Marine Corps deputy CIO asks for help, outlines C2 strategy

The Marine Corps is looking to undertake a series of initiatives related to its technology and IT posture. But it can’t undertake many of these priorities alone, so Kenneth Bible, the service’s deputy chief information officer, has identified three areas where industry can help.

The first is reliance on en-route command and control, he said at the annual MilCom conference in Baltimore, Maryland, on Nov. 1. He noted that experiments from the aviation community have pushed the tactical picture into the cab of an MV-22 Osprey, but he asked how that could be taken a step further to enhance planning and synchronization with ground forces.

Bible also described help in the way of mobility. There are Marines conducting security cooperation activity in a benign environment, suddenly being called to move forward into a contested environment, Bible said as an example. Is it possible to use or leverage commercial technologies or commercial gear, he asked, so Marines aren’t taking a very expensive, military-grade asset and putting it in that noncombat environment? And once they arrive at a more contested environment, can they integrate with the war fighting network? "We should be able to do that," he said.

Lastly, he asked for assistance with satellite communications, specifically the very small aperture terminal (VSAT), which he called a mainstay for the Marines Corps over the last decade and a half. But that gear is aging and experiencing increased maintenance issues, he said. Bible wondered what industry could offer Marines to replace light, medium and heavy satellite communications in support of battalions or divisions.

Bible also highlighted a new command and control (C2) strategy for the Marine Corps, issued down from Brig. Gen. Dennis Crall, the service’s CIO. Bible said that following the recently published Marine Corps Operating Concept, there are frameworks for a C2 strategy that will nest well with the operating concept.

There are three goals within the C2 strategy, Bible noted, the first being transforming the network. The beginning step to transforming the network is unifying it, he said. The Marine Corps was part of the Navy-Marine Corps intranet (NMCI) for over a decade, Bible said, and when the next-generation enterprise network (NGEN) contract came into place, the operating model for the Marine Corps was government-owned, government-operated. Going forward, a new contract should be capable of supporting both these business models, he said.

NMCI didn’t support the deploying capability needed by the Marine Corps. A lot of network enclaves split off from NMCI, and Bible said he's spent the last three and a half years working with Marine Corps Systems Command to stitch the enclaves back together and create a common design. Standardization is going to be critical for the Marines going forward, he noted.

The vision for the network, according to Bible, is that a young Marine should be able to take a tablet off the desktop, put it in the back of that MV-22 and go downrange – fully supportive of that mobile, en-route concept, Bible continued.​

Bible's second goal is to transforming the workforce. This is possible, he said, through modernizing communications occupational fields. One of the challenges the service will face — and this is where industry can help, he said — is in training personnel. Bible said the Marine Corps doesn't have the time or resources to send Marines to school for four weeks.

Additionally, the Marine Corps writ large has been modernizing the entirety of its force with an initiative called Force 2025, Bible said. A major feature, which he noted is pre-decisional, is integrating information warfare into the Marine Air-Ground Task Force. Information operations, as defined by the Defense Department, include the "integrated employment, during military operations, of information-related capabilities in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision-making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own."

The third goal as part of a C2 strategy is to gain greater stewardship over money spent on IT. There has been a process for several years based in statute for the CIOs to review all IT procurement, Bible explained. It was very bureaucratic regarding the buys, he noted. What the service has been able to do is identify millions of dollars of duplicate IT procurement and send the organization to an enterprise resource and apply them to a greater purpose, he said.