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 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.
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By MCC(SW/AW) Chris Hoffpauir
USJFCOM Public Affairs
(SUFFOLK, Va. – May 4, 2007) -– U.S. Joint Forces Command’s (USJFCOM) Joint Futures Laboratory (JFL) successfully demonstrated the Cross Domain Collaborative Information Environment (CDCIE) with language translation during the U.S. Navy’s Trident Warrior 2007 (TW07) sea trial event.
Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM) hosts the annual FORCEnet sea trial event to improve communication and speed vital information to warfighters. FORCEnet is the naval integration and alignment effort to make net-centric warfare an operational reality. It is the naval component of the Global Information Grid and the command and control component of Sea Power 21.
Army Maj. Jim Jackson, CDCIE’s software engineering team lead, said TW07 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 in the event.
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.
The environment provided a computer chat capability across both classified and unclassified security domains with real-time language translation, while linking as many as eight nodes at a time.
"This is moving the ball down the field in getting to that state where we have a free flow of information safely and securely between our coalition partners," Jackson said. "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 all in the same (chat) room and they’re all going to receive the source language and their own particular language."
He 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.
Jackson said the experiment showed that CDCIE is an effective collaboration tool in a maritime environment, where there’s often limited bandwidth available. He said they also tested a tool for sharing graphic information.
"We tested our whiteboarding tool, which allows you to drop an image onto a canvas and allow anyone in the room to draw on it," Jackson said. "We found the system works even when there are conditions for disconnected links."
Jackson said the next step includes sending graphic information across domains and a Web service gateway device that will allow applications to transmit structured, or XML, data between classification domains.
"This is a big win, because if you can move textual data between domains you’ve solved a minimal superset of all these problems that are out there. It’s a first step in achieving seamless movement of information between classification domains," Jackson said.
"Web services are very specific standards that enable a Web service consumer to talk to a Web service producer, or a client talking to a server," Jackson said. "It allows you to talk to coalition partners when you don’t have access to a coalition network, or vice-versa."
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.
"The use of this standard message protocol allows us to interoperate with a wide variety of systems," he said.
Jackson said that 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.
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