Q&A: Lieutenant General Dennis L. Via

Written by Harrison Donnelly

MIT 2010 Volume: 14 Issue: 5 (June)

Lieutenant General Dennis L. Via serves as the director, Command, Control, Communications and Computer Systems Directorate (J6), the Joint Staff. He is the principal adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) on all C4 systems matters within the Department of Defense.

A native of Martinsville, Va., Via attended Virginia State University, where he graduated in May 1980 as a Distinguished Military Graduate, and received his commission as a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps. He holds a master’s degree from Boston University.

Via began his career with the 35th Signal Brigade, XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, N.C. Principal assignments include commanding general, CECOM Life Cycle Management Command and Fort Monmouth, N.J.; commanding general, 5th Signal Command, and U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army (USAREUR) chief information officer/assistant chief of staff, G6 (CIO/G6); director, global operations, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and deputy commander, Joint Task Force- Global Network Operations (USSTRATCOM); commander, 3rd Signal Brigade and III Corps assistant chief of staff, G6; commander, 82nd Signal Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division; and division chief, Joint Requirements Oversight Council Division, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Army G8, Headquarters, Department of the Army.

Q: This isn’t your first assignment to the Pentagon. What do you find different this time around from your last two times in the Pentagon?

A: There is a significantly higher OPTEMPO than the last time I was here, but I’ve also noticed that the staff is more focused, more tightly integrated and more deeply engaged at the operational level. Specifically, and rightfully so, they are focused on the current fight. The chairman has made winning the current fights in Iraq and Afghanistan one of his top priorities, and the entire Joint Staff is focused on ensuring that the chairman has the information he requires to advise President Obama and Secretary Gates.

Q: How is your current role different from your last command at CECOM and garrison commander at Fort Monmouth?

A: Obviously, there’s a huge difference between being a commander, where you are in command of an organization, and a staff officer, where you support the commander or senior leader. I’ve always considered command to be a privilege and one of the highlights of one’s career. There’s a difference in resources. At CECOM, I was responsible for approximately 10,000 people and a $13 billion budget, while at the Joint Staff I have a staff of about 150 personnel and a relatively small budget. So truly, it is a huge difference. But there’s also a difference in focus. At CECOM, we had tactical responsibilities in terms of developing, acquiring, fielding and sustaining worldwide C4ISR systems and battle command capabilities to the joint warfighter. On the Joint Staff, while we have to maintain awareness of tactical and operational considerations, we are a strategic-level coordinating and advisory body. We coordinate between the combatant commands [COCOMs] and the services and act as an honest broker between competing priorities, interests and investments. At the same time, we have to remember that no matter what we want to accomplish, we work for the chairman, and we need to ensure that his priorities are our priorities so that we can effectively advise him in his capacity as the CJCS on all C4, ISR, information technology and national security systems [NSS] matters.

Q: You’ve been the director of J6 for about 10 months now. What has been your biggest challenge in your new position?

A: Culture. Changing the culture of an organization as large as the Department of Defense is incredibly challenging, and can’t be done quickly. There is a familiar quote: “The only thing harder than bringing new ideas in is getting old ideas out.” Out of the hundreds of things that we do every day, we can either choose to do them the way that we have always done them, or we can choose to do them in a new and more productive way. We live in a global, interconnected world, and we need to deal with it in new ways and processes if we want to effect real change and continue to be successful. One example is the way we acquire IT systems and services. Our process is too complex, too inflexible and non-responsive in meeting the needs of our warfighters as well as our business enterprise. With today’s pace of change in technology, if we are unable to deliver a C4 or IT capability in six to 18 months, then it’s already outdated.

Another area is the cyberspace domain, which many in the C4 community view as a support function rather than as a war fighting domain in its own right. As a result, the people who understand the technical side of the cyber challenge may not be in the right discussions and forums to help address problems and issues in this very complex area.

To help move the joint C4 community forward in the direction that I think we need to go, I have established three imperatives for the J6:

• Fight Upon Arrival: When soldiers, Marines, airmen or sailors arrive at the “battlefield”—wherever the battlefield might be—they need to be able to immediately communicate with other warfighters in the battlespace, regardless of whether those warfighters are U.S. forces, coalition or partner nations. We must acquire and field C4 and ISR systems engineered for optimal operation and performance “from the edge” that enable our warfighters operating in austere, bandwidth-constrained environments, and we must remove the systems integration burden that we have placed on those forces operating within the CJOA that are least capable of executing this task.
• Holistic Approach to C4ISR: We can no longer afford to develop, acquire and field systems in “silos”—we must take a holistic approach to acquiring and delivering C4 and ISR systems and capabilities. We have to procure and rapidly field equipment that is inherently joint and interoperable with security built-in “out of the box” that can be introduced to our war fighting formations with minimal training and that is easily sustained, and we must take advantage of the cost efficiencies that come with economies of scale.
• Drive IT Culture Change: We need to think differently about IT. We have been saying for some time now that the network is a weapon system; the time has come to treat it that way. We need to address network security in the same way. In today’s environment, we are no longer a networkenabled force, but rather a network-dependent force.

Q: Congress recently tasked DoD to evaluate the acquisition process and propose recommendations for improving the process. Are you involved in that evaluation at all?

A: Yes we are. 2009 was certainly an eventful year in the business of IT acquisition. Several extensive studies concluded during the year, including one of particular interest to DoD. The Defense Science Board [DSB] released the results of a comprehensive study on the department’s process for acquiring IT, and identified several possible solutions. The study included a potential model for acquiring IT that is a distinct departure from the current processes, which are used to acquire everything from tanks and airplanes to computers and software.

In 2009, using the DSB’s model as a guide, Congress directed DoD to implement a portion of the board’s report on IT acquisition, specifically Chapter 6. The Office of the Secretary of Defense is mandated to provide a response to Congress in July of this year to outline how DoD intends to implement the recommendations of the DSB, and also to explain any areas where a specific requirement called out by the DSB may be impractical. Our J-6 directorate has been working closely with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration for several months as they explore the implications of the DSB Report, and begin to tease out any potential stumbling blocks on the path to implementation. Specifically, the modified JCIDS process for acquiring IT, or the “IT Box” as we refer to it here on Joint Staff, has been in use for over a year now, and is starting to bear fruit. The IT Box process allows us to draw a “box” of requirements around the project, and as long as the project stays within those parameters, it does not need to come back through the JROC again. A large part of the IT Box process lines up with the recommended DSB model, and our discussions to date lead me to believe we will make considerable progress as this moves forward. We are excited about the potential to fundamentally change the way IT is acquired within the department, and resolve some longstanding issues along the way.

The bottom line is that the days of acquiring computer software and hardware the same way we acquire multimillion dollar hardware platforms like tanks, ships and airplanes are ending. We simply cannot continue to use the same processes that acquire capabilities with life spans measured in decades to acquire IT solutions that may be developed, used and retired in a few years. Our business is one of constant, unrelenting change, yet the acquisition process we use to acquire IT hasn’t changed since we basically started buying computers. The inherent inflexibility and timescale of our current acquisition process is now widely recognized as a limiting factor in acquiring the IT capabilities our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines rely on to accomplish their mission. So, I very much look forward to continuing our efforts with our partners in OSD to implement a solution to a problem that has plagued our community for a long time.

Q: Regarding GIG 2.0, what do you foresee for implementation in DoD?

A: As previously mentioned, following my arrival, we immediately began work on developing a GIG 2.0 implementation plan. And here’s why that’s important: Too often we talk about issues, come up with great recommendations, pat ourselves on the back for early successes and claim victory too soon, and then you never hear anything else about them. Our implementation plan, which is currently undergoing general and flag officer level review, takes the next important steps by leveraging the operational gaps defined in the GIG 2.0 ICD to identify required actions and responsible organizations for implementing department-wide cultural, operational and technical changes to support the nextgeneration net-centric warrior at the tactical edge.

Our GIG 2.0 implementation plan represents the way ahead for the department and our mission partners. It is designed to:

• Provide for a single information environment that is optimized for the warfighter in order to help battlefield commanders integrate their forces and succeed in accomplishing the strategic mission by winning the tactical fight.
• Deliver the information advantage that underpins freedom of action.
• Enable access to required information anytime and anywhere to speed up the warfighter’s decision cycles—in other words, to help them out-think their adversaries.
• Ensure access to, agility in and versatility of the information environment to allow commanders to know what is happening on the battlefield and for those on the battlefield to reach behind the lines to get the information and support that they need.

Q: What can you tell us about the differences of communication in Afghanistan vice Iraq?

A: First of all, Afghanistan is completely different from Iraq in many ways, such as terrain and infrastructure, and is one of the most challenging communications environments in the world. Moving or relocating systems and capabilities from one theater of operation to another, such as from Iraq to Afghanistan, is not just a case of simply picking up and relocating. There are a number of challenges and limitations, compounded by a lack of infrastructure and extended geographical distances, in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, I will focus on three.

The first and possibly largest difference is the focus of the effort: build versus rebuild. In Afghanistan, we started in 2001 with military operations using primarily organic, troop-level communications. Today, this has developed into a much larger scale operation requiring substantial C4ISR infrastructure. In a country composed mostly of very small villages and lacking a strong central government, there was very little infrastructure that our forces could use. Over several years now, we have been building up the telecommunications infrastructure through coupling many key stakeholders, including DoD agencies like DISA, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, the American Embassy and the Afghan Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Now we are taking the fight to even more remote regions of Afghanistan.

While it is challenging to build a C4ISR infrastructure in the larger cities of Afghanistan, that challenge pales in comparison to what we now face in building an infrastructure in more remote areas. Many villages have no electrical power, let alone any telecommunications capabilities. In Iraq, by comparison, there was a significant amount of basic infrastructure, including telecommunications, already in existence at the beginning of the war. While some of the existing infrastructure was damaged by our air and ground campaigns throughout the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, a sufficient level remained undamaged that our forces were able to leverage.

Second, unlike Iraq, topography complicates communications in Afghanistan. Line-of-sight communications are very limited due to the extremely high mountains that run the length of the country. This limitation, plus the lack of ground telecommunications infrastructure, forces us to rely heavily on satellite communications. We are slowly balancing terrestrial, aerial and satellite communications architecture as ground telecommunications improvements progress, particularly in the south and west.

Third, security is a much larger concern in Afghanistan as terrestrial communications systems are installed. The difficulty in providing security to enable commercial providers to install IT systems and capabilities creates significant challenges in delivering timely capability to the warfighter.

As an example, there are fiber-optic cable projects either developed or under development along much of the “ring” road. Fiber installation crews are frequently interrupted by security concerns or insurgent attacks, which significantly delays progress. Although there are still security concerns in Iraq, groups appear to be less willing to carry out attacks that would alienate the population that has come to rely upon that infrastructure for their livelihood.

Q: In the recent response to the earthquake in Haiti, the military had a huge job. Tell us a little bit about the communications challenges we faced and how we overcame them.

A: In an operation of this magnitude, with no notice for C4 planning and coordination, USSOUTHCOM and JTF Unified Response did an extraordinary job under some extremely difficult circumstances. Immediately after the earthquake occurred, the Joint Staff began tracking the Haiti crisis through the National Joint Operations Intelligence Center. The J6 was intimately involved through our J6 representative on the Crisis Management Element [CME]. We initially tracked USSOUTHCOM’s needs through the desk officer from our J6 COCOM Support Division, but transitioned to 24/7 operations to provide inputs to the CME and track information from USSOUTHCOM as they worked to establish the Joint Task Force in Haiti. We also participated in daily conference calls with the Department of Homeland Security’s National Coordinating Center for Telecommunications, and USAID. The DHS National Coordinating Center/National Communication System teleconferences proved to be an effective forum to address commercial communications issues. USSOUTHCOM J6’s staff, under the leadership of Colonel Mark Churchwell, worked diligently to flush out the construct of the Joint Task Force and assisted in prioritization of these efforts. Some of these issues included:

• The Deployable Joint Command and Control Core [DJC2] package, while a tremendous capability, revealed some limitations during this deployment. For example, the particular package that was deployed was designed to handle a smaller JTF of 65-70 personnel, and JTF-Haiti, due to the magnitude of the overall operation, eventually grew to over 200 personnel. Therefore, there was insufficient capacity to initially support the number of users without deploying additional communications systems. Also, some older software versions were discovered during initial setup, which affected system interoperability. These issues were quickly resolved through the responsive support provided by the DJC2 PEO.
• Spectrum management was also a challenge due to multiple C4 and ISR systems being employed. Although the SOUTHCOM J6 managed all spectrum issues for the operation in conjunction with the Haitian government, the inability to recover civilian spectrum records due to building collapse added to the complexity. However, with responsive support from the Defense Spectrum Office, this issue was effectively managed.
• Another issue was the Joint Network Node [JNN], which experienced reachback installation issues with the Standardized Tactical Entry Point [STEP] site at Northwest and eventually redirected traffic to the training site at Fort Gordon, Ga. Based on this experience in Haiti, we are working closely with the Army and DISA to review appropriate tactics, techniques and procedures [TTPs] for JNN and STEP facilities.

A good-news story was the implementation of All Areas Partner Network as a non-classified information sharing portal. This information sharing portal, initially developed by USPACOM and established by USSOUTHCOM as a pilot just days prior to the earthquake, was quickly adapted for use by non-governmental organizations supporting operations in Haiti.

JTF Unified Response was a primary topic of discussion during our May Combatant Command Global J6 Conference, during which USSOUTHCOM shared lessons-learned. As a follow-on to our May conference, the Joint Staff J6 will host a summit for Joint Expeditionary Communications in July to discuss and formulate TTPs based on C4 support to the Haiti crisis.

Q: When you look back at your time in the J-6 a few years from now, what would you like to say that you’ve accomplished?

A: Good question. First of all, I would like to be able to say that through the building of strong, collaborative relationships across the C4 and ISR communities, as well as industry, we were successful in moving the joint community forward toward achieving a more secure and globally accessible Joint Information Environment [JIE]. The forums we’ve established, which include the COCOM J6 Conference and the revised Military Communications Electronics Board, have contributed greatly in helping move the community forward. Of course, achieving a fully seamless and transparent JIE is more of a continuous journey than an endstate, so I think it is important to set the foundation and build upon the collective efforts of the COCOMs, services and agencies. I hope in some way, I would have contributed to that.

Second, through the realignment of the J6 staff, the establishment of a Cyberspace Division, and the development of a five-year J6 strategic plan—a living document that is aligned with the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff’s priorities and guidance, along with COCOM/service/agency requirements— I’d like to be able to say that we have successfully postured the J6 staff for the future, specifically contingency operations and the critical cyberspace domain.

Lastly, I would like to be able to say that I made a positive difference for the Joint Staff, our COCOMs, services and agencies, the deployed warfighter, and also our people.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

A: I would like to thank MIT for the opportunity to share some of my thoughts, and to illuminate some of the outstanding efforts of the great professionals on the Joint Staff J6 and the Joint Staff at-large, with whom I am privileged to serve every day. These tremendous servicemen and women, DoD civilians and the contractor partners who support them maintain focus every day on providing exceptional support to the warfighter. It is an honor to serve with them. ♦

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