Tough Terrain Technology
COMPREHENSIVE PLATFORM HELPS AFGHAN NATIONAL ARMY BRING MODERN COMMUNICATIONS TO MOUNTAINOUS TRIBAL AREAS.
An Air Force/CENTCOM deployment is providing a comprehensive communications platform to the Afghan National Army (ANA), setting up a deployable, high bandwidth training network.
The system is based on the PacStar 5500, an integrated communications appliance that delivers all the capabilities of a modern office network to any location on the planet. This includes mobile voice and data wireless LAN, streaming video and digital PBX capabilities, all in an encrypted environment.
PacStar is a technologybased integrator and solutions provider in the communications space, focused largely on the U.S. military. “Our focus is on delivering sophisticated, high bandwidth solutions into difficult places. We’re very active in Korea, Europe and the Middle East, for the Army, Navy, Air Force, CENTCOM and SOCOM—the people on the point of the spear. Our focus is on delivering services to the point of the spear,” according to PacStar Chief Executive Officer Robert Frisbee.
The PacStar 5500 is designed to bring high bandwidth solutions into dangerous and difficult environments where trained personnel may be in short supply.
“With the PacStar 5500, we are replacing many difficult, highly technical operating systems with a single, easy-to-use management interface. We’re taking capabilities that in the past have required teams of highly trained operators, and made it into an integrated solution that can be operated by a single person with very little training,” said Frisbee.
The company took about 11,000 pages of manuals and turned them into 17 icondriven wizards and about 100 pages of documentation. “If you think about all the parts of a PC, each with its own operating manual and a place to bolt it to, but you had to set up each one of those pieces and get them to work together, that’s a little like what a soldier might face under the old system,” Frisbee explained. “But under the new system, you push a single button and the entire system self-actuates, and then is driven by a simple set of management icons.”
This capability has been warmly embraced by the military, he said, culminating in the PacStar 5500 receiving certification from the Joint Interoperability Test Command. “We got that within about months, in part because of strong support from users in the field who had become acquainted with the capabilities of the 5500.”
Ease of use also led to selection of the system as a comprehensive communications platform for the ANA. “One of the reasons we won that bid was that a requirement was that you had to be able to train Dari-speaking soldiers to use a highly complex capability. You wouldn’t want to have to translate those 11,000 pages of manuals into Dari. So we have created a training platform in Dari, and created a system based on the 5500, with color-coded wires,” Frisbee said, adding, “Each system can support 600 telephones.”
ANA forces are now taking the system out on patrol and being trained how to use it in their nation’s rugged mountain terrain. “We’re bringing a sophisticated technology into a cultural environment that could not have supported it in the past,” Frisbee said.
Another project has involved working with Lucent, which chose the PacStar 5500 as the network node for a quickly deployable cellular capability. “You can see how powerful that would be for emergency response. It has a range of up to 17 miles. So you could be in a Katrinalike environment, where there is nothing. That’s where we are best—where there is no infrastructure,” Frisbee said.
The Army Reserve Command is using the system for continuity of operations, he added. “If business operations go down in an emergency situation, they will use this cellular capability to run the business while they’re fixing whatever needs to be fixed.”
In addition, PacStar is developing a unit to serve as a hub for UAVs. A UAV produces massive amounts of data, which can be very expensive to send by satellite. “But in this setting, you will be able to store the data locally. Wherever you arewith your UAV team, you can download the data into this deployable applications box. It’s multi-terrabyte data storage, as an attachment to the 5500. It does large scale data storage in the field, for both UAVs and other groups of sensors,” Frisbee said. ♦
