Report urges doubling of computer network operations training facilities to 1,000 students per year.

 

     The 2009 Quadrennial Roles and Missions Review (QRM) Report to Congress just released by the Department of Defense includes an extensive discussion of the mission and challenges facing the military in cyberspace.
 
     In addition to defining the department's core missions and capabilities, the 2009 QRM review describes how the department reviewed the rapidly evolving roles, missions, and capabilities associated with irregular warfare, cyberspace operations, unmanned aircraft systems, and intra-theater airlift. The report discusses ways the department is working to enhance operations in these areas, as well as opportunities to improve government-wide approaches to solving problems in today's complex security environment.
 
     During the QRM, a cyber-issue team co-led by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and U.S. Strategic Command addressed cyberspace issues related to developing, structuring and employing the cyberspace force. To achieve the desired end states of this cyberspace vision, the department has decided to pursue four initiatives: 

1. Develop a professional cyberspace force able to influence and execute cyberspace operations with the same rigor and confidence as traditional department operations in other domains.                        
   
2. To mature this force, the department intends to learn from the new, innovative capabilities and experiences of counterparts across the U.S. government, in the private sector, and internationally.
3. Internally, the department is changing its joint professional military education curricula to include more classes and information on cyberspace to improve knowledge of this domain throughout the force and among civilian employees.
4. For computer network operations (CNO) specialists, the department is increasing basic training capacity in the coming years, with a goal of doubling the capacity of CNO training facilities to 1,000 students per year.

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Companies seek to resolve performance and interoperability gaps in popular suite of specifications for embedded systems.


     An independent association is being formed through the alliance of more than 10 leading defense prime contractors and COTS systems developers striving to solve the interoperability issues of VPX system architectures.
 
     The OpenVPX Industry Working Group was initiated by Mercury Computer Systems to meet the challenges of VPX interoperability and system management. The group's charter is to publish a comprehensive system design guide that will improve interoperability of COTS 3U and 6U VPX-based systems achieved in part by implementation of predefined system profiles.
 
     Mercury, which has designed and deployed high-end ATCA and MicroATCA systems for the past five years, is leveraging this expertise and the proven underlying scalable architecture, including advanced system management technology, as the foundation for its contribution to the OpenVPX Industry Working Group.
 
      "The OpenVPX system-level approach will enable prime contractors to greatly reduce the time required to create integrated COTS solutions in 3U and 6U form factors," said Didier Thibaud, senior vice president and general manager of advanced computing solutions at Mercury. "It will also lower the risk of adoption, and expand the addressable market for VPX solutions, while accelerating deployment into real-world applications."
 
      The VPX standard rapidly evolved into a family of specifications defining a number of board-level architecture options. While the range of available VPX-based specifications is intended to enable superior processing performance for various defense embedded computing applications, it has significantly increased the probability that VITA 46-based products developed by multiple manufacturers will not operate together in an integrated system.

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