GPS Tracking Earns Respect
Insite’s geoOps Force Tracking System (FTS) has been certified by the National Security Agency (NSA) for processing information up to and including NATO RESTRICTED.
Developed in collaboration with WinMagic, geoOps FTS will enable multi-national forces to operate together in providing Friendly Force Tracking (FFT) in the operational military environment. This FFT capability provides commanders at all levels with exceptional situational awareness and the ability to more effectively conduct, command, and control operational maneuvers. geoOps FTS significantly enhances warfighters’ Situational Awareness, facilitating Joint Maneuver, Logistical Support, Force Multiplication, improved Joint Synchronization and Force Protection. By seamlessly integrating mission planning, transportation control, dispatching, text messaging and movement monitoring in near real time, geoOps increases troop safety by expediting the identification of friendly versus enemy forces to help prevent fratricide or “blue-on-blue” conflict…. Full article here:
It’s always nice to see friends succeed and it’s really great to see a breakthrough in the logjam of communications and computer security. To the average techie this is just another news release, but to those of us who have been in the field of secure communications and securing computer data for many years, there’s a real turn around here.
Less than 5 years ago, when I was with the US government, I took the predecessor of this system to NSA (National Security Agency) for certification and was literally laughed out the door. Some of the words used are possibly still sensitive or classified, but a true summary of NSA’s response was, “we don’t deal with toys like this.”
Well this “toy”, built from commercial off the shelf computing products and a little US and Canadian ingenuity can win a war. For sure it can make wars more efficient and lest costly in a big way. I’ve been with experienced commanders when they first get access to a system that let’s them see their mobile forces, and talk to them, in near-real time. Their faces light up and their tactical brain shifts into overdrive with an almost audible “click”. It’s no exaggeration that 20 vehicles in the field with real-time mapping and direct communication … commander to troops … is easily the equivalent of 30 or 40 without position and communication services. The fly in the ointment has always been a reliable and certifiable means to encrypt both the data passing from command center to vehicle and the data on the mobile terminals in the vehicles … can’t very well fight a war if one guy has to stay behind and guard the computer. This is some great news and my hat’s off to Insite, WinMagic, EMS Technologies and my good friends at the NSA.
