Q&A: Major General Nick Justice

Written by Harrison Donnelly

MIT 2009 Volume: 13 Issue: 10 (November)

As PEO C3T, Justice has led an organization of more than 2,300 employees that fields an extensive range of battle command and communications capabilities with an annual budget exceeding $6 billion. Prior to beginning that position in 2007, Justice served as the deputy PEO C3T. Justice began his 38-year Army career as an enlisted soldier. He was commissioned upon graduation from Officer Candidate School in 1977.

Justice’s experiences include significant joint service and acquisition assignments. His joint service experience includes a two-year assignment in 1990 in the Sixth Allied Tactical Air Force as chief, project management for command and control systems. During this assignment, he participated in Operation Desert Storm, as part of NATO. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, he served as commander of the Information Management Task Force in Kuwait and Iraq. His 20 years of acquisition experience includes assignments as project manager, Transportation Coordinator’s Automated Information for Movement Systems and project manager, Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (PM FBCB2). As the PM FBCB2, Justice fielded 1,100 Blue Force Tracking systems to soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Justice has a bachelor’ss degree in history from the University of Maryland, a master’s degree in institutional management from Pepperdine University, and a master’s degree in international relations from Salve Regina College.

Justice was interviewed by MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly.  This interview took place prior to the actual change of command.

Q: What will your role be as commanding general of RDECOM, and how will what you do there dovetail with your previous work at PEO C3T?

A: Looking at the whole science and technology community within the Department of Defense, I couldn’t be more excited about becoming the commanding general at RDECOM. It dovetails with what I’ve been doing here for almost a decade at the PEO C3T in command, control and communications. It also allows me to broaden the things I’m doing at PEO C3T, and complements some of the initiatives we’ve taken on there. So I’m going to go on the other side of the fence. We’ve talked before about the technology transition process that we’ve implemented here to leverage the great work that comes out of the science and technology community and bring it into programs of record. We need to be able to do engineering changes as we’re developing things, so that we keep programs current and modernized. Now we’ll get to go on the other side, and work it from that end. Coming out of the program office community, where I was a program manager and program executive officer, I’m going to have the advantage of walking in knowing what the challenges are in transitioning technology.

The engineering aspect of RDECOM will probably be a pretty easy transition for me, and I think I can bring a lot to the table. But the research and development aspect will be a tremendous learning opportunity for me, to get out and learn what technologies and scientific trends are emerging as something that will come up in the next decade or so. I think it gives me a good opportunity to stretch out our Army’s strategic vision to future capabilities. I can bring a tremendous capability into the organization, hopefully to improve the amount of science and technology that we transition to programs of record and get it out to soldiers faster.

Q: What is the role of the PEO C3T in developing and implementing the Army’s new Global Network Enterprise Construct [GNEC]?

A: It’s a fantastic construct. The biggest thing I find of value is that we have finally started looking at putting our hands around the whole network enterprise. That in itself opens up for discussion so many opportunities to work the seams between what I call the “terrain” of the network, where you have vastly different amounts of bandwidth and resources available to make things happen.

Being able to look at the network as a global enterprise brings us the ability to start leveraging fixed infrastructure, with large bandwidth, for our operational forces. The construct is perfectly aligned with the Army Force Generation model, which is designed to support modular, expeditionary warfare. If our forces are going to be expeditionary, they have to be network-enabled through any phase of operations. That means I have to leverage everything from the network capability in the unit itself to the capability at the posts, camps and stations where the unit is located, to the deployment sites they will move to. That provides a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of broadband capabilities that are going to be globally available to a unit as it deploys.

Q: From a tactical perspective, what are the key issues involved in implementing the GNEC vision of “information services to the edge”?

A: We will be required to use that global enterprise to get data, services and applications to the units. The biggest challenges were those of the deploying tactical force. The forward-deployed nature of the Cold War era focused us on building things from the point of view that we’re already pre-positioned. Think about the challenges we faced as we deployed in Kuwait, in preparation for going into Iraq. Being able to move through that deployment was tough. It’s like going to the National Training Center, in Fort Irwin, Calif., for a training session, but having to drive there from Fort Hood, Texas. You have to perform the en route part of your mission. As a forward-deployed force, we were already there and didn’t have to do a lot of en route things, with the exception of units such as the 82nd Airborne, which have a different deployment role.

The bulk of the Army has never had to deal with the en route aspect of battle command and communications. One of the biggest challenges is being able to figure out how to continue to plan, prepare and communicate when they have packed their tactical equipment on a ship, and put their soldiers on airplanes. Where are they going to put their data, command and control applications and the services they need? They’ll put them on the Global Information Grid [GIG] in processing centers. We’ll have hubs that will give them the bandwidth they need, so they can continue to operate even though their tactical equipment will be en route cargo.

The biggest challenge is getting the infrastructure in place, growing the doctrine and figuring out the training methods needed to develop new skills in en route communications and battle command. GNEC brings so many opportunities. If one of the principles of warfare is mass, I can now mass support for a unit virtually, because I have the ability to reach back to home station operations centers or other locations to bring information and services to the battlefield. Some of those services are national assets, which give you intelligence never before available to the forward edge. It is a tremendous opportunity, but it doesn’t come without a lot of work and maturing our understanding of being a modular expeditionary force.

You want to be capable of en route mission planning. If you’re moving halfway around the world, you might have a change in mission while you’re headed somewhere. You need to be prepared with the latest information on the ground, and to adjust what your objectives are as you’re headed into the theater of operations. There are a lot of new opportunities and challenges that go with that, and they’re exciting to work with.

Q: What does the Army need from industry in creating a new network construct?

A: The biggest shift that we’ve gone through in the war on terrorism is the importance of viewing things as a system of systems. Historically, we often had very discrete procurements, where we would ask for a single, specific thing. But we’re looking more now at how things interoperate and complement each other. If we’re going to be expeditionary, we’ve got to keep the size of the organization, the amount and weight of equipment and the sustainment requirements down to give us speed and agility in strategic maneuver. One of the things we are looking for from industry includes telling us how to save manpower. We are looking for them to help us find technologies that don’t require a lot of manpower to keep up and operating. To show us how to save money by doing things like putting software on existing systems, or virtualizing servers instead of requiring an additional piece of equipment that takes up room on a flight or ship. And save us bandwidth.

We are looking for industry to help us understand how to build applications that are sensitive of the architecture of the global enterprise network, because it doesn’t have the same characteristics at different points of presence. If you’re in a tactical environment, you’re going to have far less bandwidth, and far more challenges with persistent connectivity, than you will in an installation. There, you’ll be able to get high bandwidth to move data, applications and services from one side of the globe to the other. But how do you get those down into the tactical unit, which has far less availability of bandwidth, and the connectivity may not be persistent. You need to think through and understand where you position data and services, and how you access them as you cross different barriers defined by the characteristics of speed, capacity and access within the network.

Q: What are some of the most important steps taken by the PEO C3T as of late to support stepped up operations in Afghanistan? What role will Unit Set Fielding play as troop levels decrease in Iraq and increase in Afghanistan?

A: It’s interesting how different those two theaters are. As you transition from one to another, Unit Set Fielding will continue to equip and train the forces that are being deployed, no matter where they’re going. As we draw down in one theater and grow in the other, bringing the equipment back and getting it reset and available for units to use will be a major challenge. We’re really good at pushing equipment overseas, but we haven’t mastered all the aspects of bringing it home. The important things that we provide include embedding engineers into the formations to provide the support for the technical capabilities that we field. It’s been so important to me to learn the differences of operations in Afghanistan, especially as we grow the size of forces, that I’ve put two of my program managers in operational assignments over there— Colonel Dave Moore, PM [project manager] for Battle Command, just got back a few months ago, and I replaced him with Colonel Chuck Hoppe, the PM for the Warfighter Information Network- Tactical [WIN-T]. Those two PMs are learning firsthand what the challenges are.

One of the differences in Afghanistan is a much larger, more integrated set of coalition partners we are working with. That brings with it the challenges not only of being joint, but also coalition, in how you exchange information. The climate is also radically different in Afghanistan. During the troop surge last winter, we realized that we needed to generate much more power for winter operations—more heating and electricity required just to sustain the organization. The folks at PM Mobile Electric Power [MEP] had to come up with a way to rapidly field a large of amount of generator power to the region. So they used 12 U.S. Air Force strategic lift aircraft to deliver 434 tactical quiet generators to Afghanistan. They coordinated closely with the transportation community to ensure the generators, which ranged from three to 100 kilowatts, were delivered in less than 11 days. This type of delivery routinely takes between 60 and 70 days.

Q: What is your command doing to meet the operational and environmental challenges involved in providing power for field operations?

A: The power requirements drive fuel needs. A Defense Science Board study in 2008 identified generators as the largest fuel consumers on the battlefield during wartime. They estimated that more than 357 million gallons of fuel per year is required for generators in a wartime operational tempo. Think how difficult it is to get fuel into the remote places where our forces are operating. If you compare a gallon of fuel that you bring in on a helicopter with one carried on an 18-wheeler, it’s mind boggling how much effort goes into delivering fuel for generator power. In that harsh environment, that’s a tremendous challenge. You have to bring in generators not only for the environmental aspects of electricity, but also for the communications systems. When you’re in small, dispersed groups, you’re going to have to bring in a lot more communications equipment than we would have used in Iraq. So equipping very small forces with satellite communications systems is one of the changing aspects of what we’re doing. It’s a challenge, but we have good people who are going to solve those problems for us.

On the power generation end, PM MEP is consistently a proactive developer of innovative solutions to challenges on the battlefield. The program received the David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award in the category of program management this year.

Q: Can you provide our readers with an overview of the VICTORY program?

A: We’re working on a VICTORY architecture. It’s a spin-off of the global network enterprise. If we’re going to network our forces, one of the things we have to do is design an architecture that allows us to hook up to our global network enterprise infrastructure. One of the major pieces of our tactical infrastructure in the Army is the WIN-T program, which has an architecture that allows us to hook back into the GIG, and be able to bring services now down to the battalion level. In the Increment Two that’s coming up soon, we’ll be able to get down to company level. That same architecture needs to be a constant framework for everything that we’re working on, from combat vehicles to wheeled vehicles, shelters, command posts and even dismounted soldiers. We want a program that designs a way to put that network hook into everything we do, and bring the power of the network down to the soldier.

If you look at our combat platforms now, you will see individual systems that don’t necessarily work with one another. They’re all extremely valuable in their own, stand-alone right, but I want to be able to bring new capability to the operational force by having the ability to easily integrate different capabilities and provide information across different systems. Instead of going with “bolt on” systems that intrude on the crew compartments of those vehicles, whether tactical wheeled vehicles or combat platforms, we’d like to get to the point where the network can bring the information that those systems provide to the crews. We also might want to put those radio and computer systems into an electronics or avionics bay, as they do in the aviation community, and only bring the displays of information into the crew compartment. If we make the VICTORY architecture common across the Army, with just the changes needed for different types of equipment, forces would be able to go to the core of the tactical infrastructure and move data at any classification across the global network.

Q: Can you talk about how the FBCB2 program has evolved since it was initiated with you as one of the early project managers?

A: That program went from a program that relied solely on tactical radios for its communications, to one with satellite communications. More capabilities have been added. We take a lot of pride around here in how well we’ve been able to partner with the science and technology community to bring new technology to that program. We brought new capabilities into that program of record through some DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] initiatives, and a program called TIGR [Tactical Ground Reporting System]. That’s an application that is focused on communications and information collection for the dismounted soldier. Getting down to that dismount is the ultimate objective. We’re bringing the program into FBCB2 as a new capability, which will be in the hands of soldiers who aren’t in vehicles. Dismounted soldiers will be able to network information back into the FBCB2, and we’re going to do some engineering change proposals to bring them into that same VICTORY architecture on the vehicles.

We’d like to be able to get down to the point where every vehicle has a display on it, and they run the software on a computer somewhere in the electronics bay on the vehicle. We’ve been able to grow a lot more bandwidth into FBCB2, and have been working hard to take the initial capability, which revolutionized how we fight, and bring incremental quality and capacity improvements into it. We’re going to grow the system so that there is less latency than we initially had, more bandwidth for in-depth command and control applications, and be able to get it down to dismounted soldiers. The old mantra could be boiled down to three statements: Where am I, where are my friends and where is the enemy? That’s almost as powerful as “shoot, move and communicate,” which is the task of any soldier. It truly is a common operating picture. When I know where I am and where my brothers in arms are, it creates synergy on the battlefield. Today, it is more about what we know, what can we share and what others can share with us about the enemy.

Q: How will bringing C2, logistics and the air picture into a singular Command Post of the Future [CPOF] architecture synchronize efforts on the battlefield?

A: One of the things we have continued to accomplish in our battle command applications, which we’ve been working on for about five years, is to collapse the number of applications we had in the battle command suite. It goes back to the modular, expeditionary force. When we recognized the need to be modular and expeditionary, we started trying to downsize the number of servers and computers we had in the command post. To do that, you had to collapse applications so that they did more than one thing or you could run them on one server. One of the things that evolved out of that was the need to collaborate; another DARPA project [Command Post of the Future that we had tremendous success in transitioning into our battle command applications did just that. In fact, it’s going to be the single face of our battle command applications in the future. We will take the specific tasks in the separate applications, which all had their own displays and user interfaces, and run them as services behind CPOF.

By bringing them together into one view, CPOF allows us to get the power of the human mind to understand a bigger picture. Not only are you looking at a common operating picture, where you know where you, your friends and the enemy are on the battlefield, as with FBCB2, but now you’re also starting to look across time. If I bring logistics into the picture, the logisticians who provide me with food, fuel, ammunition, medical care and all the myriad things needed for the fight can see how operations are going, and can start anticipating and planning where they need to be on the battlefield without waiting to be told. You start creating a self-correcting system where you don’t plan and then execute the plan, but rather people start adapting the plan based on the reality of what’s taking place around them.

If you have the power of logisticians being able to watch the unfolding action of field operations, they can start anticipating and planning how to support it. That means that rather than the old style of prepackaged ‘pushes’ in log-packs going forward on the battlefield, the logistician would know what is needed in the log-pack. We’re going to cross boundaries with the systems-of-systems approach, so you could take the vehicle diagnostics off the VICTORY architecture. When you sit in your car, you know how much fuel you have. Wouldn’t it be great if the gas station knew how much gas you had, and came to you when you needed it? The power of that is amazing. You may discover that you are consuming ammunition at a higherthan- planned rate. When that happens, you realize you have to start moving ammunition forward. When engagements occur, you start preparing medical care. It’s mind boggling how many things open up to the ability of the human mind to anticipate needs when the information is laid out in front of them.

That includes everything, from logistics to operations and the air picture. One of the things we do all the time is to clear fires, which you have to do for safety reasons. You don’t want people firing beyond their line of sight without knowing what’s out there. You don’t want to have people flying through an airspace with an artillery barrage. The integration of multiple, stovepiped functional domains brings tremendous power to the soldier. It enables decision-making at a far lower level. Why did decisions get made at high headquarters by generals? Because they had the staff to integrate information. They were constantly getting reports from below, and would synthesize and synchronize those reports across the various domains, and provide support to the forward edge. But when you have the ability to move that kind of information and synchronize it, you can start making decisions and anticipating things at a lower level, and far closer to the need.

Q: How are the acquisition and science and technology communities working to close technology gaps? What future efforts will be needed to continue this initiative?

A: The aspect that we bring is closing the gap between the need and the solution. One of the things we focused on across all of the programs is getting with the user community, not only to do technology transition of things that are coming out of S&T, but also to start putting the feedback loop into the transition process, so we communicate better with the scientists and engineers who are doing the development. We have to bring the power of needs closer to the people who can solve the problems. It’s just like solving problems on the battlefield. If you make people aware of what the needs are, they will find ways to solve problems.

In almost a decade here at PEO C3T, I’ve been excited to come to work every day, because we’re able to bring engineering support and trainers out to units to bring technology into their operational construct. It has been such an honor to lead such a great organization and to work so close to our combat forces. ♦

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