National Weather Service (NWS)
Console Replacement System (CRS) and
Weather Radio Improvement Program (WRIP)

CommPower’s relationship with the National Weather Service continues as the company embarks upon the Weather Radio Improvement Program as a modernization of CommPower’s very successful Console Replacement System (CRS) effort.

Press Release: NOAA/NWS Weather and Warning Services: Massive Changes in the Forecast

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Weather Service (NWS) which provides weather forecasts, watches, warnings, and other emergency messages to the public and emergency managers via the NOAA Weather Radio/All-Hazards (NWR) system and NOAA Weather Wire Service (NWWS) will consolidate, modernize, and extend its offerings via its recently awarded Weather Radio Improvement Program (WRIP) to Communications & Power Engineering, Inc. (CommPower).

Through this program, consisting of a 3-year base period and 2 years of follow-on maintenance ($22.3M total), CommPower, with teammate Harris Corporation, will develop and deploy a nationwide (and beyond) dissemination system that rapidly and reliably delivers around-the-clock weather, all-hazards and other emergency information, as well as live audio emergency announcements to the public, media, law enforcement, and local/state emergency managers.

The nerve center of the WRIP architecture is a dualized and largely fault-tolerant Master Processing Center (MPC) through which all weather/warning data is received and analyzed for dissemination to a suite of delivery interfaces that include FM transmitters, the Internet, Satellite feeds, National Law Enforcement Network (NLETS), and others as they become available. Supplementing the MPC is a network of 122 Weather Forecast Office (WFO) "portals" that give local meteorologists and other authorized emergency personnel access to the system for generation and submission of weather/warning broadcast data, live audio announcements, and regionalized control/monitoring functions.

Aside from the system's extensive reach and demanding mission objective, a notable highlight of WRIP is its resilience to obsolescence. Kathy Nuckles, CEO/President of CommPower adds that "Through use of normalized open standards and content key-word profiling, WRIP is largely data agnostic, allowing it to be easily extended to support future payloads and interfaces as they become available. In other words, WRIP will evolve as technology advances, thereby ensuring NWS' ongoing commitment to provide timely and reliable public alert services."

History: CommPower's Console Replacement System (CRS)

The National Weather Service (NWS) of NOAA operates a network of 1000+ VHF radio transmitters supplying local weather forecasts, watches, warnings, and advisories directly to the public in the United States and some areas of the western Pacific and the Caribbean.

CRS, the personal computer-based broadcast system developed by CommPower, automatically translates ASCII text-based National Weather Service forecasts and warnings into quality, synthesized-voice audio, significantly reducing production delays.

Each CRS system generates and maintains individual broadcast schedules for up to 13 different regional transmitters, and is capable of broadcasting in both English and Spanish.

By the beginning of 1999, CommPower had successfully produced, integrated, and tested the required 120 CRS baseline systems and delivered them to the individual NWS sites nationwide and beyond, where they remain in full operation today.

Next Generation: Weather Radio Improvement Program (WRIP)

With CRS reaching end of life, the National Weather Service has embarked on a modernization effort to not only upgrade the existing CRS capability, but also to combine it with another public distribution service known as NWWS (National Weather Wire Service), the result of which will be known as WRIP (Weather Radio Improvement Program).

For this effort, NWS split program into two competitive procurements:   Phase 1 – Design and Prototype; Phase 2 – Production and Deployment.  Phase 1 was awarded to Globecomm Systems, Inc. in October 2007, with CommPower as a major subcontractor, responsible for all of the application software.

In November 2008, the Globecomm/CommPower team successfully completed Phase 1 of the program and delivered a comprehensive design package and a feature-rich prototype system to NWS, both of which will serve as the baseline starting point for Phase 2 activities.

The WRIP design is a centralized architecture with TCP/IP reach to each Weather Forecast Office and transmitter, thus enabling rapid dissemination of weather, warning, alert, and live audio data to the public (via radio and internet), emergency managers (via satellite and internet) and law enforcement networks (via system-to-system TCP/IP links).

For additional information on the WRIP program, please contact: productinfo@commpower.com

Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB)
Classified/Unclassified Message Switching Systems (CMSS/UMSS)

CommPower’s long history with Vandenberg AFB continues as the company works to deliver a fouth generation messaging capability:  Classified Message Switching System (CMSS) and Unclassified Message Switching System (UMSS), each of which is a turn-key system based upon CommPower’s CP-XJP (XML/JANAP Portal) and CP-EXP (XML/P772 Portal).

As illustrated below, CMSS and UMSS are identical in construct; each consisting of two subsystems (CP-XJP and CP-EXP) in support of legacy to/from DMS messaging.  Legacy messages from backside users flow into CMSS/UMSS via RS232 Mode I and Mode II channels maintained by the CP-XJP component of each enclave.  For the CMSS enclave, these RS232 channels are protected via cryptography maintained by VAFB Western Test Range (WTR).

Once within the CMSS/UMSS processing core, the Legacy messages are validated for correctness and analyzed to determine the set of applicable output destinations.  For Legacy destinations, the message will remain within the CP-XJP and simply be “switched” back out thru the derived set of RS232 channels to the appropriate WRT Legacy Subscribers.

For DMS destinations, the CP-XJP will convert the Legacy message into XML/P772 format, after which it will be passed to the adjoining CP-EXP via a local file share operation.

Following reception by the CP-EXP, the XML/P772 message is converted into X.400/P772 ASN.1 format, signed and encrypted via DMS FORTEZZA, and finally transmitted to DMS via a properly protected NIPRNET or SIPRNET connection using a TCP/IP based P1 protocol.

In parallel to the CP-EXP/DMS message exchange via NIPRNET and SIPRNET, both the CP-XJP and the CP-EXP components of CMSS and UMSS perform DMS directory “read” operations to obtain information necessary to convert legacy addresses to DMS addresses (and vice versa).  These directory read requests are carried out over the NIPRNET/SIPRNET using a TCP/IP based LDAP protocol.

For messages received from DMS bound for WRT Legacy Subscribers, the reverse processing path (as described above) is traversed.

The figure below illustrates the hardware architecture of CMSS and UMSS. For purposes of this document, this diagram illustrates the internal versus external boundaries of CMSS/UMSS.  All components NOT contained within the grey circles are internal to CMSS/UMSS.  All components within the grey circles represent connections to external systems/users. 

 

  For Additional Information: productinfo@commpower.com

Military Messaging

DMS Program:  Since 1995, CommPower has been a key team member and product supplier to the Defense Message System (DMS) Program (Customer:  Defense Information Systems Agency; Prime Contractor: Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems & Global Solutions).  Under this program, COTS/GOTS products are integrated to provide High and Medium grade organizational messaging to the entire Department of Defense (DoD) organization as well as partner Services/Agencies.

DMS Commercial Product Supplier: For DMS, CommPower provides and continually maintains 6 products (1,300+ Licenses).  Products provided include:  MFI (with associated SPTT toolset), MLA, CP-EXP, CP-145 (with associated SPTT toolset), CP-XJP, and CP-MMT.

 

AMHS Integration: In August 2007, CommPower and Telos formally teamed to provide secure enterprise messaging services throughout the U.S. Government (in association with DMS) and Canada.  For this venture, Telos has integrated CommPower’s CP-EXP (XML Portal) into its web based messaging server to arrive at a seamless enterprise messaging capability (as opposed to a system comprised of separate products).  Each enterprise system is capable of supporting 3,000+ organizations and 15,000+ users.  Most branches of the U.S. Armed Forces utilize this capability for their organizational messaging.

Command Email

Next generation Command Email is here! By building upon the existing COTS email framework the DoD can realize a single email network that provides BOTH organizational and informal messaging services. Proven, simple and extremely cost effective...

SAFEmail: Provides an intuitive Command Email form within the COTS Outlook client. Elements of Service can be hidden/exposed as required. Also provided is SMIME and DMS compliant protective markings that guarentee security integrity across domain boundaries.

TREX: Disribution profiling is performed on the message header and attachments as appropriate. Each profile contains a basic set of mode properties and a rule set that defines the key words/phrases that must be found for the associated action to be taken. Rule sets can be simple to complex and are context sensitive, i.e. each message attribute has a set of rules that can be applied to that attribute.

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