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 Liveblogging: Noble Resolve 2007
MCC(SW/AW) Chris Hoffpauir from U.S . Joint Forces Command Public Affairs blogged live all day April 25 from Noble Resolve 2007, the first in the command's series of experiments examining ways to enhance homeland defense and improve military support to civil authorities both before and after natural and man-made disasters. The experiment brings together numerous partners at the federal level, such as the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Northern Command, and at the state level, such as the commonwealth of Virginia.
Editor's note: USJFCOM Public Affairs provided an Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed for this liveblog all day. This allowed readers to track Chief Hoffpauir's entries in real time as they are posted. Click here to add this feed to your RSS reader. To learn more about RSS and other feeds USJFCOM offers, click here.
9 a.m. – An Overview of Noble Resolve 2007
I'm here in U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Futures Laboratory in Suffolk, Va., for the day observing the command's Noble Resolve 2007 experiment.
This is the first in a new series of experiments the command's pursuing to find better ways to share information, enhance homeland defense and improve military support to civil authorities in crisis situations.
Before the start of the day's events, I spoke briefly with Steve Ferrell, a senior concept developer at the lab. A retired Army brigadier general, Ferrell's role in Noble Resolve is to help maintain the participant's focus on achieving the experiment's objectives. The experiment's participants range from federal agencies and multinational partners to state and local governments and academic institutions.
"One of the main objectives of this experiment is looking at how effectively we are sharing information," Ferrell said. "What are the roadblocks to that? What problems exist? Then we can develop solutions and better ways of communicating across these levels."
The day's first brief described one way the commonwealth of Virginia is working to improve communication – its Fusion Center at the Virginia State Police Headquarters in Richmond.
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| A participant in Noble Resolve 2007 looks at a screen showing the linkages between the Virginia Fusion Center and other organizations. (Click on this official photo by Air Force Staff Sgt. Joe Laws to download a high-quality version.) |
11 a.m – The Virginia Fusion Center
Virginia's General Assembly passed legislation in 2005 that required the governor to establish a multi-agency intelligence center to receive and coordinate information related to terrorism and other hazards.
The result is the Virginia Fusion Center, located in the Virginia State Police Combined Headquarters in suburban Richmond. The center is run by the department's Criminal Intelligence Division, which provides criminal intelligence and technical support to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.
The center's role in Noble Resolve is to coordinate the flow of information during Virginia's response to the scenario and allow the various federal, state and local entities involved to get a clear picture of what's happening.
I spoke with Virginia State Police First Sgt. Lee Miller, who manages the center's day-to-day operations. He said the purpose is to fuse together key resources, including the private sector, to exchange information.
"We basically fuse together all the information regarding hazards and threats to the commonwealth and get it to our different partners," Miller said.
Those partners include Virginia's Department of Fire Programs and Department of Health. Other state and local agencies connect to the Fusion Center from their own offices, feeding up-to-date information into the system.
Miller said that while some parts of the center are classified, the headquarters is open to the public and information is available on the Virginia State Police Web site, http://www.vsp.state.va.us. He also invited the public to report criminal and terrorist activity by calling the Virginia State Police hotline at 1-877-4VA-TIPS.
12:30 p.m. – How the Department of Homeland Security fits
After grabbing a quick lunch, I had the opportunity to speak with Randall Zeller, director for interagency coordination in the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, as he toured the JFL.
He said DHS hopes to gain an understanding of the capabilities Noble Resolve's participants have and how the department can help to improve interoperability across the board.
"My job is coordination of interagency contacts, to get DHS and other agencies communicating better," Zeller said. "We're going to visit the Virginia Fusion Center tomorrow morning to see it from that side and get a feel for what the state has for equipment, how it ties into our command center in Washington, and how those links work.
"We're trying to learn if the capability gaps we've identified for DHS are valid, or are there other areas we should be paying attention to. Do we have the interoperability with the states that we desire? Is it effective? Are there improvements that we need to make? Those are some of the things we want to find out."
Zeller said that other states have also established fusion center as well, making interoperability even more critical. He said DHS should have a hand in ensuring those centers have adequate capabilities to work with the various federal agencies that would respond in a crisis.
"We're finding that a DHS role in coming up with standards and then inspecting to those standards for fusion centers might be appropriate," Zeller said.
He said the experiment is an excellent opportunity to see how interoperable the participants are, where any deficiencies in their capabilities are, and what DHS can do to improve its ability to connect.
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| Canada is among the countries with representatives at Noble Resolve. (Click on this official photo by Air Force Staff Sgt. Joe Laws for a high quality version) |
2 p.m. – The multinational element
Noble Resolve's scenario involves multiple vignettes that run the gamut from a hurricane moving up the East Coast, to suspect vessel delivering a nuclear weapon to a U.S. port. I just listened to Finnish naval officer give the participants an update on the scenario, which involves a ship with suspect cargo sailing toward the United States.
I've already written about how federal, state and local government agencies are working to improve communication in the event of a crisis, now I'll explain what the experiment's multinational partners are contributing.
The problem the Finnish officer was telling us about has to do with how countries work together to ensure the safety of their ports and communicate with each other when they identify threats.
I spoke briefly with Canadian Navy Cmdr. Jean-Luc DeVillers, one of Noble Resolve's multinational participants, about the concept called maritime domain awareness.
"I think what's important is that because of the United States' has interests across the world, they need to figure out how other nations do this business of maritime domain awareness and how they can fit in to gather information and bring that into their own knowledge base," DeVillers said.
He explained that each nation has relationships with other nations and with the shipping companies that operate in their waters. A company might have more trust of a particular country than with another, either because it's based there or because of a longstanding relationship. He said that maritime domain awareness is about nations sharing information so they can make informed decisions about handling shipping entering their ports.
"Maritime domain awareness is a global problem that involves shipping from around the world," he said. "A ship entering Norfolk will come from many countries overseas before it gets to here. Any one of those ten thousand containers onboard could bring a problem that could have been spotted by a nation along the way before it gets here.
"It's all about the shipping companies and the customs agencies in each nation," DeVillers said. "For example, there's a process for a cursory screening for containers being preloaded to go to the U.S., but that ship carries thousands of other containers that are not destined here, so there's no screening on those containers before they come into the port of Virginia.
"It might be on its way to another country, but it might be sitting here for three or four days and it's suspect. It could carry anything."
He said that sharing information about the cargo, even though its final destination might be elsewhere, is essential. He said that the goal in Noble Resolve is to establish those relationships and improve communication.
3 p.m -- What if?
Every "what if" becomes a reality in the make believe world of Noble Resolve's scenario.
In that world, despite the best efforts of our multinational partners, a ship managed to bring a nuclear weapon into the Norfolk, Va., setting the stage for how local authorities would manage the situation.
To make matters worse, that hurricane I mentioned earlier is moving up the North Carolina coast and is bearing down on the region. A cloud of locusts wouldn't be a big surprise at this point.
Here in the real world, I spoke with Virginia Port Authority Police Lt. William Revell about the port's role in the experiment.
"We're looking at how we'd communicate with different organizations, both state and federal, in the event of an emergency," Revell said. "Who we contact, who contacts us, and how the information flows from one entity to another."
Revell said that should a catastrophic event occur at one of the port's terminals, the port authority would work with the Virginia State Police and the Virginia Fusion Center in Richmond, the U.S. Coast Guard, local police and fire departments, and in the case of a terrorist act, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
"We'd also talk to the civilians on our ports to advise them of anything they'd need to know to take appropriate action," he said.
Revell said he's finding the ability to connect with other organizations during the experiment to be a valuable experience.
"We're finding out how our information connects with other organizations. They're finding out what our access needs are and we're finding out what their needs are. We're building relationships and understanding about how other agencies operate.
"So far everything we're doing seems to be matching up pretty well with what other folks need, but we'll review our procedures based on what we learn here," Revell said. "These cultures are always in flux. The fusion center and how we operate with them is fairly new, and there're new things coming up at the federal level that we'll work with."
4:10 p.m. – Connecting the dots
One way USJFCOM is drawing all of Noble Resolve's participants together is by using modeling and simulation (M&S) to create that fictional world where everything that can go wrong does.
The command is using several tools, and a lot of computing power, to make that happen. I spoke with Mike Waterman, one of Noble Resolve's M&S leads, to get an idea of what's involved in facilitating an event with so many players and how his team keeps everything straight.
"We're bringing together a suite of tools and capabilities that show how all the different agencies can tie their databases together into one common operating picture that everyone can look at to see what's going on," Waterman said.
"Some of these tools focus on organizing different types of information, while others focus on how that information passes between different entities and different levels of government."
He said one tool called Palanterra, developed by the National Geospatial Agency, generates detailed maps with overlays that show the infrastructure of the area and all the elements of the experiment. The software generates those maps from the participants' databases and with information from other sources, such as satellites and shipboard data.
"What we're doing for this first Noble Resolve experiment is showing the capability and what we can do for future experiments in the series," Waterman said. "This is more of a demonstration of what we can provide with M&S for the future."
He said another tool the command is providing is call the Cross-Domain Collaborative Information Environment, which allows information to pass between different classification systems so federal agencies can easily share information with state, local and appropriate non-governmental organizations more efficiently.
5 p.m. – Wrap up
I spoke to Navy Capt. John M. Kersh, Jr., who heads J9's Joint Context and Homeland Defense Department, as Noble Resolve 2007 wrapped up its second day.
He said that the issue of interoperable technology isn't as big an issue as many expected.
"What we're finding so far is that most of what we're working through is not technology-related, it's really sorting out the policy that allows different organizations to talk," Kersh said. "Which is interesting because you'd think this would be focused on technology.
"We've got lots of technology. The problem is picking one and putting a standard in place that allows you to share information. We're definitely discovering a lot of things as we go and we're seeing that we have more work to do."
That wraps up today's live blog. For more information about how USJFCOM is supporting homeland security, continue to visit us on the Web. You can also receive updates by subscribing to our RSS and podcast feeds.
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