Communications-Electronics Command Research Articles

Glory in Their Spirit: How Four Black Women Took on the Army During World War II

Book Review| July 01 2019 Glory in Their Spirit: How Four Black Women Took on the Army During World War II Glory in Their Spirit: How Four Black Women Took on the Army During World War II. By Sandra M. Bolzenius. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018. xvi + 208 pp. Graphs, tables, appendices, notes, index, and bibliography. $99 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). Melissa Ziobro Melissa Ziobro Monmouth University Melissa Ziobro is currently Specialist Professor of Public History at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey, teaching courses that include Introduction to Public History, Oral History, and Museums and Archives Management. She worked as a command historian at the US Army Communications–Electronics Command, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, from 2004 to 2011. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2019) 38 (4): 105–107. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.38.4.0105 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Melissa Ziobro; Glory in Their Spirit: How Four Black Women Took on the Army During World War II. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2019; 38 (4): 105–107. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.38.4.0105 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The 100th Anniversary of Fort Monmouth

April 1917 marks the 100th anniversary of the American entry into World War I. The war brought many changes to NJ, to include the creation of military bases like Fort Monmouth. First called Camp Little Silver, then Camp Alfred Vail, and finally Fort Monmouth, the base stood up in June 1917. Though it was supposed to be temporary, the base remained open until September 2011. The majority of personnel stationed at the base, employed by the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM), moved to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. There, the Fort Monmouth/CECOM archive is maintained to this day. In honor of what would have been the base’s 100th anniversary, we present a brief recap of the 1917 activities of the site, along with two early photographs from the archive.

Bayesian Networks for Combat Equipment Diagnostics

The lives of U.S. soldiers in combat depend on complex weapon systems and advanced technologies. In combat conditions, the resources available to support the operation and maintenance of these systems are minimal. Following the failure of a critical system, technical support personnel may take days to arrive via helicopter or ground convoy—leaving soldiers and civilian experts exposed to battlefield risks. To address this problem, the U.S. Army Communications Electronics Command (CECOM) developed a suite of systems, Virtual Logistics Assistance Representative (VLAR), with a single purpose: to enable a combat soldier to maintain critical equipment. The CECOM VLAR team uses an operations research (OR) approach to codifying expert knowledge about Army equipment and applying that knowledge to troubleshooting equipment diagnostics in combat situations. VLAR infuses a classic knowledge-management spiral with OR techniques: from socializing advanced technical concepts and eliciting tacit knowledge, to integrating expert knowledge, to creating an intuitive and instructive interface, and finally, to making VLAR a part of a soldier’s daily life. VLAR is changing the Army’s sustainment paradigm by creating an artificial intelligence capability and applying it to equipment diagnostics. In the process, it has generated a sustainable cost-savings model and a means to mitigate combat risk. Through 2015, VLAR saved the Army $27 million in direct labor costs from an investment of $8 million by reducing the requirement for technical support personnel. We project additional direct costs savings of $222 million from an investment of $60 million by the end of 2020. Most importantly, VLAR has prevented an estimated 4,500 casualties by reducing requirements for helicopter and ground-convoy movements. This translates to short- and long-term medical cost savings of over $9 billion. In this paper, we discuss the OR methods that underpin VLAR, at the heart of which lie causal Bayesian networks, and we detail the process we use to translate scientific theory and experiential knowledge into accessible applications for equipment diagnostics.

The use of a waveguide expansion to model landmine detection using acoustic to seismic coupling

The use of a waveguide of sufficiently large radius to simplify the modeling of the infinite space response of a buried landmine to airborne sound has been investigated. It was previously determined that if the ground is modeled as an effective fluid, an efficient and rapidly converging algorithm can be obtained. The effective fluid has been replaced with an elastic solid. For such a model, this technique fails to converge sufficiently rapidly to the infinite space limit. The surface wave supported by the shear sector gets excited by the landmine. The decay of this surface wave with distance is too slow, forcing one to use a waveguide of a prohibitively large radius. In conclusion, this technique at best gives qualitative results. [Work sponsored by the U.S. Army Communications–Electronics Command, Night Vision and Electronics Sensors Directorate.]

Bayesian probability analysis for acoustic–seismic landmine detection

Landmines buried in the subsurface induce distinct changes in the seismic vibration of the ground surface when an acoustic source insonifies the ground. A scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) senses the acoustically-induced seismic vibration of the ground surface in a noncontact, remote manner. The SLDV-based acoustic-to-seismic coupling technology exhibits significant advantages over conventional sensors due to its capability for detecting both metal and nonmetal mines and its stand-off distance. The seismic vibration data scanned from the SLDV are preprocessed to form images. The detection of landmines relies primarily on an analysis of the target amplitude, size, shape, and frequency range. A parametric model has been established [Xiang and Sabatier, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 110, 2740 (2001)] to describe the amplified surface vibration velocity induced by buried landmines within an appropriate frequency range. This model incorporates vibrational amplitude, size, position of landmines, and the background amplitude into a model-based analysis process in which Bayesian target detection and parameter estimation have been applied. Based on recent field measurement results, the landmine detection procedure within a Bayesian framework will be discussed. [Work supported by the United States Army Communications–Electronics Command, Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate.]

A success story of formal description techniques: Estelle specification and test generation for MIL-STD 188-220

This paper presents a success story of specifying a complex real-life protocol (MIL-STD 188-220) in Estelle and generating test sequences from the formal specification. 188-220 is being developed in the US Army, Navy and Marine Corps systems for mobile combat network radios. A key factor in this success story has been the collaboration among the researchers of the University of Delaware and the City College of the City University of New York, the developers of the US Army Communications–Electronics Command (CECOM), and the protocol designers in the Joint Combat Net Radio Working Group. Based on the research results, 188-220 test sequences are realizable without timer interruptions while providing a 200% increase in test coverage. The test cases are being installed at a CECOM test facility.

Achieving synergy in collaborative education

Professional software engineering continues to face problems that involve large-scale (complex) software systems development. Such efforts typically require team collaboration over months, possibly years. Once implemented, the system must be maintained for sometimes decades. This development and maintenance life cycle requires not only technical knowledge and skills in software development, but also the knowledge and skills associated with software process. We believe the traditional computer science curriculum fails to consider this spectrum of needs. We also believe, however, that software engineering must use certain elements of the core knowledge and skills taught by computer scientists as its foundation. We describe lessons learned from the 10-year collaboration between Monmouth University and the Software Engineering Center of the US Army's CECOM (Communications Electronics Command). The center recruits electrical engineering and computer science graduates from academic institutions in the geographic regions surrounding its various installations to be part of its intern program; Monmouth University, in turn, incorporates the demands of the intern program in its Master of Science in software engineering curriculum.