Public Intelligence

Nearly two years ago Public Intelligence posted the U.S. Army Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS A) Commander’s Handbook.  Representatives of the project, including a Lieutenant Colonel at Fort Huachuca, later demanded its removal.  The document was not removed.

An hypothetical overview of the DCGS-A system in operation from the Commander's Handbook.

Army’s faulty computer system hurts operations (Politico):

The Army’s $2.7 billion computing system designed to share real-time intelligence with troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq has hurt, rather than helped, efforts to fight insurgents because it doesn’t work properly, several analysts who have used the system say.

The analysts’ comments mirror concerns raised by the top military intelligence officer in Afghanistan and members of Congress over the past two years in an unsuccessful bid to get the Army to consider alternatives to its portion of the military’s Distributed Common Ground System, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

The Army system, known by the acronym DCGS-A, is a cloud-based computing network designed to collect information from multiple sources for real-time analysis that quickly puts usable intelligence in the hands of battlefield commanders. For example, a commander searching for an insurgent leader would benefit from being able to collect reports of that leader’s location and plot them on a map to make tracking easier.

But the analysts say DCGS-A was unable to perform simple analytical tasks. The system’s search tool made finding the reports difficult, and the software used to map the information was not compatible with the search software.

“You couldn’t share the data,” said one former Army intelligence officer who worked in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There were also problems with the hardware, with the system being prone to crashes and frequently going off-line, he and another former Army intelligence officer now working as a contractor in Afghanistan said.

“The laptops are turned on, but it doesn’t work,” the second former officer said. “There’s a lot of bugs in the workflow.”

The analysts, who spoke on condition their names not be used, said problems with the DCGS-A system led Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, the top military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, to write a July 2, 2010, memo citing the urgent need for a new system to analyze the vast amounts of intelligence being collected.

“Analysts cannot provide their commanders a full understanding of the operational environment. Without the full understanding of the enemy and human terrain, our operations are not as successful as they could be,” Flynn wrote in the memo obtained by POLITICO. “This shortfall translates into operational opportunities missed and lives lost.”

 

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