Feature Article

Command Center in a Box

Ashland-based Spec Ops builds ultra-mobile operations centers that DOD and Homeland Security can deploy into the field at a moment’s notice.

By Peter Galuszka

Soon after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, paratroopers from the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division found themselves sloshing around the flooded streets of New Orleans. The soldiers had trouble coordinating their rescue and security work because power failures had cut all telephone service. The ravaged city was very much like a war zone -- and that gave them an idea.

Not long before, the 82nd had purchased battle management hardware from Spec Ops Inc., a Hanover County, Va. Company, that makes mobile operations centers. Spec Ops gear is ideal for the airborne division, a quick-reaction force that can be airdropped anywhere at a moment’s notice.

The paratroopers contacted Spec Ops with a special request: They needed one of Spec Op’s mobile operations centers. Responding immediately, Paul Garner, the firm’s president, dropped the mobile unit into the back of a white truck. He and his wife drove all night to New Orleans where the 82nd had set up shop at the Louis Armstrong International Airport. “I’ve never seen devastation on that scale,” says Garner, who ended up staying in New Orleans for three days. “It was every single block after block.”

Helping coordinate rescues of hurricane victims is just one of the jobs that’s been keeping Spec Ops busy. Founded just before the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the 31-person company has grown 732 percent in revenues. The firm has supplied more than 25,000 pieces of hardware including small Tactical Operations Centers (TOCs), which are mobile briefing rooms replete with communications tools and Liquid Crystal Display screens.

Big customers include the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, which manage the deluge of information intrinsic to a high-tech war. Operations for combat, logistics, intelligence –- just about any military or security activity –- must be run through centers that are durable, light-weight and capable of handling a lot of add-on electronic devices. 

Plus, the command centers must be mobile. Not that long ago, says General Manager Steve Shaw, a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, it might take two days to take down or set one up for a fast-moving military unit. “Now it takes less than an hour.”

 

Tactical Operations Centers (TOCs) are mobile briefing rooms replete with communications tools and Liquid Crystal Display screens.

Some TOCs involve 52-pound tables, about the length of a billiards table, which are pre-wired to handle laptops, satellite up-and down-links and video monitors. Spec Ops also makes larger units protected by field tents, which weigh 200 pounds and can handle multiple LCD displays.

All of the gear can be parachuted to remote areas and powered with mobile generators. If TOC operators need a radio antenna, they can inflate small dirigibles that lift wires skyward. The LCD screens can project, and the satellite uplinks can send, real-time images of actual combat from soldiers wearing tiny digital cameras on their helmets. The gear will be on display at the company’s warehouse near its Richmond headquarters April 3-4, 2007, in an event where up to 1,000 people are expected to attend. (Find out more about the event, Spec Op Days.)

Managing tactical information is especially important because the amount of data that military personnel must absorb has grown exponentially over the past 20 years. By way of an example, the website of an Israeli defense contractor that does work for the Defense Department gives an account of a U.S. Marine officer who served in Iraq:

Members of my force often had to use a helmet headset, four radios and two laptop computers -- all crammed into a light armored vehicle -- all at once!" adding that "we were overwhelmed with communications systems for every eventuality, but these did not really integrate with each other. For example, a Marine commander riding aboard a LAV had to use a headset to use the intercom to talk to his driver and gunner, answer his squad leaders by grabbing hand-held radio and speak to accompanying infantry by another radio, all this while monitoring two laptop positions of friendly and hostile forces!

Spec Ops understands the problems because some 75 percent of its personnel are military veterans. President Garner, for example, is a West Point grad. Shaw, the general manager, served in the Marines; Joe Swider, vice president business development, is a Virginia Military Institute grad and former Navy officer who served on destroyers and frigates during the first Gulf War; while Jeff Yates, vice president of engineering, is a 22-year Navy veteran.

Relationships with the defense department help win business, but they also make for extra hard work. “Our staff has a real sense of mission and of deadlines,” says Swider. “If a unit is buying our equipment and is deploying to Iraq soon, you’ll see people working until one or two in the morning to get the job done, because they know that the gear will be needed.”

The Greater Richmond location is a tremendous advantage, offering proximity to Washington,  D.C., without its high costs. Spec Ops, which has an engineering center in Chesapeake, is just down Interstate 95 from the Pentagon and Quantico, where the Marines make many purchasing decisions. Defense officials have to pass by Spec Ops Ashland headquarters if they are heading to Hampton Roads for the Navy or Air Force or if they’re are on their way to Ft. Bragg, the home of the 82nd Airborne, Army Special Forces and the XVIII Army Corps, which led the Iraq invasions. The firm likewise has done considerable work in Panama City, Fla., where a number of Navy, Air Force and Army special operations units are based.

The lower labor and housing costs also give Spec Ops a pricing edge, says Swider. Compared to one competitor in New York, Spec Ops can save from 40 to 60 percent on production costs.

Thanks to companies like Spec Ops, Gene Winter, senior vice president of the Greater Richmond Partnership, sees the region emerging as a player in military logistics. Not only is the area close to the Pentagon, it enjoys access to a cluster of major military logistics facilities in the metro area, including Fort Lee, the Defense Supply Center Richmond and the Defense Distribution Depot Richmond. “The military presence creates opportunities for local companies as vendors and partners,” he says.

Spec Ops also works with domestic agencies, including state emergency responders, units of Homeland Security and the Red Cross. The goal is the same: providing tough, highly mobile operations centers quickly to places in need. One challenge is coordinating communications. During the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, city, state and federal agencies including the FBI found they could not communicate with each other by radio.

In addition to devising solutions to such dilemmas, Spec Ops integrates command, control and tactical communications technology into weapons systems such as warships. That’s a tricky challenge because the design-build cycle for Naval vessels can stretch over 10 years. By the time a vessel is commissioned, its technology is 10 years out of date. The Navy is trying to change its approach. For example, U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, the recently christened nuclear aircraft carrier built by Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding, allows for miles of wiring to be easily stripped out so that new electronics and other technology can be added in an off-the-shelf mode. 

Spec Ops is working with the Navy to follow the Reagan template with other surface vessels. Several of the firm’s employees are former Navy personnel with experience working with some of the Navy’s most advanced weapons coordination system, such as the sophisticated AEGIS system used by surface vessels to track and destroy airborne threats. The company anticipates winning a major contract with the Navy in the near future that would double its workforce to 60. Company President Garner says he’s confident that his firm will win the contract. If so, the firm’s revenues will double this year to between $16 million and $18 million.

The firm also is positioned to exploit the big expansion at the Army’s Ft. Lee base in Petersburg. According to the recommendations of the Base Realignment and Closures committee, a number of multi-service logistics and supply support and training units will be consolidated at Ft. Lee, adding 3,509 permanent soldiers by 2011 and increasing its trainees mostly in supply and logistics by 4,302 a year by that time. That provides a big logistics opportunity for Spec Ops to provide mobile tactical operations hardware to track supply chains in combat conditions.

Spec Ops does face formidable competition, however. “There are a lot of firms out there and Raytheon is the biggest,” says Terry Beane, president of Brown International, a company in Huntsville, Ala., that does work similar to Spec Ops for the Marines, Army, defense contractor General Dynamics, and others.

But a spokesman for Raytheon, a $22 billion defense contactor giant based in Waltham, Mass., says that fitting tactical operations centers for the military “is a custom market.” And that should play to Spec Ops’ strengths: Custom work is a specialty at Spec Ops. Garner believes Spec Ops has an edge because some of the competitors are “garage shops” that can’t sustain the level of quality control that Spec Ops can.

Garner sees no slow-up in demand for the company’s products by the military or Homeland Defense units. Meanwhile, the company is exploring doing more work with the private, civilian sector, perhaps with utilities, energy companies or the news media. Some of the solutions, such as providing well-designed aluminum tables to help harried troops in the field, may seem small. But, the cumulative results are impressive.

-- February 12, 2007
 

CEO Paul Garner

For more information...

Spec Ops website

News...

International Communications Group Signs Spec Ops Inc. as New Distributor. (November 9, 2006)

Spec Ops Officially Awarded IDIQ FIGHTER Contract with Tyonek. (December 18, 2006)

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