Overview:

1. Prior efforts at establishing effective civil-military communications under stress have been variably successful, and Operation Iraqi Freedom might be one example of limited civil-military communication impairing the initiation of post-conflict reconstruction. Since such requirements have been uncommon but are now needed, this demonstration will establish one architecture for meeting a large subset of the civil-military coordination requirements discovered within the Humanitarian Operations Center during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The communications capability designed within Strong Angel II will span the range of desirable methods, while providing a comfortable, effective, and well-informed environment within which multilateral stabilization and reconstruction activity can take place.
2. For the past decade Civil-Military Operations Centers (CMOCs) have been established in conflict areas to help Coalition military, UN relief agencies, non-governmental agencies (NGOs), and host-nation citizens communicate more easily about issues of shared importance. In many cases the CMOCs have been quite successful, and in others they have been less so.
3. This demonstration is not to design a CMOC, but rather to specifically enlarge upon communications requirements noted in the Humanitarian Operations Center (HOC) within Kuwait City during the Iraq War. The HOC was a rather special CMOC, run by the Host Nation government as a humanitarian gesture at a cost of well over USD$1 million.
4. There were many successes within the HOC, but we noted problems as well. Since the coordinator for Strong Angel was one of the early members of the HOC, present when it was still awaiting floors and windows, he was privileged to watch the unfolding of a very successful enterprise, while at the same time recognizing how much we were not able to do prior to the inception of Phase Four, the reconstruction. In one opinion, communications shortfalls were an early hindrance to success. There were a number of reasons, but some were easily addressable. It was readily apparent during the war, for example, that more links were urgently needed within and between:
1. The members of ORHA, the administrative body scheduled to run Iraq after the war (ORHA, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance under General Jay Garner), since even talking within themselves was very difficult,
2. The Coalition militaries working with them,
3. Their ORHA staff members in DC,
4. The ORHA member specialty reference libraries in the US and UK,
5. The surrounding Kuwaiti infrastructure (ambulance services, public health laboratories, immigration visa office, airport security, Kuwaiti media, the Kuwaiti military),
6. The ORHA Iraqi counterparts soon to be asked to take a dominant role in governance,
7. The Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) members. The author was one.
8. The vehicles used for transporting members of ORHA and their military escorts,
9. The Arab media,
10. The Islamic leadership both inside and outside of Iraq,
11. and the academic and professional communities who might know something important that we might otherwise miss.
5. This demonstration will work at developing interim solutions for the problems seen in Iraq, with the ability to take the tested solutions into Iraq if requested. The problems that will be addressed include:
1. Translation for English-Arabic, Arabic-English, both spoken and written
2. Collaboration tools (development of an information-sharing mesh)
3. Communications suite (voice & data)
4. Cultural & religious awareness
5. Event documentation, emergent, urgent, and routine
6. Habitation & work accommodations
7. Imagery, mapping, and GIS overlays as required, with a rapid retrieval
8. Lessons Learned collection process inherent
9. Logistics management
10. Needs assessment & response tracking
11. Power, distributed and renewable
12. Reachback and reach-forward
13. Staffing to optimal capabilities.
14. and teaching modules for those forward and for those remote
6. The overarching goal in this demonstration is the formation of a comprehensive trans-lingual information mesh, using technology to link humans in simple, reliable, and collaborative ways.
1. The English-Arabic-English translation requirements will be met with support from the National Virtual Translation Center, MITRE MiTAP and Language Lab access, and Arabic-speaking participants familiar with the culture, but located remote from the site.
2. The "mesh" of subject matter experts will be established through a suite of collaboration tools developed for the purpose and able to provide a responsive and flexible conversation architecture across time zones.
3. Assessment forms will be optimized from the international Rapid Assessment Form now used in Iraq. They'll be printable in hard-copy, available in a very small HTML file, and addressable directly within the collaborative software. They will also be extremely flexible; we do not determine the fields.
4. The completed forms will be scanned by a software agent, then placed immediately and automatically into a database designed to include a redevelopment indicators template adapted by Professor Nancy Mock of Tulane from the World Bank development indicators for Iraq.
5. That database will be accessible through automated reports, generated as requested, with full searching capabilities on a reproducible template.
6. We'll have a comprehensive GIS capability inherent in the collaboration tool design, as well as a capable atlas with satellite overheads already present.
7. Information on local and regional opinions will be provided by the eTIRR program using TIDES technology out of DARPA.

*Any questions regarding any facet of the demonstration can be directed to the Officer Conducting the Demonstration (OCD), CDR Eric Rasmussen, Medical Corps, USN. Best contact access is EricRasmussen@carebridge.org or cell on 619-925-7701.