CDC Systems UK - Bowman Solution
9 February 2001
The interview below with Larry Johnson, Managing Director of CDC Systems UK Limited, is reproduced by kind permission of SMi (Publishing) Ltd. Larry Johnson speaks to Adam Baddeley, Editor of SMi's monthly publication - Defence Digitization Bulletin - about the development of the CDC Bowman solution, which was submitted to UK's Defence Procurement Agency on 7 February 2001. For further information about SMi's Defence Digitization Bulletin, please E-mail jwild@smi-online.co.uk
What is its current status of Iris in the Canadian armed forces?
"We are now about 50% through the conversion of vehicles for Iris, we will also be introducing the command and control aspects, both brigade and above and brigade and below software packages in the New Year. To do the fielding, we are undertaking a multiple site conversion option using military bases across Canada. The only exceptions to this are a number of militia units, which we will field at different sites. The main conversion work started at Canadian Forces Base, Gagetown in November 1999. We completed our work at this site with the whole of the brigade based there. We are approximately 60% complete at our site at CFB Petawawa, and have begun installation at CFB Winnipeg and CFB Edmonton. For the next short while, we will have three conversion sites going simultaneously with the aim of completing conversion by October 2001. The last phase of conversion will cover the more sophisticated Signal Corps functions, such as communications management and other top-level functions. This conversion phase will be at CFB Kingston and will begin in January."
"One wouldn't want to underestimate how important our conversion experience has been with the Iris programme. The UK IPT for BOWMAN has been studying what has been happening in Canadian conversion and it appears to me that there are great parallels between the two conversion processes. Clearly there are differences in scales; the Canadian Iris conversion was for 6000 vehicles in 18 months as against the 18-20000 platforms covered under BOWMAN. However, the British Army intends to have completed conversion in 36-48 months, so the daily rate is not significantly different."
"The timing in regard to our risk reduction contract is just about right. The Iris engineering work will be completed in March 2001, and in the mean time, we will be gradually weaning the engineering personnel from Iris onto the BOWMAN project. The engineering team is now up and running to establish the architecture, what we are calling the CDC BOWMAN solution. That process will be completed by next summer. The development process will be ready to go with the announcement of a contract.
What is the Athene C2 element?
"The Brigade and above element, called Athene, is centred on the Thomson CSF SIC-F product. What we have done is to take that product and adapt it to the Canadian Army doctrine, convert it to a C++ software code with Windows NT operating system and add on x.400 military messaging capability. We also had to increase the bandwidth of our communications solution and we introduced fast Ethernet to distribute it around the HQ environment. We are now getting that ready for delivery. We are also providing our battleWEB product at the brigade and below level. The next stage of our work will see the integration of the two through harmonising the software tools to the battleWEB model as opposed to that of Athena. We will subsequently be able to deliver a continuum of command and control at all levels."
What are the lessons you derived from your experience of Iris in Canada that can be applied to the BOWMAN programme?
"The lesson that we have learned is how to be flexible in our conversion approach. The Canadian army is very much like the British army; constantly being tasked for different peacekeeping and peacemaking operations, while trying to fit these in around their more permanent operational requirements. In our experience with the Canadian Army, we found that within as little as two weeks, the units that we thought we would be working with were deployed elsewhere. The flexibility we developed to maintain our installation tempo without disrupting the conversion process is an important asset in BOWMAN. We also found out how difficult and time consuming, the system integration of a large communications system can be. Fortunately, in BOWMAN we will be able to re-use most of the two million lines of test code developed for Iris".
CDC already exists in the UK. Why was a new company established in Bristol?
"The rationale for this was to set a direct line into General Dynamics HQ. One of the things we are able to offer the UK government was that I, as Managing Director, would report to the No. 2 man at Falls Church, who in turn reports to the chairman of General Dynamic. We felt this would provide assurances that there will be top level attention to the BOWMAN programme."
The MoD has asked for significant UK content in BOWMAN. You are undertaking your risk reduction work in Calgary. Is this a weakness?
"What we are doing is balancing off risk against UK content. I think that risk is the more significant factor in the opening stages. What we will do, is to undertake engineering design in Calgary, which is where the engineering staff for Iris resides. However, we will transition this team to the UK in the early stages of the BOWMAN contract. We will also establish a parallel systems integration facility in the UK which will be commissioned with the identical software that exists at the Calgary facility, maintaining complete configuration management of the two laboratories at all times."
MESHnet will figure strongly in your BOWMAN bid. How is that system developing?
"MESHnet will be the core to our information distribution solution. It is MESHnet that has allowed us to field the world's first IP based integrated digitized system to the Canadian army, and upgrades to MESHnet will allow us to continue this process with a completely integrated voice and data system for BOWMAN. Some of those upgrades are already resident in MESHnet in operational use with the US Marine Corps.
MESHnet was offered as part of the CDC Hunting team's bid for the original BOWMAN LAS contract. What has happened since then?
"When we offered this system with Hunting, it was a hybrid approach. Frankly, I think it would have been a successful product but the Ministry deemed it as too risky in terms of integration. In hindsight, had we offered our complete MESHnet solution, this would have saved the Ministry a lot of aggravation in the development of the LAS. What we offered was an early version of MESHnet, which was really an offshoot of the development of VICDS and the work we did as part of our Headquarters Information Distribution System in Canada for the Iris programme.
The first application for MESHnet was as part of the TOCs in the US Army's Force XXI efforts. At that stage, we used it as a telephone feature and distributed no data through it. We have since been successful in selling it into the USMC, where it's the core of the data and voice distribution systems for their direct air support centres. In that sense, it is operational now with the Marines. We are also the systems integrator for the C3 variant of the Advanced Amphibious Assault vehicle (AAAV), in terms of communications and command and control functions. In regards to Iris, MESHnet is one of the successes of the programme. The system had its first operational deployment with the Canadian Army to Eritrea in December 2000."
What is the upgrade path for Canada's Iris programme?
"The upgrade path for Iris coming downstream in two years is called TIDE (Tactical Information Distribution Enhancement). This will see the establishment of a Tactical Internet using the radios and for that we will likely choose the ITT NTDR. This will also be the basis for the Tactical Internet for BOWMAN."
What role will software radios play in future upgrades?
"Software radios will be a huge leap forward in technology and I think the first thing to come along will be an 80% solution. We will be following developments and future proofing our BOWMAN system as part of any solution we offer in the near future. I do not think that the integration of software radios is a phenomenal leap if you have good core system with open standards and the software integration facility is established with good configuration managed test software."
How will your BOWMAN solution work with Wide Area Networks such as Falcon and those of other NATO countries?
"It seems to me that armies inter-operate at the Headquarters level through their trunk systems because most armies wish to be somewhat autonomous at lower levels. Interoperability here is the key to interoperability at the tactical level.
In Canada we had an appendage programme to Iris called the IRRV, Improved Radio Relay Vehicle, in which we used Marconi ltaliano Line of Sight radios to establish a trunk system compatible with NATO standards. This will probably be replaced by an ATM or IP based system in the future. For Iris what we want to do is look to working with the WIN-T programme, however that develops, be it IP based or ATM."
"General Dynamics Communication Systems have developed the Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) system and we are working closely with GDCS to ensure that MSE in its current form, and WIN-T in the future, will inter-operate with Iris and BOWMAN. Our solution for BOWMAN will clearly also be compatible with the Falcon solution, whatever is ultimately selected. General Dynamics Communications are an integral part of our networking system for BOWMAN and they will be there to ensure we have interoperability with the US Army. They will also provide some other products into our BOWMAN solution."
"Without saying who our team will be, we will have a very strong British team to support conversion and engineering. Part of this team will have very strong insights into the Ptarmigan and Cormorant systems. One company can't do all this alone and hopefully, we will play a part in Falcon as it moves forward."
How will your BOWMAN solution offer a means to expand digitization?
"We will present a path to wider digitisation since we recognise that the British army does not want to be bounded by the solutions it takes in the short term. The British Army is making the right decisions now in starting at the BMS level rather than building down from a higher level solution. It is the lower links of digitisation that are the most difficult. battleWEB is the derivation of the SAS system that we have introduced into Iris and we will be using the core of our battleWEB software for our situation awareness within BOWMAN, as well as other functions. This will allow us to offer the balance of the functionality necessary for the combat requirements within battleWEB at very little cost, as the software will already reside in BOWMAN."
The battleWEB system was assessed by DERA as an alternative to the GP3. What feedback have you received?
"The feedback we had was that the battleWEB product was rated very highly indeed. We are not sure about the rankings, other than it was very high up. The feedback on our weaknesses will allow us to improve the product. We have had some very positive feedback on the software, both in terms of the current product and what we have to do to meet all of the functionality to meet the combat requirement, sometime in the future."
The issue of integration is an important one. How will BOWMAN affect this role?
"Whoever wins the BOWMAN programme will I think, become the de facto integrator for digitization. This will best be accomplished in an IPT format, combining industry and the Ministry. However, you can't develop an effective C2 function without bringing in the three services and factoring in issues of doctrine. This is not just a man-machine-interface issue. We will have to determine what the new doctrine will be in the initial stages of digitisation of BOWMAN and decide how we will move forward. This requires, very much, a lock-step approach."
What are the issues of cryptology?
"We have selected the preferred ITT ADR VHF radio and crypto integration is well under way for this radio by Cogent and ITT. This same team will play a role in the crypto integration into the ITT NTDR data radio and the Harris HF radio to provide a common integration solution."
"KVMS is a standalone issue, but this is really a plug in and plug out system, and we do not anticipate any problems. For the CDC BOWMAN solution, CMIS software provides most of the inputs to KVMS. A seamless KVMS/CMIS solution is going to be one of the keys to our BOWMAN bid and we have identified this as a strength in our teaming arrangements."
How does the NAO's MPR affect your bid?
"We understood that when the issue to move forward was made, not withstanding the NAO report, the real problem was management: management of the systems integration, management of the systems design baseline and having a systems integration test bed. In a sense, Iris has solved that problem for us. We already have a design baseline that we can advance into whichever designs we will move forward with. We also have the systems integration facilities to support that design baseline. By the middle of January, we will have ITT radios at our integration facility and the first versions of new data terminals to start updating our baseline. I think we are well advanced in regards to the testbed element."
How did the studies you undertook in early 1999, inform your solution for BOWMAN now?
"The study was undertaken to show how Iris met the BOWMAN requirements. We learned a lot from that, such as developing a better understanding of what some of the weaknesses were in Iris. We also gained an insight in terms of where we should move in terms of the CDC BOWMAN solution. We froze the baseline for Iris so that we could get on with delivery to the Canadian armed forces, three to four years ago. BOWMAN's SD is 2004 and the customer will not want the Iris baseline of 1997. We therefore, will provide a system design and equipment to meet the BOWMAN Requirements."
Do you anticipate bids offering solutions for less than £1.7 billion
"I do not think there is anything to be gained by going under £1.7 billion. I think the Ministry wants to determine how much solution they can gain from this figure. It's up to the contractors to optimise their solution and it may be counterproductive to come in with a lower price. There will be a lot of tradeoffs to see how much value can be placed in the BOWMAN £1.7 billion tradespace. For example, to attempt to put too much digitisation into the solution might weaken the overall communications solution that one might be able to offer."
What are you doing to ensure high UK content to your bid?
"We are obviously, acutely aware of this issue and there are a number of areas we wish to capitalise on that have in the past received development money from the Ministry. We are also looking at the possibility of manufacturing in the U.K. This will ultimately be a trade-off with cost. In addition, when announced, our team will include strong contribution from UK industry."
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