Defense Transportation Reporting and Control System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 06:41, 28 March 2010

Revision as of 06:53, 28 March 2010

Line 8:

After it became more heavily used, it was determined that the Army needed its own secure hub on a military base in Germany. This hub was located in [[Mannheim, Germany]] outside of Coleman Barracks at a ___location known as the "tank-farm". This ___location was chosen because it already housed other satellite hubs, one of which was for AFN.

The Land Earth Station (LES) portion of the system was maintained by a company called Data Path (which was acquired by Rockwell Collins in 2009<ref>http://www.rockwellcollins.com/news/page12220.html</ref>). The servers that processed the messages and GPS ___location information through the QTRACS software were initially housed in Friedrichsfeld, [[Germany]] and maintained by the United States Army in Europe (USAREUR) G4 office. The G4 contracted this work out to the Titan Corporation (now owned by L3 Communications). andManagement of the program was latereventually pickedturned upover byto PEO EIS<ref>http://www.eis.army.mil/</ref>. The servers were latereventually moved to [[Kilbourne Kasserne]] in [[Schwetzingen]]. This move was made because the facility at Friedrichsfeld was not robust enough and had a poor communications pathspath with no redundancy. The site in Schwetzingen, also known as "Site-S", had better comms and was also an official military [[Network Operations Center]] (NOC).

At its height, there were three server stacks for processing DTRACS data. One stack for European devices, another for devices in SWA and a third for receiving a split-feed from the KBR (Kellog Brown and Root) owned and operated server. While KBR had their own vehicles and server, all three systems used the same satellite for their communications. As of January 2010 the KBR solution still exists, but was moved to Ramstein Airbase.

On the military side, the system was replaced by a newer system called [[Movement Tracking System]], or MTS. The last use of DTRACS by US military personel was in early 2007. While some devices are still used by KBR in their deployment, the military decided to swicth to MTS instead of DTRACS for its [[military logistics|logistics]] tracking solution. The primary reason for the swicth is that MTS provided a mapping capability in the vehicle. Of course this came at a price. A typical DTRACS device cost in the neigborhood of $2,500, while an MTS device cost approximately $20,000 or more. Further funding for MTS from the military allowed the system to have Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) includded in the system. This allowed the trucks to read passive RFID tags that were included in its cargo and report live locations back to the Radio Frequency - In-Transit Visibility (RF-ITV) system maintained by PEO EIS Product Manager Joint - Automatic Identification Technology (PM J-AIT)<ref>http://www.eis.army.mil/programs/j-ait.htm</ref>

== Capabilities ==

DTRACS devices were capable of sending messages to each other and their dispacthers. The dispacthers used either a DTRACS device in a box (refered to a a "Fly Away Kit" or FAK) or online software (QTRACS) to send and receive messages from the drivers. While the DTRACS FAK only allowed limited communications, the QTRACS software allowed the dispatcher to see all communications they sent to and from their trucks as well as thier assigned vehicles "truck to truck" messgages. It also provided topographical maps, and where neccessary, satellite imagry provided by NIMA (now NGA).

Vehicles could send free text messages containing up to 1,900 characters. There were all preformated or 'canned' messages where the driver only needed to fill in blank fields and hit send. Such messagews included NBC1 reports, NEDIVAC message and arrival and departure messages among others.

== Sources ==