Sean M. Gallagher

[updated]

I’m currently doing some inquiries for an article I’m preparing on the Human Terrain System — a program that’s had more than its share of controversy surrounding it, and as far as I can tell, a lot of political FUD-spreading.

The name of the program is somewhat misleading to those who don’t know about it, because the primary element of the HTS in place is HTTs — Human Terrain Teams, made up of social scientists, who have been providing “human terrain” data — information on local anthropological, sociological and political systems in Iraq and Afghanistan–to help the Army resolve as many potential conflicts without using “kinetic” action (blowing things up). An admirable goal, no doubt.

But the program has been getting smeared quite a bit–some of it being legitimate, but a great deal of it being…well…like I said, FUD. I’ve seen enough FUD in my time to know when I see it. And apparently, so has Old Blue over at Bill and Bob’s Excellent Afghan Adventure. Take a look, and see what I mean, as he takes apart a story that ran in Men’s Journal on the program, and its author. (The Army responded to the article, and the author to the Army’s response, which you can see here.)

HTS is interesting to me for a number of reasons. There *is* a technology element to the program — a reporting system called MAP-HT, which is supposed to provide for data collected by HTTs to be distributed to units as part of a geospatial intelligence system that tells unit commanders not just about the physical terrain they’re entering, but the people who live there, their customs, and potential sources of conflict. But human analysts — HTT members– have to collect that data, and they’ve often found themselves in harm’s way.

The program is evolving, in part because of the Status of Forces agreement in Iraq (which has changed the game for Army contractors considerably), and in part because of the shift of emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan. I’m hoping to get an accurate picture of what’s going on with the program as I dig–a balanced view, based on the facts. Of course, I won’t be bringing whiskey to Afghanistan to do that…

Update: Today, I interviewed Dr. Bill Stuart, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Maryland, for some background on why anthropologists are so disapproving of HTS, and the relative merits of the program minus the ideology.

Stewart said, essentially, that the problem with the program from the American Anthropologial Association’s standpoint was largely based on a post-modernist, ideological view of the nature of anthropology.

ome in our discipline (Anthropology) are heavily ideological in the stances they take. .. and that many of them are users/champions of a more-or-less “post-modernist” stance that (i) the traditional distinction between “fact” and “value” is a phony – and perhaps pernicious one; and that (ii) it is the right (perhaps responsibility) of anthropologists to see our discipline as a “moral” rather than strictly “scientific” one and that, accordingly we must address and assess issues in terms of matters of “justice” rather than in terms of “truth”. Thus anthropology becomes first and foremost a Normative/Moral rather than a Postivist undertaking. [Perhaps Nancy Scheper-Hughes has given most articulate voice to this position. See her “The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology” (Current Anthropology, Vol 36, No 3 (Jun., 1995), pp. 409-440.). Her position was challenged by Roy D’Andrade (Moral models in anthropology. Current Anthropology, 36(3) (Jun., 1995), pp. 399-408) . Thus, it’s especially those who take the manifestly “left-of-center” postmodernist or critical anthropology to take ideology-informed stands...they have converted even applied anthropology into a heavily ideologized undertaking, including the limiting of applied anthropology to approved topics and tasks… where such a list of approved applied anthropology would not include HTT.

But he was unsure that using applied anthropology--"rapid ethnography", as he called it, in the way HTS does is practical, since it would take long periods of field work to understand the dynamics of a community so well as to turn it into actionable information. In other words, the payoff from HTTs will likely not be very high without long-term deployment within the communities. "Perhaps more usefully such anthropological input as part of HHT would best be done 'in the classroom'," he said , "in briefings, before, and de-briefings after the combat teams did they onsite work, without an anthropologist being present. "

[updated with clarification from Dr. Stewart]

From my article in Defense Systems:

A senior Navy program manager challenged the software-defined radio (SDR) industry to think more like the PC industry.

Richard Anderson, senior program engineer and manager at the RF Communications Engineering Division of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in Charleston, S.C., specifically pointed to the need to deliver the types of features consumers have in their mobile phones.

“I don’t understand why troops in the field don’t have a cell phone like I do,” he said at the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement’s Software Radio Summit Feb. 24.

See Defense Systems for the rest of the story.

From my swan song at Defense Systems:

In the face of an increasingly dangerous collection of network-enabled terrorists, politically and economically motivated hackers, and potentially adversarial countries flexing their muscle in the cyber realm, the Defense Department is in the process of creating a doctrine for waging – and preventing – war in cyberspace.

Read more on Defense Systems.

The Center for American Progress’ Lawrence Korb wrote today on the think tank’s blog that the Obama administration’s top-line budget for the Defense Department –which is a 4% increase over the Bush administration’s 2009 budget , and $6.7 billion more than Bush had asked for in 2010–is more than adequate, and gives some suggestions on how to spend it.
(more…)

The irrepressible Bob Brewin reports over on NextGov that Sherrill Nicely, deputy chief information officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “has assumed the role of acting CIO while Patrick Gorman, the acting CIO, is on leave. ODNI did not say why Gorman was on leave or for how long.”

Gorman was acting CIO. Does that mean that Nicely is now the acting acting CIO?

FCW reports that NIST is assembling a cloud computing team to develop ways to assess the security of applications built with a cloud computing architecture.

“The team will give our customers a sense of what kinds of risks they may be taking on by moving into that new territory,” [Ron Ross, a senior computer scientist and information security researcher at NIST] said today at the SaaS/Gov 2009 conference produced by the Software and Information Industry Association and market research firm Input.

The Army just gave Lockheed Martin’s Orlando operation a contract to provide vehicle simulators and tactical trainers. Here’s the DOD announcement:

Lockheed Martin Corp., Orlando, Fla., was awarded on Feb. 23, 2009, a $30,524,017 firm fixed price with time and materials CLINS contract to exercise Lot II option for a quantity of 3 Reconfigurable Vehicle Simulators (RVS) and 7 Reconfigurable Vehicle Tactical Trainers (RVTT’s) and associated weapons training. Work is to be performed at Orlando, Fla., with an estimated completion date of Sept. 30, 2010. A sole source bid was solicited with one bid received. Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, Orlando, Fla., is the contracting agency (W900KK-07-D-0707).

The Air Force and Army try to get their large UAS acts together with “Task 11″, a concept of how to go forward with unmanned aerial systems in both services.

The Army has been hot to get its own UASs dedicated to frontline units, to forward deploy them for both C4ISR missions and as potential supporting weapons platforms. The Air Force recently created a whole UAV pilot career track, as Air Force leaders see UAVs as a rapidly growing part of the Air Force mission–and are putting rated pilots in charge of them.

The new “concept” unifies how the Air Force and Army TRADOC look at UASs, which means that there should be a bit less confusion about whose Raptor or Predator is dropping what on who.

Ron Beckstrom, director of DHS’s national security center, told Homeland Security conference attendees that “the end state (of a cyber security effort) is not adequately discussed”, and that the Federal government needs to set some concrete goals.”Do we want a stable Internet for commerce, for communication, for intelligence, for information-sharing or for the warfighter to have an electronic advantage in war? We need clearer directives.”

Army CIO LTGEN Jeffrey Sorenson spoke at a meeting of AFCEA Baghdad today, and repeated his call for a unified, universal information service for soldiers that would give them “a universal data storage point, with one phone number, e-mail, and one set of collaborative tools that will not change, even when one physically moves, and will be effective anywhere in the world.” Sorenson has made this goal part of nearly every major address he’s made in the last year, as he steers the Army toward a Network Service Center model for IT–essentially moving the Army’s networks toward a cloud computing model.
From the Multinational Force Iraq press desk:

Lt. Gen. Sorenson began by saying to the group, “When it comes to
information, it is not what you know, it is what you share.” He added, “The U.S. Army is transforming what its IT network will look like by developing a better expeditionary capability and by having the ability to establish collaboration as a way of doing business. The Army will be transitioning a lot of independent networks into a single network enterprise. In order to be effective, we in the United States have to be able to communicate with all our expeditionary forces. The current network we have is not a single enterprise and we have to do a lot to make it function to the expeditionary level.”

Also at the event were Iraqi Maj. Gen. Sa’ad Kadhum, Director General of Communications for the Ministry of Information; Brig. Gen. Aliwe Jassam, Director – Radio Repair Division; Brig. Gen. Mahmood Al-Anni from the Ministry of Information; Brig. Gen. Ahmed Hoan, Advanced First Responder Network Program Manager for the Ministry of Information; and Dr. Ali Taresh, Chief Information Officer for the Ministry of Defense.

Taresh asked what the Iraqi MOD could learn from the problems the MNF coalition had faced. Sorenson answered that “getting people to come to agreement on the governance and protocol and the network structure was a challenge. We now have a process where we have one single group that looks at the network structure.”

AFCEA’s Baghdad Chapter opened last November.