Document created: 29 September 03
Air University Review, May-June 1974
Brigadier General
Charles E. Williams, Jr.
For the majority of readers, I suspect that the term TRI-TAC is unfamiliar. Hopefully, though, all who finish this article will gain a fuller understanding of an important Department of Defense effort that will have far-reaching effects on our future communications and indeed on the entire spectrum of our tactical operations.
All of us are familiar with the increased concern about communications effectiveness that has been generated in the past few years. Communications management within the Department of Defense was given special attention by the President’s Blue Ribbon Defense Panel (Fitzhugh Panel), partly as a result of certain international incidents. Without discussing the effectiveness of, or indeed the part played by, communications in these incidents, I mention them only to emphasize that they served to increase the level of interest now focused on all DOD communications and specifically, for purposes of this discussion, on those used by our tactical forces. In our present atmosphere of intense competition for resources among proponents of our various national interests, both domestic and foreign, DOD investment and expenditures for communications have quite properly come under close scrutiny. This interest was exemplified by a major recommendation of the President’s Blue Ribbon Panel: that greater centralized management for telecommunications be established at the level of an Assistant Secretary of Defense. This position was established in May 1970 by DOD Directive 5148.6 as an Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Telecommunications. It was elevated to full Assistant Secretary status in January 1972, and on 17 January 1974 was changed to add command and control responsibilities with a new title as Director, Telecommunications and Command and Control Systems (D,TACCS).
During the same time frame, the U.S. Army’s Mallard Project, instituted in 1965, came under critical review by the Congress. This was an international developmental effort, conceived by the United States, United Kingdom, Canadian, and Australian armies (ABCA countries) as an effort to get an interoperable tactical communications system to assure compatible communications among our national armies in the event of mutual involvement in future conflicts. The system was revolutionary in that, using a turnkey approach, it was to employ digital technology to replace existing conventional analog switchboards, telephones, and transmission plants. With appropriate communications security, it was to be fielded in 1977, completely replacing then existing ABCA army systems. The project did not address other U.S.-NATO interface requirements, and until late in the program it did not include consideration of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Marine Corps interests.
The Congress, during deliberations on the defense appropriations bill in 1969, recommended that “(1) The program should be reoriented to give priority to (U.S.) Joint Service requirements and interrelationships without the complication of active international participation. . . ,” and “(2) the need to interface with NATO Forces, (instead of only U.K., Canada and Australia) should be recognized and provided for, if practicable, by active coordination of effort, but not by joint development efforts which experience has shown to be more a hindrance than constructive.” Thus ended the international developmental Mallard Project. The Congress had, however, put strong emphasis on the need for a program to address the tactical communications systems of the U.S. services jointly.
To carry out the intent of this Congressional guidance, the Secretary of Defense established the joint program on 27 May 1971 when he issued DOD Directive 5148.7, subject: Charter for the Joint Tactical Communications (TRI-TAC) Program. The charter lists the four major program objectives as follows:
(1) Achieve the necessary degree of interoperability among tactical communications systems and other DOD telecommunications systems.
(2) Place in the field in a timely manner new tactical communications equipment required by the armed forces to perform their mission and which reflect the most effective technology.
(3) Eliminate duplication, where feasible, in the development of service equipment.
(4) Perform the above in the most economical manner.
The scope of the program includes all trunking, access, and switching equipment for mobile and transportable tactical multichannel systems, including associated systems control and technical control facilities; local distribution equipment; voice, teletype, data, and ancillary terminal devices; and associated communications security equipment. It also includes mobile and transportable tactical single-channel switched systems that may be operated as an independent system or as part of a tactical multichannel system. Finally, it includes all interface devices for connecting TRI-TAC-developed items to existing service systems and the Defense Communications System (DCS). This last statement makes apparent the fact that equipment developed under the TRI-TAC Program must be able to extend the worldwide military command and control system (WWMCCS) into the tactical arena. The potential impact of the TRI-TAC Program on command and control of tactical weapon systems should thus be readily apparent even to those only casually familiar with the technicalities of communications equipment developments. Items of equipment developed under the TRI-TAC Program are also being designed for use within the Defense Communications System itself, thus extending impact in the strategic arena.
The charter also establishes the TRI-TAC Office to administer the TRI-TAC Program. The mission of the TRI-TAC Office is basically one of being a systems architect for development of future tactical communications equipment. To carry out this mission the TRI-TAC Director is given five major tasks:
(1) Provide advice and assistance to the Director, Telecommunications and Command and Control Systems, and other DOD components concerned with developing and implementing plans and programs for TRI-TAC.
(2) Be responsible for system definition and engineering of TRI-TAC systems and equipment.
(3) Be responsible directly to D,TACCS for coordinating the development and production of TRI-TAC systems and equipment in response to service/joint requirements.
(4) Communicate directly, for purposes of mission performance and information exchange, with all organizations and offices with which the TRI-TAC Program has interface or which support the program.
(5) Perform such other tasks as the D,TACCS assigns.
These five major tasks are enlarged in the charter by fifteen functional subtasks, which provide a detailed break-out of specific areas of interest and responsibilities where the TRI-TAC Office is involved.
The TRI-TAC organization is designed to carry out the mission and also to further our relations with the services, Defense Communications Agency, National Security Agency, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Secretary of Defense, recognizing one of the main Congressional criticisms of the Mallard Project (i.e., not really having full U.S. joint service participation), established the TRI-TAC Office as a truly joint organization with each military department about equally represented among the 62 military personnel. While the majority of our professional civilian personnel came from the Army’s defunct Mallard Project, we have been successful in getting a number of highly qualified civil servants from the other services too. Regardless of where they come from, all civilian personnel are carried on Department of the Army records, since the TRI-TAC Office is located in New Shrewsbury, New Jersey, adjacent to the Army’s Fort Monmouth.
The organization is responsible to the Secretary of Defense, with staff cognizance exercised by the Director, Telecommunications and Command and Control Systems.
We have the normal administrative support and certain liaison personnel, including representatives from DCA, NSA, U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and U.S. Marine Corps, plus representation from Australia and Canada. There are three staff assistants to the Director:
(1) The Scientific Advisor, who is a senior civilian scientist, ensures that TRI-TAC plans, policies, and specifications properly consider current scientific knowledge, the state of technology, and the threats to communications effectiveness.
(2) The NSA Liaison Officer also serves on the staff as the principal communications security (COMSEC) advisor to the Director.
(3) The Assistant for Allied Affairs, a senior civilian electronics engineer, is the principal advisor on international communications matters, particularly actions to achieve international interoperability, standardization, and commonality.
The Operations and Management Directorate, headed by a Navy captain, provides the overall program and acquisition planning envelope, dealing directly with the Joint Staff and the services for operational requirements and the DOD planning, programming, and budgeting system. It ensures program status assessment and funding.
The Engineering Directorate, headed by a senior civilian electronics engineer, provides the systems architecture, design, and engineering disciplines. Its members, who are a mixture of military and civilian professional engineers, deal with systems definition, specifications, technical interoperability, and standards.
Responsibilities for configuration and data management, integrated logistics support, and computerized data support belong to the Logistic Management Directorate, also headed by a Navy captain.
The Operations Research, Test and Analysis Directorate, headed by an Air Force colonel, plans and prepares joint development test programs. It also provides analyses, modeling, life cycle costing, cost effectiveness, risk, and should-cost analyses.
The fifth directorate is our Washington Operations Office, headed by a Marine colonel. Being out of the services’ mainstream of daily interaction in Washington, we maintain this office to act for us in the Pentagon on day-to-day items involving service tactical communications activity.
Our relationships with NSA and DCA are somewhat unusual. We have had a very close working relationship with both these agencies from the start. NSA engineers have worked on a daily basis with ours in preparing detailed performance specifications to insure a fully integrated communications security capability in all our developmental efforts. As with NSA, we have worked very closely with DCA from the start. We established nine DCA/TRI-TAC tasks, which covered our relations completely from plain administrative relationships, through technical design efforts, procedural standards, user requirements, to planning for the future. Under direction of the D,TACCS, the DCA, NSA, the services, and TRI-TAC are presently engaged in extensive efforts to achieve complete interoperability in future equipment design, procedures, COMSEC, etc., so as to provide as truly a transparent and end-to-end secure communications system as is possible to achieve within the constraints of budget and time.
Also, as a matter of interest, the Director of TRI-TAC sits as a full-time member of the Telecommunications Council, which meets monthly under the direction of the Director, Telecommunications and Command and Control Systems. At this level we interface directly with the senior communicators of all the services, with DCA, NSA, and the J-6 (Director of Communications-Electronics) of the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to address all facets of defense communications planning, programming, budgeting, and problem solving.
Briefly, the eventual goal of TRI-TAC is to produce a family of secure tactical communications equipment for use by all services which will interoperate with the DCS on a transparent and secure basis from end to end. Our approach to this mission is twofold, that is, a long-term effort and a more immediate transitional effort. Our long-range planning effort is dedicated toward achieving this goal in the 1980s. The more immediate problem is to develop a family of transitional equipment that can interoperate with the communications equipment currently in inventory and in development, yet provide an evolutionary step forward toward achieving the longer-range objective of the 1980s. A subtask of effort is to work with the services in solving existing interoperability and security problems caused by incompatibilities in inventory equipment.
Technological developments, information transfer requirements, long-range studies by the services, Defense agencies, industry, and academic institutions all tell us that digital methods of communications are necessary to meet our future needs. Our equipment today, with few exceptions, is not digital but is analog.
Although our record communications or message traffic is transmitted securely in most areas, much of our voice traffic is not secure. We need to achieve a completely interoperable capability to permit essentially transparent and secure communications end-to-end from the national command authorities to the tactical users at whatever level command and control requires.
Obviously, before we could begin an orderly attack on this requirement, our long-range objectives needed to be set in focus, and our immediate steps to start on the path to achieve these objectives needed to be made firm. This is the essence of what the TRI-TAC Office has been doing since it was established in mid-1971. For the long range we have an extensive planning effort in coordination with the services, DCA, NSA, and the JCS to prepare three levels of technical plans that will eventually lead to equipment developments. These are our systems, transitional, and subsystems plans. We have also drafted a master programming plan, which lays out developments, funding, and procurement calendars. For the near-term goals, we have initiated a series of transitional equipment developments to start us on the path to the secure digital communications world of the future.
Our systems plans establish a sense of direction for a particular segment of tactical switched communications by identifying a recommended system design. Our transitional plans will define the time-phased technical planning for implementing the recommended system design. Our subsystems plans will define a recommended technical solution and design for each of the functional subsystems identified in the transitional plans.
The Joint Tactical Communications Master Plan (TACOMASTER) is also being developed in coordination with the military services, DCA, NSA, and the JCS. It will provide for integrated program direction and overall management of TRI-TAC Office efforts to provide equipment that will satisfy service requirements by relating our planning and programming to service plans, inventories, and procurement programs.
Our Systems Plans, that is, the Land Based System Plan (Systems Objectives) and the Naval Switched Systems Plan (Systems Objectives), after full coordination with the services, DCA, NSA, and the JCS, were approved by the then Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Telecommunications and have been promulgated to the services/agencies for technical objectives planning. Transitional plans for both objectives systems are now in draft coordination phase, and we are hard at work on several of the subsystems plans. We depend upon direct service and agency participation in the subsystems plans effort because these lead to equipment specifications of direct interest to the ultimate users.
Our near-term efforts are characterized by a series of fully coordinated steps designed to acquire new equipment that will help make the technological transition from analog to digital communications. In early 1971 we were directed by the Secretary of Defense to develop an evolutionary concept for a land-based communications deployment for the purpose of determining what elements should be addressed as key to achieving a transitional posture aimed toward a secure tactical communications system for the future. Our analysis disclosed that digital technology, automatic telecom switches, communications facilities controls, and transmission systems, all with integrated COMSEC and peripheral devices, were key items to address. Our first development effort, undertaken at SECDEF direction, was to develop performance specifications for a new family of automatic switches that would satisfy the services’ existing analog requirements and provide a secure digital interface to the future. Thus the hybrid AN/TTC-39 program with its associated COMSEC was born. The U.S. Army was tasked in January 1972 as the developing service, and NSA was tasked to develop the COMSEC. Both these procurements are under way, and the Joint Service/Agency evaluation for further contract awards began in October 1973.
As we develop the other elements needed to fulfill the systems requirements, a tasking assignment is prepared for the D,TACCS to send to a particular service to develop and procure the device envisioned. We capitalize on any ongoing service developments so that duplication of effort is avoided. Through this effort, a number of ongoing service developments have been brought under the TRI-TAC Program element, while some other programs have been phased down or terminated as being duplicative.
We have made the following taskings to date:
(1) AN/TTC-39 Circuit Switch (USA)
(2) COMSEC Subsystem (NSA)
(3) Tactical Communications Control Facilities (USAF)
(4) AN/GRC-197 Tropo Terminal (USAF)
(5) Composition and Editing Display Equipment (COED) (USAF)
(6) Digital Facsimile Equipment (USN)
(7) Unit Level Switchboards (USMC)
(8) Data Adapter (USAF)
(9) Short-Range, Wide-Band Radio (USAF)
(10) Digital Group Multiplexer (USA)
(11) Mobile Subscriber Access Equipment (USA).
The general time frame for developing and fielding transitional equipment is in the 1975-1981 period. What we are doing and planning to do constitute our effort to make that period payoff.
Obviously in a brief article the details of a program such as TRI-TAC cannot be adequately covered. If, however, I have been able to put in focus the nature of the organization, the extensive planning effort, and the impact of the individual taskings for developing new equipment for joint service use, I shall have accomplished my purpose.
Joint Tactical Communications Office
Brigadier General Charles E. Williams, Jr. (M.S., George Washington University) is Vice Director, Joint Tactical Communications (TRI-TAC) Office, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. During World War II he flew in antisubmarine warfare. He has commanded operations in FEAF and Vietnam; directed Flight Safety Research, TIG; filled command and staff positions in TAC related to operations, command and control, communications and electronics; and served as Director, Communications-Electronics (J-6), Hq USSTRICOM. General Williams is a graduate of Command and General Staff School and National War College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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