News From USJFCOM: Newsmaker Profile: Christopher Jackson

Newsmaker Profile: Christopher Jackson

Spy thrillers take readers into a world of international espionage, heroic adventure, and intelligence collection, all conducted against overwhelming odds in a matter of minutes. Despite this genre that portrays intelligence as spine-chilling drama with immediate results, real world intelligence professionals take more time, with less drama, but with lasting results in supporting the warfighter. Christopher Jackson, responsible for Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) transformation at USJFCOM, shares his views of ongoing efforts to optimize military ISR capabilities.

By Jennifer Colaizzi
USJFCOM Public Affairs

(NORFOLK, Va. - April 19, 2005) -- With the intent to optimize ISR capabilities in support of military operations, U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) works on intelligence collection, management, and dissemination initiatives that will provide joint warfighters with precise, timely, and relevant information.

As the chief of the intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) transformation division, Christopher Jackson and his staff work to make ISR-derived information as broadly available with minimal delay, and as user-friendly as possible.

Jackson has worked at the command more than 20 years - he has seen it change from the Atlantic Command (LANTCOM) to USJFCOM - and has been a part of the transition from a command with a geographic focus to the current emphasis on transforming how joint forces are trained, integrated, and provided new concepts and capabilities.

He recently discussed how the ISR transformation division works to solve intelligence information integration challenges and strategies for accomplishing goals in 2005 and beyond.

Q: As a member of an organization touted as the "transformation laboratory" of the military, what does the word "transformation" mean to you?
A: Transformation doesn't necessarily mean breaking current models and capabilities just for the sake of change - rather, I view it as a pathway to a recognized goal, which builds upon existing knowledge.

For example, I bought a home computer in 1995 and another one last summer in 2004. While the difference in the two computers was mind-boggling - with respect to capability, number of applications, and speed - the skills I acquired in setting up and using a computer in 1995 meant I could set up and use a new computer in 2004 in a fraction of the time - and take advantage of the improved technology in minutes rather than hours. Transformation is like that - a continual pathway, building upon the status quo, leading to better capabilities.

Our role in transformation is in understanding where emerging ISR technology is going; in developing the concepts which best exploit these technologies for warfighting; and in conducting analysis and experimentation leading to quantifiable evidence that these new capabilities deliver value.

Our critical path deliverable in ISR - leading to increased force protection and faster, more precise force application - is enhanced battlespace awareness of the adversary's disposition and options, driven by the information needs of the joint commander.

Q: In your role as ISR lead for the command, what do you bring to the joint warfighter out in the field?
A: I bring to the command an understanding of how the massive ISR investment by the services and the intelligence community can be shaped, both in size and architecture, to support the joint warfighter.

I bring to the service ISR programs and to their intelligence community counterparts awareness and an understanding of joint warfighter needs and expectations.

Further, I like to believe I've been effective in getting these programs to support joint requirements. A forcing function we've developed is to bring common interfaces and standards to service ISR programs, and to demonstrate how these commonalities can lead to a network-based intelligence architecture, where information is readily shared across the joint force. ISR programs tend to build things in a stovepipe; we're trying to change that.

Q: What is the biggest challenge you face in ensuring you deliver the best product possible?
A: Well, one is the propensity for the ISR program offices of the services and intelligence agencies to look at their particular problems as being unique, thus leading to a stovepipe mentality. It may be Navy requirements levied against a Navy program - but there are Army and Air Force equities which need to be considered as well - particularly as the operational employment of these service capabilities will be in a joint context. The program offices have to look at the ultimate goal -- to better support the warfighter, who will, by definition, be joint.

Two, thanks to popular fiction - where you have Tom Clancy-type scenarios where intelligence operatives use a joystick to manipulate satellites in orbit, and have total access to an infinite number of collection resources -- there's a misconception that the job of providing intelligence information is easier than it is.

There's a belief that resources, and therefore information, is being held back for some reason. Not true -there are an almost endless number of information requirements, and only a finite number of resources - which include both collection platforms and the analysts needed to make sense out of raw data.

Q: You work in a diverse organization, both in individual missions and people from other countries; how do these factors enhance or benefit your outlook and goals toward getting the mission accomplished?
A: There's real dedication throughout the command. Everyone sees we can no longer afford to do business as usual.

The nature of the threat has changed from the days when we used to track Soviet submarines in the Atlantic Ocean and Cuban troop rotations in Angola.

Now, our adversary is less constrained by doctrine and geography and is better able to exploit areas of vulnerability. We have to get into that mindset - which means getting many different points-of-view from personnel with different backgrounds and experiences. Thus, the diversity of the command plays a major role in helping to address today's threat.

On the coalition side, there's a lot of interest in what we are doing to maximize use of the high-demand, low-density assets alluded to earlier. In particular, our activity with the Multi-sensor Aerospace-ground Joint ISR Inter-operability Coalition (MAJIIC) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration has a lot of interest. MAJIIC is a horizontal fusion initiative with potential to provide coalition warfighters - which includes the U.S. -- with near real-time data that's been collected from U.S. and multi-national manned and unmanned air platforms.

We need to keep looking outside the command, to academia and industry, where there are inherent structural reasons to seek new ideas and ways of doing business. The (USJFCOM) chief of staff has been extremely active in looking outside the staff and going to industry and academia and asking "What are we (USJFCOM) doing right? What are we doing wrong?" That way we don't get fixated on a single solution, a single way of doing business.

Ideally, we should move towards a much more flexible model -- have a great idea on Thursday, test it on Friday, do the analysis over the weekend, and determine on Monday how the original idea was good, bad, or in-between. That means we need to be prepared to say on Monday, 'What was I thinking?'

Q: You've worked here 22 years, what have been some of your personal highlights or successes during that time?
A: I've been in same billet since June 1982 when I was hired to do collection planning and, as a collateral duty, was tasked to manage the Atlantic Theater's HUMINT (human-resource intelligence) programs. The highlight of the first few years was Operation Urgent Fury, when we sent troops into Grenada in 1983 - there was a lot we could have done better with respect to providing intelligence directly to the operational forces. In retrospect, we took advantage of what tools and capabilities we had at the time, then used lessons learned to help develop new ways and means of collecting, processing, and disseminating intelligence.

The result of that effort - which really was a precursor to our current focus on transformation - led to a much more capable, much more responsive intelligence architecture by the time we went into Haiti in 1994.

Another success during the 1980s was the integration of national technical intelligence sources and methods into the operational level of war.

Our current capability to access and task these sensors and sources is a quantum leap beyond how it was when I started working collection programs. It's no longer a "we vs. them" attitude, referring to national intelligence agencies and the operational use of intelligence; it is very much a coalition of ISR capabilities working towards the common goal of warfighter support.

We really have made great strides in being able to share intelligence-derived information with coalition partners - in large part because we have separated out sources and methods from the data provided by systems and programs.

We are moving to the paradigm where data is source-agnostic: it doesn't matter where the intelligence data comes from, only that it gets distributed horizontally and vertically with minimal delay - the goal being zero latency from collection to dissemination. That's what the operators want -- and their requirements are really the driver for what we do.

Q: Who or what do you see as your biggest motivator?
A: The forces in the field, in daily contact with the enemy. At the end of the day, I need to believe that someone's son or daughter came home alive because of my actions. Two of the folks in my division are fathers of soldiers who are currently in Iraq. If I fail in my job, it is going to be tougher on them.

Q: If you were able to speak to one of your customers right now, what would you ask?
A: What intelligence have you gotten? How has it helped you do your job? How could we make it better? What is the trade off? Do you need intelligence faster, even if it's not 100 percent accurate?

I suspect the answer would be: It doesn't have to be perfect intelligence, just give me what you have now then follow up with greater precision as the processing and analysis refines the initial ISR data.

Q: If your program were discontinued, what would that mean or what impact would that have on the joint warfighter?
A: We are the guys who are speaking for the joint warfighter. We've looked at the lessons learned from previous conflicts and what it means for ISR efforts and how that translates into specific actions that our folks can train against. We are unique in that we do all that here. We are the spokesmen for the joint warfighter, translating those needs to the ISR community. That's not happening anywhere else that I'm aware of.

Q: What is the next step for your division?
A: One: we are bringing in our industry partners up front, and ensuring they understand operational ISR requirements. Two, it gives me flexibility to pull in ISR subject matter expertise from industry for concept and architecture development on an "as needed" basis, and to release these contractor personnel once the specific task has been completed.

We've started moving towards this organizational model and I expect this movement will accelerate as we acquire better understanding of the end state for ISR transformation. I guess my most important job is to set clear and understandable goals, to find and hire the best people to meet these goals, and to clear away any obstacles they may encounter as they work towards the goals.

Q: What are some of your priorities for 2005?
A: First, we have what I call the "ISR Troika." The Joint Operational Test Bed System UAV program is being coupled with our two ISR ACTDs (advanced concept technology demonstration) -- MAJIIC (Multi-sensor Aerospace-ground Joint ISR Interoperability Coalition) and AJCN (Adaptive Joint C4ISR Node) -- to develop better, more precise, more integrated ISR information, and make it available faster and to more customers.

While not a program of record per se, the ISR Troika will help provide us the quantitative and qualitative data we need to drive ISR programs into a more operationally oriented structure.

Another priority is the Distributed Common Ground Station (DCGS) joint concept. Each service has its own variant of DCGS, which is the service ISR processing, exploitation, and dissemination capability.

Our intent is to develop business rules and procedures by which each individual service DCGS can share ISR data and processing requirements in support of the joint commander.

For example, if the Air Force DCGS and all its imagery interpreters are busy doing something else, then we should have the ability to have ISR aircraft - regardless of service -- downlink to, say, the Army's DCGS and get the data distributed to where it needs to go without delay.

The priority this year is to keep pressing on the idea that ISR data should be made available to whomever needs it, and in whatever format they need it in - regardless of source. The goal with the ISR Troika, is to open up the aperture on that concept - and to ensure that ownership of ISR sources and sensors is divorced from ISR data ownership.