The soldier was frustrated, to say the least. He was in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert trying to put together a computer server there for the Air Force's command and control systems but, no matter what he did, the darn thing just wouldn't boot up and he couldn't figure out why.
His call was answered 6,000 miles away by a tech specialist at a military "help desk" staffed by officers and contractors at Hanscom Air Force Base outside of Boston. After running a few routine tests, they concluded that the computer's central processing unit was probably faulty and probably had been damaged en route. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. dispatched a replacement and, within a matter of days, the new equipment was in the Persian Gulf area. To everyone's relief, the machine -- which provides a critical link in the military's communications network -- was fixed.
Capt. Robert McDonald, commander of the A Battery Company of the 2nd Battalion, 20th Field Artillery, consults a computer map from his Humvee during exercises at Fort Hood, Tex., in December.
(File Photo/ Rodger Mallison -- Fort Worth Star-telegram/AP)
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"If it gets to the point where someone has to call the help desks, you know it's a critical issue. . . . I don't think you could conduct this war effort without them," said Air Force Col. Pete Hoene, who oversees systems support for the military's air and space operations centers around the world.
To a greater extent than any war before it, Operation Iraqi Freedom depends on an elite group of technicians, engineers and other specialists in the United States who are standing by 24 hours a day, seven days a week to assist the troops. In some ways, thanks to e-mail, instant messaging and satellite phone connections, those men and women, estimated to number in the thousands, are on the front lines as much as their counterparts on the other side of the world, even though they are not directly in the war zone.
Pentagon officials have called this conflict a "network centric" one, with computers and wireless technology linking intelligence from the 250,000 U.S. troops and the drones, tanks, planes and other vehicles in a way that has compressed decision-making from what in the past might have been days into minutes. Plus, some 80 percent of weapons being used today are equipped with some sort of "smart" computer brain, up from 30 percent in the 1991 Gulf War.
A single mix-up, glitch or crash in the technology could cost lives.
So far, the technology has held up well, and there have been few major problems, according to about a dozen of the contractors who provide technical support services to the military.
Working in classified "safe rooms" or reachable via pagers and cell phones around the country, they have been working behind the scenes to make sure the multitude of software and hardware systems is working properly. There's always been tension between tech support and tech users, and the life or death, supercharged situations of the war have exacerbated those.
A Fairfax-based company called Trident Systems Inc. provided a regiment of the 2nd Marine Division, Camp Lejeune, N.C., with a set of handheld computers that map the location of friendly troops and allow the Marines to send text messages to their commanders. The radio operators that shadow the leaders of each unit carry the computers in one of the pockets in their cargo pants.
"The most-asked question on the radio is: 'Where you at?' With these small computers, you don't have to ask that anymore," said John Broglio, vice president of business development at Trident, which makes the "battlefield situational mapping" software for the devices.
Broglio said the company has received only a smattering of questions via phone calls and e-mails, the most serious of which wasn't very serious at all.
It turned out that the soldiers kept losing or breaking their styluses, the pen-like sticks that are used to write on the handheld computers. The company shipped out 50 of them, about four for every Marine who carries one of the devices.
Broglio said he hasn't heard from the units in days because they have been on the move and came under attack during a friendly fire incident near Nasiriyah that left 31 of the Marines wounded.
Unlike help desks for companies, which are notorious for putting customers on hold and employing nontechnical people who read scripted answers off their screens, military support personnel pride themselves on rapid and intelligent responses.
Since the war began, the Air Force has logged 19 calls about the 90 or so systems Air Force command operates. Most were addressed within hours.
"In general, the systems are operating pretty effectively. We don't get phone calls every hour . . . but it always seems like there's a weekend issue. It often happens when there's a crew rotation or something else occurs and a system fails," Hoene said.
Ray Miller, head of the 45-member combat support division of Dynamics Research Corp. that supports Air Force command, said many of the questions that have come to its help desk have been software related, enhancing the capability of existing systems, such as those that track aircraft, weapon and crew availability and target enemy forces.
"Some issues are more complex then others, but the military team . . . always manages to get them," said Miller, who is based in Hampton, Va.
Itronix Corp., which has provided the troops with more than 1,000 laptops so rugged they can survive a cycle or more in a dishwasher, fielded calls during previous conflicts about a wide range of problems, from machines that have been run over by vehicles to devices damaged by fire, said Matthew Gerber, vice president for marketing.
One machine "that got sent back to us looked like a charcoal briquette," he said.
So far this time, things are calmer. The help desk run by Itronix, which is based in Spokane, Wash., has taken only eight calls since the war began, and they were all ordinary, company officials say -- "basic functionality and tech-support related."
Software that allows military commanders to view battlefield maps along with overlays of troop locations made by Solipsys Corp. of Laurel has been put on communications and control computers attached to vehicles deployed in and around Iraq.
But since the conflict began March 19, the company hasn't received a single call about the systems, said Eric Conn, chief financial officer of Solipsys, which was recently acquired by contracting giant Raytheon Co.
The lack of news may be good, Conn said, an indication that all is going well. Either that or the systems are turned off "and being towed behind the Humvees for all we know."
