AC Summer 08 WIN-T Online - United States Army Signal Center of ...

WIN–T Personnel
Requirements
By MAJ Alprentice “Al” Smith and
John Plotts
In the current operational
environment, the Signal Regiment
enables the warfighting function
command and control by installing,
operating, and maintaining Army
communications networks and
information services. Command and
control of Army and Joint forces will
require a seamless communications
network that is robust and capable
of supporting full spectrum operations.
The military occupational
specialty structure and the training
provided to our Soldiers is the
critical factor in providing this
indispensible capability.
Many of the readers of this
article will remember Mobile
Subscriber Equipment. It was a
communications system that provided
many years of good service,
but Operation Iraqi Freedom proved
that our combat forces needed much
more capability not the least of
which is command and control onthe-move
or C2OTM. In an unprecedented
acquisition, the Army
purchased what we then called JNN
– Joint Network Node – which
provided a satellite based at-thequick-halt
capability and moved the
Army closer to C2OTM.
In an amazing display of
agility, the Army was able to design,
purchase, and field our first JNN in
about six months. In fact, we fielded
the equipment so fast that we
received Headquarters Department
of the Army approval for a new
MOS (25N) to install, operate, and
maintain this equipment after it was
fielded.
New Equipment Training
picked up the slack initially and now
we have a steady stream of 25N
Soldiers generated by our Advanced
Individual Training courses at Fort
Gordon. As many of you know, this
Command and control
of Army and Joint
forces will require a
seamless communications
network that is
robust and capable of
supporting full spectrum
operations. The
military occupational
specialty structure and
the training provided to
our Soldiers is the critical
factor in providing
this indispensible capability.
transition created an imbalance in
the inventory of Soldiers in certain
MOSs that is only now starting to
rebalance.
Today, JNN is part of the WIN-
T program called WIN-T Increment
1. The WIN-T program goes well
beyond JNN and brings many more
capabilities to the force. Although
JNN was just the first glimpse of
what WIN-T would look like, we
designed the 25N not only for JNN,
but so that this MOS could evolve
along with the evolution of the WIN-
T program. WIN-T is a high-speed
and high capacity backbone communications
network. It will be focused
on moving information in a manner
that supports commanders, staffs,
functional units, and capabilitiesbased
formations – all mobile, agile,
lethal, sustainable, and deployable.
C2OTM will be fully realized in later
increments of WIN-T. If this sounds
like some tremendous capability, it
is, but WIN-T will not meet the
needs of the commander without
well-trained Soldiers and leaders of
the Signal Regiment.
As the Signal Regiment continues
to develop the hardware and
equipment required to employ the
various increments of the WIN-T
program, the Regiment, through the
Office Chief of Signal, is also determining
the personnel requirements.
These requirements are being
analyzed in terms of the five Regimental
core competencies that were
published in an earlier article,
Summer 2007 edition of the Army
Communicator, and our initial focus is
on the three competencies that
comprise the critical components of
network operations. Signal Soldiers
must be able to execute Enterprise
Systems Management, or said
another way, to install, operate, and
maintain WIN-T systems.
Our people also need to be
competent in Information Dissemination
Management and Content
Staging. This competency goes to the
heart of how we technically enable
having the right information available
at the right time and at the right
place. And finally, our Soldiers must
be able to exercise the core competency
of Information Assurance and
Computer Network Defense or in
layman’s terms, protect our networks.
As you can imagine, there is a
definitive process we must use to
identify personnel requirements for
emerging technologies. OCOS is
working closely with the materiel
developers, trainers, and Program
Managers in the review of developmental
task analysis reports and
draft training materials for WIN-T
configuration items to determine
skill sets and knowledge requirements.
This analysis is then crosswalked
to existing officer areas of
concentrations and warrant and
enlisted MOSs to develop the
personnel structure. Since many of
Army Communicator 67