Network Veteran Integrates Future Combat
Brigadier General N. Lee S. Price, deputy program manager of network integration for the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS), has an intense interest in fielding FCS components to get new technologies out to warfighters.
by Tom Marlowe, MIT Correspondent
Colonel N. Lee S. Price, deputy program manager of network integration for the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS), came to the program last summer with a great deal of experience working in the field directly with the operators of military technology.
As such, Price arrived at FCS with an intense interest in fielding FCS components to get new technologies out to warfighters to provide them with an upgrade in capabilities and to spur rapid development of FCS gear. Long lead times on research and development sometimes leave producers and users of technology alike frustrated with their inability to field new components to augment warfighter capabilities, Price said.
“Why can’t we have it today and make that technology real?” Price asked. “In the special ops community, we try to get something into the hands of the user immediately and then start to develop it. That’s the viewpoint that I bring to FCS.”
Following the model of spiral development, Price advocates examining the components available now and the best methods for getting them into the hands of operators quickly. As she hasn’t been with the FCS program very long, she is still learning how to best deliver FCS capabilities, but she’s determined to deliver increased utility to the battlefield through FCS research.
“We sometimes call that getting it 80 percent right and then we make it better,” Price remarked. “If 80 percent right provides a combat multiplier or an increased capability to an operator, that is what I have tried to do for the last three years.”
Price, who is slated to become a brigadier general in November, has 33 years of service, including her years in the National Guard. The vast majority of that has been spent implementing networks in the field in direct support of soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines.
Providing direct field support has given her tremendous job satisfaction, hence her determination to provide the same sort of support with FCS. Price understands that fielding new technology also requires some experimentation and training to discover what works and how service members make use of new gear.
Keeping that perspective in mind gives Price insight into which FCS components will need more development behind closed doors and which the Army might field more rapidly to support today’s battlefield.
Price joined the program shortly before the start of fiscal 2009—a critical point in the FCS program. FCS leaders will focus in the coming year on making a strategic change from fielding heavy brigade combat teams (HBCTs) to fielding interim brigade combat teams (IBCTs), which are mediumweight forces that bridge the gap between heavy, lethal forces and light, rapid forces.
The focus on that strategy will hopefully lead to a successful decision on FCS Milestone C, which calls for the low-rate initial production of FCS technologies beginning in 2010.
DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
Prior to receiving her assignment at FCS, Price was on retirement orders. But she wasn’t really ready to stop serving the Army. When tasked to transfer to FCS, Price hit the ground running, studying FCS lexicon and dissecting the Army’s campaign plan for the program. She required some education on the evolution of the program, particularly as her last assignment had been in support of Special Operations Command, and many of her other recent jobs had been in joint forces domains.
“We are working the details,” Price commented. “The devil is in the details. When you are looking at that many programs coming together, it becomes more difficult.”
So she works with other FCS personnel to update the status of the program every week, seeking out elements that could hinder development or pose challenges. If need be, she reaches up to the FCS program manager, Major General Charles Cartwright, and other leaders to engage challenges. As part of her preparation for her job at FCS, Price was quick to identify the key people she must talk to on a daily basis and those whose support would be vital to getting things done smoothly.
In that regard, Price brings another important perspective to her job in that she doesn’t want to duplicate the efforts of others. She attributes her success in supporting command and control systems in Korea to her abilities to let people do their jobs and to avoid reinventing outside capabilities.
“If you look at work I did at DCAD in terms of the type of work that went on there, I did not try to recreate what other program managers already had available,” Price explained. “If I needed a telephone switch, I reached out to the telephone switch PM and said, hey, we need help. Then they would be part of the team members that would go out and design and install that for us and then they would develop the support that we need as well. I have never tried to recreate something that we already had; I tried to incorporate them into the team.”
Serving as a program manager thus could be viewed as the ultimate team sport, Price quipped. No one program manager receives all of the personnel they would ideally need to complete all of the tasks before them, so they must build a team to get things done. Price has worked at the joint service level for 13 years, which provides her with insight into communicating with others regarding their capabilities and then bringing those capabilities together to solve a problem on the battlefield.
NETWORKING CAREER
Price has spent her career working with networks and dealing with operators. As an officer, she started out in Germany, supporting the 8th Infantry Division and 3rd Support Command with their telecommunications needs. From there, she attended the University of Arizona to obtain her master’s degree in information systems.
Upon graduation, Price began working in computer systems engineering and dabbling in acquisitions management, assigned to Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. She supported initiatives across personnel, ammunition, medical system and property accountability programs.
When the first Gulf War started, the Army dispatched Price to support Central Command.
“At that time, CENTCOM did not have any computer engineers,” she recalled. “Nor did the Saudi theater of operations have e-mail. When the Gulf War started, there really weren’t that many people who had their own computers—period—or knew what e-mail was. My task was to go to the CENTCOM theater and start to plan out the requirements to put in both the classified and the unclassified e-mail systems— truly off the back of an envelope.” And so Price assisted in the implementation DISNET 0, now known as NIPRNet, and DISNET 1, now SIPRNet, in the CENTCOM theater of operations.
“I really enjoyed being in theater,” Price commented. “It was my first time in combat theater. My takeaway from that was learning how quickly people could really pull together when they see that a mission is vital.”
When Price arrived at CENTCOM, she dealt with an auditing system used to push requisitions for systems that was terribly backlogged. Requisitions were more than three days behind due to the inefficiency of the system. Once Price and her co-workers established e-mail, they began to requisition units much faster, reducing the turnaround time for repairs significantly. The e-mail system also provided troops with their first exposure to e-mail in theater. After being promoted to major, Price went to the Defense Information Systems Agency to work on the Defense Message System (DMS).
“I tackled the tactical part of DMS for them,” she elaborated. “I got there just when the contract had already been awarded in May of 1994. I pulled together the tactical component of it. I have always supported operational; I have always tried to look out for the tactical people and get them interoperability with the strategic communications infrastructure.”
After supporting DMS, Price traveled to Korea for two years as a lieutenant colonel to support the Global Command and Control System (GCCS) Korea, a variant of the Army GCCS system. She also had to deal with the Year 2000 bug during that time—and the Army ended up with no Y2K issues.
“Korea is a very interesting place to spend time because it is jammed packed with exercise schedules and 85 percent of the people turnover there every year in theater. I was there for two years doing my job. You always have a constant training,” Price noted.
At the time, GCCS Korea was the largest command and control system at the Department of Defense, with about 1,500 users. Both U.S. and South Korean armed forces used the system, which was highly unusual.
After leaving Korea, Price went to the Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems, where she was involved with strategic planning, supporting the White House hotline to the Kremlin, and the combat service support small aperture satellite program. She also conducted the commercialization of communications infrastructure in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan to bring Army tactical communicators home and take the pressure off tactical systems, which were not intended to support daily, year-round communications in theater.
Most recently, Price supported Special Operations Command. “I was in charge of all of the combat mission needs statements. That is defined as those material needs that would prevent the loss life or required for mission success. Those were all rapid acquisitions that we pushed up within 180 days. That covered the entire product line from body armor, night vision goggles, sensors, specialized ammunition, specialized aircraft— if you name it, the special ops community needed it,” she described. “I also had a focus on taking care of all of our congressional requests for information.”
These various career experiences now lend themselves to Price’s position at FCS, where she aspires to rapidly field FCS technologies, work with others, and troubleshoot problems as opportunities arise. ♦
