INTERVIEW: Col. Michael C. Albano, Marine Corps career techie

ALBANO: It's going well. I just left the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force last summer, where it's in use. There are some problems with interoperability in a joint environment.We want to use the Defense Information Systems Agency's Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment to overcome the problems.ALBANO: It's not primarily a Navy problem, and I wouldn't say they are problems, but challenges. At the Marine Corps, because of the nature of what we do, we have to be interoperable and joint.We are very strong supporters of DISA and the Global Command and Control System because we need more cooperation and interoperability.I'm a firm believer in jointness wherever we can do it. We usually rely on the Army to cover our left and right flanks and for sustained ground coverage.The reality is that Unix-based systems are very powerful; Windows-based systems are more user-friendly but not as powerful. There are interoperability problems for applications within Unix systems, as well as from Unix to Windows.Although we're no longer developing Unix command and control applications in the Marines, we have a good mix of computers running Unix and Windows. And things aren't always what they seem. What's behind a Windows-based system in many cases is a Unix server.My Corps systems must work with DISA's Global Command and Control System, which is based on SunSoft Solaris, and with the Navy's GCCS-Maritime, which is based on Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX.ALBANO: This is just an opinion, but I would say the ideal situation would be to use an Iridium-like system that would have the capability to go anywhere you want at any speed and would allow you to pass data, including video.Right now, we're working with single-channel radios. An enhanced position location reporting system (EPLARS) is a reasonable solution to a problem we haven't solved. We need a wide-band solution for units on the move. EPLARS is an interim step until we get what we need.ALBANO: I think there's no question that we in the Defense Department are getting more comfortable with using video and data in addition to voice. Commanding officers are more comfortable with using e-mail now than with picking up the phone. It's easy, and it's fire and forget.ALBANO: I think it's great. Before, infantry officers usually were the heads, and it didn't work as well. Brig. Gen. Shea is as qualified with operational communications as anyone in the Marine Corps.ALBANO: The reality of life is that Marines who sit in on joint meetings are usually junior in rank to the other service people in the meetings. But they usually hold their own. Brig. Gen. Shea's been able to hold his own, and he's been very effective. He's one of the few one-stars who gets invited to the Corps' three-star off-site meeting, when they discuss their plans.ALBANO: People say that the phrase 'dumb Marine' is redundant, and we laugh at that. But go visit the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force or the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, and then tell me if you think the Marines are technically backward.We have a pretty austere budget. A high percentage of it, though, goes to C4I. The way the Marine Corps operates, our necessity is to be mobile and get data out to the individual Marines.Having said that, the vast number of infantry soldiers carry rifles rather than computers. A Marine can't be looking down at a computer while also looking out through a rifle scope. It's also difficult to carry a computer when you're already carrying a heavy load.There would also be a geometric increase in bandwidth requirements, as well as potential security problems, if we had universal e-mail on deployment and gave computers to everyone. I think we need to look at the ergonomics of computers. We need systems that allow a Marine to use it while still having his finger on the trigger.ALBANO: It's easy for us. The operating forces are just across the railroad tracks at Camp Pendleton. I've got 25 years' worth of friends in the Corps. We've got a lot of Marines here.Fifty percent of our on-board strength, half of the activity's 400 personnel, are Marines'and many of them came here after being with operating forces. ALBANO: We have a very good, very healthy budget to support our program managers. I don't think my boss would like it if I released the details.Tooth to tail, when we talk about our budget, we talk about doing things. We get our funding from the Marine Corps Systems Command. The money is spent more on doing things than building infrastructure.ALBANO: We had some problems when the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command headquarters moved to San Diego [in 1997]. We saw a migration of people to SPAWAR for a time to fill the command's billets.I would define that as an event out of the norm because they had just moved here, and they do some similar things to what we do.Now the doors are going both ways, with people coming from the civilian sector to the military [and vice versa]. I think that's very healthy.ALBANO: I feel proud that the Marine Corps Tactical Software Support Activity was selected by the Systems Command to test and evaluate the integration and interoperability of Corps systems. We're testing the C4I architecture to see how well it works. We're doing diagnostics work with the infrastructure, using commercial products and government off-the-shelf network diagnostic tools.