Contact: Andrew CareagaPhone: 573-341-4328E-mail: [email protected]
NATO expansion could compound alliance's communications, IT problems
ROLLA, Mo. -- President George W. Bush's proposal to expand NATO to include Ukraine and other former parts of the Soviet Union could present the alliance with a new set of communications and information technology challenges, says a University of Missouri-Rolla professor who is working with NATO to meet those challenges.
Dr. Ann Miller, the Cynthia Tang Missouri Distinguished Professor of computer engineering at UMR, is a member of the NATO Research and Technology Organization's Information Systems Technology Panel. This group of information technology experts is working to make the communication systems of NATO's 19 member nations more compatible.
In a speech at Warsaw University in Poland on Friday, June 15, Bush said every European democracy -- including Ukraine and the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- should be permitted to join an expanded NATO. Such a move would compound issues Miller and her colleagues already are trying to address with former Soviet Bloc nations, where information technology needed for military operations is antiquated compared to western standards.
"Not only is there a technology gap, but even with sophisticated systems, there are incompatibility issues," Miller says. "Just as there are different standards for commercial cellular phones around the world, there are different protocols and standards for military communication systems."
A common communications mechanism is not the only challenge facing the organization, Miller says. As chair of the NATO Task Group on Validation, Verification and Certification of Embedded Systems, she leads the effort to improve the reliability of all manner of systems -- everything from aircraft control systems to encryption technologies.
The group's biggest challenge comes in trying to integrate "off-the-shelf" commercial systems into military applications. These components are needed in order to field systems in a timely manner, but they can sometimes have unintended consequences, Miller says. "We're trying to determine the best practical methods to make a system as reliable as possible, given time and budget constraints," she says.
The panel has addressed the critical issues of information assurance and interoperability on several occasions in recent years -- at meetings in Washington, D.C., NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and most recently at a meeting in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, June 4-6. "We are very customer-conscious, so our meetings and conferences include both military and technologists," Miller says.
An expert in satellite communications, Miller was the Navy's deputy assistant secretary for command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, electronic warfare and space. She was appointed to the NATO effort while with the Navy, and was asked to continue her involvement after joining UMR. She was appointed chair of the Task Group on Validation, Verification and Certification of Embedded Systems in October 1999.
Miller's work with NATO reflects her interest in large-scale communications systems. She's always been interested in attacking big problems.
"They are exciting problems to work on," she says. "I love to tackle a big problem and break it down into smaller components which we can solve. Working with actual systems is also more rewarding to me. Knowing that someone is using the system or will do so in the near future makes the task more meaningful.
"Just as NATO's peacekeeping activities are coalitions of various member countries, technologists from the NATO nations form teams to improve critical systems. We have a multinational team of talented information technology gurus, and it is exciting to be a part of it."
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