Boeing Targets Pentagon With ‘Network Centric’ Sales Plan
By SHERRI CRUZ
Orange County Business Journal
The U.S. military can send a missile to an exact target in downtown Baghdad even changing the weapon’s course midway with little damage to people and buildings around it.
Figuring out whether the target is friend or foe is another matter.
A lack of key battlefield data and the inability of some battalions to talk to each other have riled Donald Rumsfeld. The defense secretary is pushing contractors to make their communications and control systems work together by unifying on a common standard, much like the Internet.
In technology jargon, it’s dubbed a “network centric” approach to war.
The effort is pitting the big defense contractors against each other in a bid to create the standard on which future electronic systems will be based.
Boeing Co.’s bid: a $16 million, 13,000-square-foot facility in Anaheim dubbed the Boeing Integration Center. The flashy room of giant screens and computers is designed to show off electronics and software in a theater setting.
The goal is to shock and awe military planners by showing how computers on aircraft, ships, tanks and handheld devices can share live data on a common network.
Heading up Boeing’s war technology effort is Carl G. O’Berry, a retired general who used to oversee the Air Force’s command, control, communications and computer operations. After a stint at Motorola Inc.’s space and systems technology group, O’Berry now works out of Boeing’s Anaheim facility.
Sales job
Boeing wants to sell the military on its way of standardizing warfare communications. That could bring the company a big portion of Defense Department spending under what’s known as Joint Vision 2020, a long-range modernization plan outlined in 2000. One of the plan’s tenets is “information superiority.”
Along the way, the company is looking to sell individual military branches on its system. Since the integration center’s 2000 opening, more than 15,000 visitors, including high-ranking military officials, have toured the facility.
Last year, Boeing won the prime contract on the Army’s Joint Tactical Radio System to come up with new radios to boost communications for land, sea and air forces. The initial contract value is $2 billion and could triple.
But Chicago-based Boeing has challengers among the other major defense contractors, including Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp.
Lockheed has its own version of the integration center dubbed the Global Vision Network. In June, Lockheed combined three businesses to form a new division, Integrated Systems and Solutions, based in Maryland, which pulls together its efforts to develop a war network.
“This is what the 21st century is all about,” said Ted Campbell, Lockheed’s vice president of advanced concepts. “Lockheed has been gearing up for this for several years.”
At Boeing’s Anaheim operation, software engineers and researchers make up Boeing Strategic Architecture, the group formed last year that’s spearheading development of a networking standard.
Traveling truck
The integration center is the flagship of the effort. To show military planners how the system would work, the integration center links with Boeing facilities in Seattle; Colorado Springs, Colo.; St. Louis; Huntsville, Ala.; Philadelphia and the nation’s capital.
In the parking lot outside the integration center is a traveling truck with a fighter-jet simulator that links with computers inside. As the simulated jet takes off, goes on a bombing run and then lands, its every move is tracked by the integration center. It’s also identified as friend or foe.
During war, aircraft, satellites and intelligence units collect information. But the military doesn’t have a way to share it among everyone, said John Harms, director of business development for Strategic Architecture, which is part of Boeing’s St. Louis-based Integrated Defense Systems’ division.
The objective of a war network is “to make decisions faster than the other guy,” Harms said.
Inside the integration center, two computers project a battle scene on three large screens at the front of the room. It’s what a military commander might see. Click on a symbol and a box pops up that says what the symbol is and if it’s friendly or hostile.
Boeing is in the early stages of trying to rally an industry consortium around a networking standard. The group could be similar to what the Underwriters Laboratory is to the appliance industry, according to Ball.
That could be a tough sell. Lockheed’s Campbell called Boeing’s consortium approach “exclusive.”
Even if the integration center doesn’t yield a standard, it still could be valuable for Boeing. It offers military planners an idea of what they might want to include in defense spending proposals.
“We’re chasing new business,” Ball said. “It’s really there to show how the technology would work.”
