Guardian
Written by JEFF MCKAUGHAN
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INSTALLATION PROTECTION INVOLVES A WIDE RANGE OF DETECTION, EVALUATION AND PROTECTION REQUIREMENTS. THE PROGRAM HAS SIGNIFICANT S&T AND ARMY FUNDING AS IT MOVES TOWARDS FY 2008.
The Installation Protection Program (IPP) is a mature, evolutionary program that employs a tiered capability concept designed to provide increasing chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) protection and response capabilities to critical military installations. The goal of the program is to protect critical missions and to enhance organic response capabilities to more effectively mitigate the impact of a CBR event.
The program has to be capable of ensuring current and future operational suitability, affordability, mission flexibility and effectiveness across a changing operational environment. The program will leverage readily available government offthe- shelf items, commercial off-the-shelf items, contractor furnished information, such as training and maintenance materials for CBR equipment items, governmentfurnished equipment and governmentfurnished information, such as operational and employment procedures, tactics, techniques, and procedures, and concepts of operations. Together these components provide an integrated CBR protection and response capability for DoD installations.
The program has three primary elements: installation protection, consequence management, and force protection.
PROGRAM STUDY
The Office of the Secretary of Defense conducted a revised Installation Protection Program study from April to June 2006. The study recommended the use of a multi-tiered capability strategy. As a result, the IPP fielding execution plan has evolved into three tiers.
The Baseline Tier leverages the best practices of military and civilian responders to provide installation commanders with improved training products, planning templates and checklists, evaluation and procedural information, mutual aid agreement templates, scenarios, and exercises. This tier capability will be both Web-based and paper based, and available to all military installations.
Tier 1 includes all Baseline Tier capabilities and additionally incorporates an integrated system consisting of emergency first responder equipment, mass warning and notification, portable CBR detection, shelter in place, medical countermeasures for first responders, mass casualty support, and decision support tools, incident management software and new equipment training; This tier will provide the bulk of capabilities to military installations and will constitute approximately 80-90 percent of the total fielding requirement. The Tier 1’s purpose is to enable installation first responders to prepare for, respond to, and transfer the critical mission to another unit within 12 hours.
The Tier 2 includes Baseline Tier and Tier 1 capabilities and incorporates an integrated system of capabilities consisting of fixed chemical and biological detection, collective protection, additional individual protection equipment, and a robust decision support system (DSS). The DSS network will leverage existing capabilities and be integrated into the operational command and control infrastructure. This tier will provide the bulk of capabilities to military installations and will constitute approximately 10-20 percent of the total fielding requirement. This tier’s purpose is to enable critical missions to continue uninterrupted missions following an event and to enable installation first responders to effectively prepare for, respond to, absorb the attack and continue the critical mission for at least 12 hours.
IPP-tiered capabilities are based on a joint system architecture tailored for each installation to ensure an optimized solution set and leverages existing emergency response, physical security, communications and infrastructure to the maximum extent feasible to minimize the impact on installation operations and support requirements. Where various options exist, these will be discussed with installation POCs and service headquarters to allow trade-offs to be considered and the final site capabilities suite or configuration determined that best meets the overall needs of the installation and service.
Overall, these capabilities have been designed to provide DoD prioritized installations with a CBR protection and response capability to reduce casualties, maintain critical operations and contain contamination. The study also recommended that that the priority of fielding should be to OCONUS installations vice CONUS and coordinated with the Services/COCOM. However, the Joint Staff-published list will determine the actual fielding locations and CONUS to OCONUS ratio.
The program has achieved design and functional stability with mature systems architecture and is transitioning from program definition to execution. The initial program emphasis will be on improving services, fielding activities, improved and refined processes and improved product quality. The contractor shall initially deliver fielded installations using already available designs. The contractor shall be required to execute simultaneous program phases, (design, fielding, and installationlevel logistics support), while consistently delivering quality, technical, managerial and service efforts across disparate geographical locations. The program will utilize an evolutionary improvement process focused on incorporating defined capability packages at defined intervals, approximately every two years. FY08 is expected to be a capability evolution year.
DEMONSTRATIONS
Several demonstrations are scheduled that will focus on particular aspects of consequence management, protection and/or detection technologies “with outcomes intended to inform procurement, deployment and sustainment actions.”
ROBOTICS SURVEILLANCE
The goal of this demonstration is to determine the military utility of configuring and deploying the MARS and unmanned ground systems for use in the installation protection program, using MDARS technologies developed.
The objectives are to:
• Combine best available features and capabilities of MDARS and UGV on a single platform
• Provide capability to operate modified version remotely
• Conduct clearance, sampling, and forensic collection activities remotely (human in the loop)
• Recover unmanned ground vehicle from a hot zone, perform decontamination actions and re-use
• Determine military utility for the tested unit based on DOTMLPF considerations
• Demonstrate a COTS system for integrating disparate push-to-talk radio systems with other voice, video, and data networks
• Solicit industry to meet further JPMG requirements for expanded use with another installation
• Expand telecommunications integration with civilian community
• Demonstrate data security of solution set used
• Provide basis to certify and accredit the system for acquisition
INSTALLATION PROTECTION
The overall mission of the IP program is to, “Assist DoD in preparing for preventing, responding to, and recovering from CBRN events by providing effective and affordable capabilities,” said the JPEO CBD.
IP seeks, fundamentally, to reduce the overall life cycle management costs of protection systems, as well as improving chemical and TIC detection and identification. It also wants to have systems in place to be able to rapidly identify biological agents in order to effect timely decision-making and medical response/ treatment. Perhaps most difficult is a desire to fully integrate decision-support systems and integrate existing installation capabilities with new and expandable technologies.
Personal protection equipment challenges have been identified as a need for lighter and more flexible suits with equal or better protection and longer shelf life; enhanced masks with greater protection and longer stay times; improved internal environmental control without loss of mobility; and better voice communications between team members and local command staff.
Other identified technical issues relate to CBRN detection equipment to include development of low cost, sustainable RAD portal and CBRN standoff detectors operating 24/7; more effective TIC detection capability; real time biological warfare agent identification capability; portal radiation detectors with increased sourced material identification; and better handheld detectors.
CONSEQUENCE MANAGEMENT
Consequence management seeks to “Provide CBRN analytical, communications, protection, response and survey capabilities in support of civil support teams [CST] and Reserve reconnaissance and decontamination platoons in support of homeland security requirements,” according to the program office.
This support includes all 57 CSTs, 81 decon and 27 recon platoons, equipping and refreshing nuclear disarmament teams, and developing the 20th Support Command mobile laboratories. Support, in most cases includes personal protective equipment as well as COTS and mission-specific equipment.
Technical challenges have been identified as the creation of a secure wireless communications capability and need to integrate a real time communication system for first responders with C2 and decision-support capabilities. Another issue is the need for to develop an advanced modeling and simulation tool better able to perform 3-D analysis; building and structure modeling; triangulate and predict contaminant cloud origination and trajectory; and integrate a disparate system of networks.
FORCE PROTECTION
The mission of the force protection systems program is to, “Provide affordable, modular, scaleable and supportable tactical force protection capabilities to forward deployed forces while simultaneously providing state-of-the-art physical security equipment to Army installations worldwide,” according to the JPEO CBD.
One side of this program looks at installation-based systems that have the larger scale view of the technology solutions. It is primarily focused on access control point systems, integrated commercial intrusion detection systems, mobile detection and response systems and smart gate technologies.
The other aspect of the program is focused on tactical-based systems including non-intrusion inspection devices, battlefield anti-intrusion systems, lighting kits and motion detectors, a family of integrated rapid response equipment and a tactical video surveillance system.
The program office notes several technical challenges to its objectives, including automated and payload issues with unmanned ground vehicles; capabilities for non-intrusive detection of high-yield explosives, nuclear materials and other contraband; reliability of and precision of automated access systems; as well as capabilities of long-range, man-portable video detection and assessment systems. ♦