Homeland Defence Relies On Modern Communications Systems

Sigurd Hess

Germany and for that matter all member states of the European Union (EU) are in danger. How well are we prepared to meet the challenges of terrorism? After 9/11, when the dust had settled over the battle fields of lower Manhattan and Washington, DC many political promises were made to improve and modernize our homeland defences. After 3/11, when the debris of the train explosions in Madrid were cleared, new promises for improved and modernized homeland defences could be heard. On closer scrutiny these new promises in many cases turn out to be old requirements, which remain unsatisfied since they were first stated some years ago.
Homeland Defence concerns and involves many public and private security and rescue services. In Germany these range from fire fighting units and health care and rescue services at the communal level to law enforcement, police and counter-espionage at the state level to law enforcement, border police, civil defence and disaster protection, customs, armed forces, intelligence and counter-intelligence at the federal level. In addition many important non-governmental organisations have to be included here. Regardless of the complex organisational structure and the legal prerogatives the efficiency of these security services depends on modern command and control and communications systems and their interoperability, be it domestically or European-wide.
The latest comprehensive test for German homeland security in its broadest sense occurred during the flooding disasters at the Oder and Elbe river plains in August 2002. Thereafter a commission installed by the state government of Saxony and chaired by General (GE A ret.) Hans-Peter von Kirchbach investigated the crisis management and provided a straightforward report in December 2002. Among the many structural, personnel and functional problems the report clearly identified the lack of a modern, digital, encrypted and mobile police communication system as a major deficiency.
For many years, as a matter of fact for about a decade, the state and federal ministers of the interior discussed the introduction of a modern police communication system without much concrete results. This planned communication system of the domestic security forces is called BOS in the abbreviated German form. One overarching requirement was not only the interoperability to the communications systems of other security and rescue-oriented services, but to those of other European countries as well. In Europe three system designs emerged and compete against each other. The time-multiplex system TETRA was developed according to a European standard but has so far no successful implementation to show for. The frequency-multiplex system TETRAPOL has originally been developed for the French police. In the mean time it has also been installed by the security forces of Switzerland, Romania, Slovakia and of the Czech Republic. The British Vodafone Company has recently proposed GSM-BOS as a cheaper system based on the GSM-standard for public mobile communications. After decade-long procrastination it has now been announced by the conference of the interior ministers that the bidding process for the German BOS should commence with an initial step in the third quarter of this year.
This is not the only example of a sluggish development of a much needed communications system. With much fanfare the minister of defence announced in 1999 the start of the Herculean project to modernize the IT-landscape of the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces. Four pilot projects formed what would later be called the Hercules-Project. The largest part concerned the introduction of an area-wide digital network together with its local extensions, the garrison networks and the required central network control. Because of this project all existing modernisation attempts to convert the age-old and museum-worthy analogue telephone network of the armed forces into a digital network were stopped in 1999. It took until 2001 to get the bidding process for the Herkules-Project going. After several time extensions only two competing consortia remained. In late 2002 the ISIC 21 consortia (CSC Ploenske, EADS and MobilCom) was declared compliant and the due diligence negotiations started. Since then the giant Hercules is fast asleep and has so far not been reawakened. The armed forces have in large parts still to rely on analogue networks and continue to spend much money to maintain and operate obsolete equipment. The legal distinction between external and domestic security gets blurred when considering terrorist attacks. On the one hand domestic operations of the armed forces are restricted to the protection of their garrisons and bases and (on demand by civilian state authorities only) to disaster control and humanitarian aid. On the other hand, should the terrorists strike with a larger scale attack, inevitably the armed forces will be called upon to assist. Therefore both the police and the Bundeswehr communications systems would urgently be needed to provide a modern, secure, flexible and interoperable network for all of the domestic security services. Regrettably nobody seems to care much about the lack of political leadership and urgency to accelerate their development. Not even the spectre of the required upgraded security during the Soccer World Championship in 2006 seems to alarm the responsible politicians.
In the aftermath of the many terrorist attacks in Europe and North Africa the EU summit of the head of states on 25/26 March in Brussels defined several goals for the coordination and interaction of police, law enforcement and intelligence services and their data and information exchange. If Germany intends to comply with these goals the digital networks for the police and the armed forces are indispensable. When will this requirement translate into speedy action?

Responses concerning this editorial should be sent to SigurdHess@compuserve.com

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