Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/139409
C4ISR C "It's a completely new paradigm of doing the work that we do. I'm not sure that everyone in the intelligence community understands the significance of it yet." the last minute. Sometimes it worked but often it did not because it had not been formally designed and tested and the technical and operational staff had not received training." Dunfield is the deputy project manager for an RCAF project known as Tactical Integrated Command, Control & Comms–Air (TIC3 Air for short). Drawing on a directive from the Chief of the Defence Staff to ensure connectivity in operations, he is spearheading activities to address the critical missing pieces of that communications puzzle. "TIC3 Air gives the RCAF the proper capability on the ground and equally important it gives us the formal program of record to collect, share, distribute, and for the most part manage that information," he said in a recent interview. "It allows us to pave the highway to pass the data." The highway is an apt metaphor. Think of Canada's current network as a series of paved and unpaved roads that have yet to be properly linked together. The new highway will feature the equivalent of on and off ramps and toll booths to foster the smooth flow of data across a federated network to specified users. TIC3 Air was created two years ago, combining a replacement program for aging UHF/VHF radios used for air traffic control with the Joint Tactical Data Links project to install Link 16 receivers across the country. Neither project had progressed, and when a growing requirement for ISR capability was identified, all three were brought under one banner. Over the next several years, the TIC3 Air project will provide existing RCAF units with a common set of deployable ISR and Tactical Data Link (TDL) systems, establish a terrestrial network of ISR and TDL communication sites, replace the fleet of air traffic management and air defence radios with modern Internet Protocol-capable radios, and integrate these systems into a single holistic network. "To enable ISR data distribution you need three things: a network, an efficient video and image distribution capability on the network and a set of tools to store and access this media. The Coalition Shared Database (CSD) is the heart of the system," Dunfield said. "The problem was, the domestic DND networks didn't have these capabilities." Last spring, three events occurred to create the environment to change that, he explained. "First, the deputy commander from 1 Canadian Air Division said, 'I want this multicast capability on the backbone of the Consolidated Secret Network Infrastructure (CSNI).' Second, the senior leadership of the organizations responsible for CSNI and the Army's deployable network agreed to converge many of their services. One of the most significant services to be added to CSNI was the ISR capability. Finally, a research aircraft outfitted with advanced ISR capabilities was preparing to demonstrate sharing of High Definition ISR imagery directly from the aircraft. This airborne capability is the product of the RIFL2E (Radar and Imaging for the Land/Littoral Environments) project. The RIFL2E aircraft stores imagery in its on-board imagery database (CSD) while also making the data continuously available to any CSNI user while in flight via high bandwidth satellite communications." A critical catalyst was Operation Nanook, an annual exercise across Canada's North that requires, and often tests, the CF's networking ability. With new found impetus and with Op Nanook as a milestone, many organizations could devote the required time and resources to focus on the CSNI limitations that had existed for so long. As a result, a multi-agency working group (WG) was formed in May 2012 which was led mostly by ADM Information Management and air force organizations. With oversight from the WG, they designed and implemented the required services on the CSNI network in stages, the first being in time for Op Nanook. During the northern exercise, the CF was able to pull data from an Aurora aircraft and the RIFL2E aircraft, provide access to this data to users located at an initial set of multicast nodes at 1 Can Air Div in Winnipeg, Joint Task Force North in Yellowknife, Canada Command in Ottawa, the Canadian Forces Warfare Centre in Shirley's Bay where RIFL2E's satellite earth station was located, and an intelligence unit in Ottawa that was tasked with performing data analysis. After the successful implementation and demonstration at Op Nanook, the WG continued to expand the number of bases and www.vanguardcanada.com JUNE/JULY 2013 17