Tech Firms Eye Juicy Contracts

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,58747,00.html

By Noah Shachtman 
May 08, 2003 

WASHINGTON -- The dinner bell hasn't rung yet. But technology
companies of every breed are scrambling for a place at the trough.

A $9 billion homeland security IT feast is set for the coming fiscal
year. And after lean times gnawing on scrawny private-sector
contracts, these firms can't wait to get their hands on new government
fat.

Pre-meal preparations are in full swing this week at the new
Washington Convention Center, where the Armed Forces Communications
and Electronics Association has assembled 10,000 military techies and
defense contractors for a three-day confab.

The best way to shore up the United States' defenses, they've
collectively decreed, is to boost communications, increase information
gathering and heighten collaboration between military and civil
authorities.

And in the center's fluorescent-lit exhibit halls, they've laid out
hundreds of handsomely priced tools for facilitating all that talk:  
secure cell phones, Humvee-mounted communications hubs, software for
directing ambulances and fire trucks like so many Predator drones.

Some of the executives here -- like the waxy, rumpled suits from
Boeing and Lockheed Martin -- have long histories of handling the
government's business and are looking to expand their ancient,
lucrative ties.

Others, like Paul Kirchoff, a tanned, crystal pendant-wearing vice
president of Austin, Texas, software firm United Devices, are
newcomers to the public sector.

But this dot-com refugee knows money when he smells it. "There's a
sense of urgency in the government space," Kirchoff said, slipping
quickly into business jargon. "And an ability to monetarily support
your business."

Paul Noble, CEO of Imtech, a New Jersey-based company that makes giant
video screens, certainly would agree.

"Until a year ago, we handled mostly private business -- trading
floors, telecom, energy trading," Noble said. "But Wall Street's on
hiatus. Telecom is in a terrible funk. Energy trading is much
besmirched. Most of what we do today is, loosely, homeland-security
focused."

His products are now being pitched as ideal displays for homeland
security command centers. And with customers like the New York Fire
Department and U.S. Strategic Command, Noble said he is expecting his
business to triple in the coming year, to somewhere "in the modest
eight figures."

Many other contractors haven't seen the same windfall -- yet.

Federal grants supposedly will enable state and local governments to
give out gobs of homeland security cash -- but not until the fall,
when the new fiscal year rolls around.

"It's been very slow," said Eric Adolphe, whose company, Optimus,
makes "command-and-control" software for ambulances and other
emergency vehicles. "We've been hearing about the money coming, the
money coming. But most jurisdictions haven't seen much money yet. And
what they have seen is more nuts and bolts. They have had to buy
gloves, oxygen tanks, ambulances and radios. They're not ready for IT
yet."

Local authorities in Washington, D.C., recently gave Adolphe a $1
million order to equip 600 ambulances with the system.

As for the national government, it will take time before the Homeland
Security Department -- stitched together in March from 22 different
federal agencies -- is ready to spend the $9 billion for homeland
security and cyberdefense that the Bush administration has requested.

"(Homeland security officials) are trying to get their acts together,"  
said Bruce De Witte, a Northrop Grumman product manager who is
pitching a new video surveillance software package. "Potentially,
there's a lot of budget, but they don't know where to spend it."

Making spending suggestions is what the Armed Forces Communications
and Electronics Association was designed to do. Headed by a retired
vice admiral, the organization was "formed after World War II to get
the whole military-industrial complex going," spokesperson Tobey
Jackson said.

These days, that's done by bringing top operators from the boardroom
and from the Pentagon to conferences like this one, blandly named
TechNet International 2003.

All sides are sure that communications, surveillance and information
technologies are the keys to preventing future terror attacks. The
feeling has only been heightened since Saddam Hussein's relatively
easy defeat in the recent war in Iraq.

"We used the same weapons platforms as we did in Desert Storm," noted
Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege Jr., who leads the Defense Information Systems
Agency. But thanks to enhanced communications systems, "we used them
much more effectively."

For example, the U.S. military's use of wideband satellite
communications increased by more than 3,000 percent during the second
Gulf War compared to the first, Raduege said. Iridium satellite phone
usage shot up 4,800 percent since Sept. 11. Traffic on the Pentagon's
data networks increased by 557 to 869 percent during a similar period.

In the past, the different military services barely spoke to one
another. During the recent conflict in Iraq, they were more tightly
coordinated than ever before. The trend will only continue in the
future: Over the next five years, according to Defense Department
projections, the military will spend $28 billion on "leveraging
information technology."

Now the Pentagon would like to bring so-called "first responders" --
emergency medical technicians, firefighters, police and the like --
into the loop, said Gen. Paul Kern, head of U.S. Army Materiel
Command, in his opening address at TechNet.

But these groups need the right equipment to be able to chat with each
other more effectively, Kern added. It's an order the gear makers in
his audience are all too happy to fulfill.



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