Verizon, though, offered the capacity for 6,000 mobile devices at five megs per device and the ability to transmit in every direction, including in areas where communications weren’t usually needed. “It wasn’t rapid at all. Verizon was ready. The government was not ready. The Army was not ready,” Norris said.
He recalled having to get approval from the Defense Information Systems Agency and others, which took about 16 months. Once he gave Verizon the green light, the company installed the necessary equipment in two months. So, it took 16 months for approvals, two for installation.
“We need to think through ways, and maybe we will, in time of need for large-scale conflict, we may be able to reduce that bureaucracy down to shorter time periods. I certainly wish, looking back, I had some type of shot clock with the government that would have expired, so I could have gotten that capability installed much earlier,” Norris shared.
Moving on to workforce issues, he declared a skilled workforce to be “the foundation of any successful infrastructure deployment and sustainment of that infrastructure” and stressed the need to invest in education and training programs to “equip our workforce with the necessary skills to design, build and maintain advanced communication networks” to include not only technical skills, but “knowledge of cybersecurity practices to protect these critical infrastructures from threats … now and in the future for the Army.”
And the deployed infrastructure must be resilient and redundant. “As we quickly deploy new communications infrastructure, we must also ensure that these networks are resilient and capable of withstanding various challenges and threats. That’s everything: natural disasters, cyber attacks, other disruptions. Building redundancy into our networks and adopting a zero-trust architecture can enhance the security and reliability of our infrastructure. Particularly for the Army moving into this unified network based on zero-trust principles, a lot of work to streamline and flatten our cyber attack surface.”
The second piece of resilience is the concept of sharing infrastructure, including towers, ducts, conduits, recruitment, employment, when and where needed, and then “working to ensure what shared, wherever that shared infrastructure is needed, is secure,” and not just physically secured but “physically and financially only controlled by the U.S.” and not by a potential adversary.
