said, is because there is little if any research and development required. "We are not asking for anything that doesn't exist today--that isn't off the shelf. So all we are asking them to do is put a lot of stuff together, to package it and ... then deploy it in a lot of places."

Another unusual aspect of the contract is that the Navy is not buying any of the equipment that will be needed to make the NMCI work. Instead, Cipriano said, "we are buying services, like a utility. ... We are saying we want 0s and 1s to go from point A to point B; we don't want to own the infrastructure that carries them. It's just like buying electricity or buying telephone service."

The department also will not have to worry about upgrading the system when the technology improves, because the NMCI contractors will be responsible for periodic "technology refreshing." That will allow the department to keep up with the rapid advances in IT technology, which it cannot do within the normal Defense Department procurement cycles, Cipriano said.

The Navy and Marines also want to significantly reduce the number of technicians needed to operate and maintain the system, "because it's not our core business to do that," he said. In short, the Navy wants "to get ourselves out of the network-operation and maintenance business, and into the information business." The RFP to industry provides wide flexibility in how bidders provide the required services. All that the department is concerned about, Cipriano said, is getting the necessary quality and quantity of reliable and secure information services.

"We will pay ... [the contractors] based on the service, just like you pay a monthly bill for cable TV," he said.