February 17, 2000
Contact: Andrew Careaga
573-341-4328
[email protected]
PROFESSOR HELPS NATO OVERCOME COMMUNICATIONS PROBLEMS
NATO's expansion to include former Soviet Bloc nations, where information technology needed for military operations is antiquated compared to western standards, presents the organization with a new set of communications challenges, says a University of Missouri-Rolla professor working with NATO to overcome those challenges.
Dr. Ann Miller, the Cynthia Tang Missouri Distinguished Professor of computer engineering at UMR, is a member of the NATO Research and Technology Agency's Information Systems Technology Panel. This group of information technology experts is working to make the communication systems of NATO's 19 member nations more compatible.
The quality of information systems used by some NATO members -- particularly the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland -- lags far behind the systems in use by the U.S. military, Miller says. "Some countries are using radio systems from the United States that were used in World War II," she says.
This gap between the IT haves and have-nots within NATO is not the only communications challenge facing the organization, Miller says. As chair of the NATO Task Group on Validation, Verification and Certification of Embedded Systems, she leads the effort to improve the reliability of all manner of systems -- everything from aircraft control systems to encryption technologies. The group's biggest challenge comes in trying to integrate "off-the-shelf" commercial systems into military applications.
The question boils down to: How can NATO upgrade all critical communications systems in the most cost-effective manner? At an October 1999 conference at NATO headquarters in Washington, D.C., Miller and the panel considered the critical issue of "information assurance." She will discuss the issue again with colleagues at a NATO symposium in April at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. The symposium is titled "Ruthless Pursuit of Commercial Off the Shelf Software."
"We're trying to determine the best practical methods to make a system as secure as possible, given your time and budget constraints," Miller says. "We're trying to determine what are the best specifications for various systems, given our member nations' vastly different situations."
An expert in satellite communications, Miller was the Navy's deputy assistant secretary for command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, electronic warfare and space. She was appointed to the NATO effort while with the Navy, and was asked to continue her involvement after joining UMR. She was appointed chair of the Task Group on Validation, Verification and Certification of Embedded Systems in October.
Miller's work with NATO reflects her interest in large-scale communications systems. She's always been interested in attacking big problems.
"They're fun problems to work on," she says. "I love to get my hands on a big problem and break it down into smaller components in order to solve it."
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