Joint Futures Lab flexes cross-domain translation capability during Trident Warrior 2007
U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Future’s Laboratory successfully demonstrated a language translation capability in the Cross Domain Collaborative Information Environment during the Navy’s annual Trident Warrior sea trial event, allowing servicemembers from many countries to communicate seamlessly in text messages. MCC(SW/AW) Chris Hoffpauir has the story.
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Narrated by MCC(SW/AW) Chris Hoffpauir, USJFCOM Public Affairs
Featuring Army Maj. Jim Jackson, Joint Futures Laboratory CDCIE software engineering team lead
Hoffpauir: U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Futures Laboratory successfully demonstrated the Cross Domain Collaborative Information Environment, or CDCIE, with language translation during the U.S. Navy’s Trident Warrior 2007 sea trial event.
Naval Network Warfare Command hosts the annual FORCEnet sea trial event to improve communication and speed vital information to warfighters. FORCEnet is the naval component of the Global Information Grid and the command and control component of the Navy's transformation plan, called Sea Power 21.
Army Maj. Jim Jackson, CDCIE’s software engineering team lead, said the event offered USJFCOM the opportunity to test the system in a shipboard tactical environment with collation partners. In addition to DoD and other U.S. civilian agencies, the militaries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and France participated.
Jackson said JFL used CDCIE to link USS Harry S. Truman, USS Oscar Austin and the Canadian Navy’s HMCS Charlottetown at sea with the Canadian Joint Operations Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the U.S. Second Fleet Maritime Operations Center in Norfolk, Va.
Jackson: We were able to test the ability to do real-time translation. So as someone types in a text message and sends it to a collation partner that speaks a different language, when the coalition partner receives the message they can automatically translate that message into their particular native language. You could have a French speaker, a Spanish speaker and an English speaker and they’re all going to receive the source language and their own particular language.
Hoffpauir: Jackson said the system currently supports the bidirectional translation of 13 different languages to and from English, as well as the unidirectional translation of another 13 languages to English. Languages include most of the Western European languages, as well as Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Korean, and Japanese.
He said the experiment showed that CDCIE is an effective collaboration tool in a maritime environment, where there’s often limited bandwidth available.
Jackson said CDCIE uses the DoD standard instant messaging protocol, called XMPP. The Defense Information Systems Agency currently deploys it on the department’s classified systems and will soon use it as part of its net-centric enterprise collaborative services.
Later this year the command will work with U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. Southern Command to connect the system with Australia’s Defence Secret Network.
For more on this and other ways USJFCOM supports the warfighter, visit us on the Web at www.jfcom.mil. For U.S. Joint Forces Command, I'm Chief Petty Officer Chris Hoffpauir.
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