The communications systems at the US Central Command headquarters

(Updated: January 6, 2025)

Previously, this weblog provided a close look at the phones used by US president Biden. This time we turn to another end of the line and look at the communications equipment which is used at the headquarters of the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida.

A recent 60 Minutes television report provides an unprecedented look inside the Central Command's operations center, where we see the general military communications equipment, followed by some more special devices used by the commander, who also has access to the virtual Desktop Environment for the US intelligence agencies.

Large operations center in the Central Command headquarters, January 2021
(still from 60 Minutes - click to enlarge)

The 60 Minutes television report shows never-before-seen video footage of the Iranian ballistic missile attack from January 7, 2020 on the Al Asad Airbase in Iraq, where 2000 US troops were stationed. The attack was a retaliation for the American drone strike from January 3, which killed the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force.

The report also includes an interview with general Frank McKenzie, combatant commander of the US Central Command, who leads the US armed forces in the Middle East. McKenzie followed the Iranian missile attack on the Al Asad Airbas at his headquarters, from where he had ordered the killing of general Soleimani six days earlier.

The Central Command headquarters

The United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) was established in 1983 and is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the US Armed Forces. Its Area of Responsibility (AOR) includes the Middle East, Egypt, Central Asia and parts of South Asia.

CENTCOM's main headquarters is not in its area of operations, but at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, where a new 282,200-square-foot headquarters building was completed in 2012.

The new building includes specialized mission critical spaces like the Command Joint Operations Center, Joint Planning Cell and Operational Planning Element, Network Operations Center and the Command Secure Communications Operations Center.

The headquarters of the US Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base
(photo: Burns & McDonnell - click to enlarge)

The new headquarters building includes more than 109,000 square feet of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) and space constructed according to sound transmission class (STC) 45 and 50 to support secured operations.

Relevant antiterrorism standards, including progressive collapse mitigation by means of tie forces, were also incorporated in the new headquarters. All concrete contains ground granulated blast furnace slag and fly ash for LEED compliance.

On the website of the construction company there's an earlier photo of the interior of the building showing standard workstations equipped with two computer screens, an Avocent SwitchView KVM switch, a smartcard reader, the ubiquitous HP keyboard, a mouse and two telephone sets: a Nortel Meridian 3903 and a Cisco 7975 IP Phone, one for secure and one for non-secure calls:

Interior of the Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base
(photo: Burns & McDonnell - click to enlarge)

Military communications equipment

The communications equipment that is currently used at the Central Command headquarters can be seen in the 60 Minutes television report, which shows shots from inside a large and a small operations room.

In the large operations room we see big video screens along the walls and several rows of workstations, each with two sets of communications equipment, one set for access to classified telephone and computer networks and another set for unclassified networks.

According to the color codes of the US classification system the telephones and the smartcard readers have the green label for Unclassified systems and the red label for Secret systems.

Large operations center in the Central Command headquarters, January 2021
(still from 60 Minutes - click to enlarge)

Computer systems

Some of the computer screens show a bright red lock screen with the text "This information system is accredited to process - SECRET - For authorized purposes only", which means that they are part of SIPRNet, the main classified secure network of the US military for tactical and operational information. The military's unclassified non-secure computer network is known as NIPRNet.

Identifying authorized users for NIPRNet is done through the Common Access Card, which is the standard identification for active US defense personnel. Access to SIPRNET requires the SIPRNet token, which is also a smartcard, but without visible identification information.


Coalition networks

Besides NIPRNet and SIPRNet, the Central Command also has separate computer networks for collaboration with foreign partners. For the members of bilateral and multinational coalitions, the United States provides a network architecture called Combined Enterprise Regional Information eXchange System (CENTRIXS), which operates at the classification level Secret/Releasable to [country identifier].

The first CENTRIXS networks were established as of late 2001 by the US Central Command in order to support coalition operations under Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). This resulted in CENTRIXS-ISAF for operations in Afghanistan and CENTRIXS-GCTF for the Global Counter Terrorism Forces. Meanwhile, both systems have been integrated in the CENTCOM Partner Network (CPN).

> See also US military and intelligence computer networks

The various networks in CENTCOM's area of responsibility
(source - click to enlarge)

A CENTRIXS network consists of servers and thin clients and provides users with at least the following computer applications, giving them the same basic capabilities as users of classified US systems:

- Microsoft Office
- Command and Control Personal Computer (C2PC)
- Integrated Imagery and Intelligence (I3)

These applications allow access to the releasable Near-Real Time (NRT) order of battle from the MIDB database (to be replaced by MARS) and imagery databases and to display the data on a map background. They can also access various browser-based products, send e-mails with attachments and conduct collaboration sessions.

For US military users, these applications are part of the Global Command and Control System (GCCS), which encompasses a suite of over 200 client-server tools and applications for fusing data from multiple sensors and intelligence sources to produce a graphical representation of the battlespace.

Update:
In December 2024, the US Army tested its Next Generation Command and Control's integrated data layer on secure, classified networks. This integrated data layer is a user interface where sensors from multiple domains can work together to supply information on enemy targets and other data, so warfighters don't have to digest the various data separately, which currently results in five or six different views of the battlefield.

Interface of the Command and Control Personal Computer (C2PC) application
(source - click to enlarge)

Telephone systems

In the large operations center at CENTCOM's headquarters there are also a range of Cisco IP phones, some being the older 7975, others the current 8841. The Cisco 8841 IP phones look like the ones that are commercially available, but are actually modified versions from the small telecommunications security company CIS Secure Computing Inc.

These modified phones are approved for use in SCIF and SAPF environments and offer additional on-hook security features which can be engaged for the 'hold' and 'mute' functions while in a call. Speakerphone functionality isn't disabled, but is protected with the on-hook security of the positive disconnect electronics.

Several workstations even have a third telephone set: a Cisco IP Phone 8845, which has a video camera on top for video calls. According to their display background, these phones appear to be for the video conferencing service of the Desktop Environment (DTE, see below) which runs on the Top Secret/SCI intelligence sharing network JWICS.

Operations center in the Central Command headquarters, January 2021
(still from 60 Minutes - click to enlarge)

The commander's communications equipment

The 60 Minutes television report followed general McKenzie into a small room off his main operations center in the Central Command headquarters. There we see similar equipment as in the large room, like computers connected to SIPRNet, in this case for senior staff officers, like the:

- Director of Operations (J3)
- Commander's Action Group (CAG)
- Command Senior Enlisted Leader (CSEL)
- Staff Judge Advocate (SJA)

General McKenzie entering a small operations room, January 2021
(still from 60 Minutes - click to enlarge)

In this small room, commander McKenzie has additional communications equipment that seems not available for the personnel in the large operations center. When he is being interviewed at his place at the table (see the televison still below), we see from left to right:

- A Cisco DX 70 video screen with video camera, probably for the Secure Video Teleconferencing System (SVTS) which is part of the Crisis Management System (CMS) and allows top-level video meetings.

- A Cisco IP Phone 8841 with a distinctive yellow bezel for the highly secure Executive Voice over Secure IP-network which is also part of the Crisis Management System (CMS) and connects the President, the National Security Council, Cabinet members, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, various intelligence agency watch centers, headquarters, and Continuity of Operations (COOP) sites.

- A Touchscreen Executive Phone (TXP) with two additional 50-button Touchscreen Line Expansion units (TLE), manufactured by the small telecommunications security company Telecore, Inc., which also made the Integrated Services Telephone (IST-2) that was on the Oval Office desk of presidents Bush and Obama. These devices are specifically designed for the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN), which offers full command and control and conferencing capabilities for military commanders up to the level of Top Secret/SCI.

- A Cisco IP Phone 8865 with video camera and a Key Expansion Module. The phone has labels for Top Secret (orange) and Top Secret/SCI (yellow) and appears to be for the video conferencing service of the Desktop Environment (DTE, see below) which runs on JWICS, the main network for intelligence sharing within the US military and the US intelligence community.

- A Cisco IP Phone 8851 with a Key Expansion Module and a label for the classification level Secret (red), which means it runs on SIPRNet and is therefore Voice over Secure IP (VoSIP).

General McKenzie's communications equipment in the small operations room
(still from 60 Minutes - click to enlarge)

According to the 60 Minutes report, it was in this small room where during the missile attack on the Al Asad Airbase, commander McKenzie "could talk directly to the only two people above him in the chain of command" - the Secretary of Defense and the President. To illustrate this, the speed dial buttons on the commander's Touchscreen Executive Phone were shown.

Normally such buttons are blurred out, but here we can clearly see that McKenzie has direct lines to the White House, the Secretary of Defense (SecDef), his house (SecDef Home) and his communications center (SecDef Cables), as well as to the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS XO), among others:

The speed dial buttons on general McKenzie's Touchscreen Executive Phone
(still from 60 Minutes - click to enlarge)

The commander's computers

The same telephones as in the small room appear on McKenzie's place in the large operations room, but here he also has two computer screens connected to a Vertiv Cybex Secure MultiViewer KVM switch which allows access to networks of different classifications levels on a single screen.

Apparently the commander was logged in on one of the classified computer networks, as we can see the desktop background with several application icons - quite remarkable because usually during photo ops or television recordings only unclassified images should be visible.

At the top of the desktop background is a yellow bar which means it's JWICS, the intelligence sharing network for the US military and the US Intelligence Community at the classification level Top Secret/SCI. Unlike NIPRNet and SIPRNet, access to JWICS doesn't require a smartcard, but a software certificate: military users have to identify themselves with a DoD PKI certificate, others need an IC PKI certificate.

General McKenzie's workstation in the large operations center
(still from 60 Minutes - click to enlarge)

The IC Desktop Environment

The desktop background on the commander's computer is deep blue and has the term "DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT (DTE)" with an image of the earth covered by a stylized network. In the bottom left corner we see the seals of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and some text.

This "Intelligence Community Desktop Environment" (IC DTE) was conceived in 2012 as a single, identical platform for the US Intelligence Community. As such it's the heart of a huge modernization project called Intelligence Community IT Enterprise (IC ITE), under which data will be stored and processed at the Commercial Cloud Services (C2S) managed by the CIA and the IC GovCloud managed by the NSA.

The implementation of the DTE was managed by the Joint Program Management Office (JPMO) led by DIA and NGA, while the software system was built by BAE Systems under a $300 million contract for five years. This had to result in the Next Generation Desktop Environment (NGDE), which has to bring virtual desktops at different classification levels to one physical computer.

Multiple computers for networks at different classification levels, ca. 2008.
(source - click to enlarge)

With the Desktop Environment (DTE) analysts at DIA, NGA and other US intelligence agencies can go anywhere within these organizations, sit down at any Top Secret workstation, log in, authenticate, and get access to their e-mail, home directories, shared files, etc., which were previously stored on thick client computers at each workstation.

Besides a virtual desktop, the DTE also comes with a common suite of desktop applications (developed via the Ozone Widget Framework) and access to common services, including Unified Communications as a Service. Among the first applications were standard e-mail, collaboration tools and video conferencing capabilities. The NSA is responsible for an Apps Mall that incorporates apps stores of the various agencies.

> See also: About Intellipedia and other intelligence wikis from the Snowden trove

The common collaboration tool for the DTE provides a single interface for secure voicemail integration with e-mail, peer-to-peer file sharing, a screen capture tool and Outlook calendar integration. When additional users transition into the common operating environment, this tool could serve as a single interface for community-wide collaboration. In 2014, there were already some 4.000 DTE users at DIA and NGA.

However, in 2018, John Sherman, chief information officer of the Intelligence Community, said they had come to the realization that it no longer made sense to deliver a standard capability to every agency and user given the differing architectures, security requirements and mission needs.

In order to reach the outcomes for which the DTE was initially created, the Collaboration Reference Architecture (CRA) was created. Agencies can now build applications which fit their own needs as long as they comply with the standards set by the CRA in order to ensure compatibility throughout the different systems.


Finally, the DTE is also a step towards an environment where security and tagging of data will be done at the data level, as opposed to the network level. Traditionally, access to information was based on which network you were on: DIA data were only accessible on the DIA's network, etc.

The idea is that there will be a common Intelligence Community network for which the Identification, Authentication and Authorization (IAA) project of the IC ITE provides access to data and information based on the different credentials of each individual user, so on who you are, what role you have and what accesses are available to you.



Links and sources

- Yahoo! News: 'Conspiracy is hard': Inside the Trump administration's secret plan to kill Qassem Soleimani (2021)
- American News: Biden Allows “60 Minutes” to Release Military Imagery Secrets that Saved US Lives (2021)
- DIA: Striking a balance between compatibility and flexibility in the intelligence community (2018)
- Joint Publication: Joint and National Intelligence Support to Military Operations (2017)
- CSIS: New Tools for Collaboration, The Experience of the U.S. Intelligence Community (2016)
- Raytheon: When Secure KVM Isn’t Enough (2015)
- Defense Systems: How cloud is changing the spy game (2014)
- Deep Dive Intelligence: Interview: Mike Mestrovich – Full Transcript (2012)
- Burns & McDonnell: Joint Intelligence Center, Central Command (2009)
- AFCEA Signal: Desktop System Streamlines Analysis Work (2004)
- MITRE Corporation: Intelligence Community Public Key Infrastructure (IC PKI) (2002)

Another "red phone" for the Israeli prime minister

(Updated: December 29, 2015)

In an earlier posting on this weblog we took a look at the phones used by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which included an eye-catching red one. In some more recent pictures we can see that this red phone has apparently been replaced by an interesting looking white telephone.


Although this device itself is white, it has a rarely seen but very distinctive feature: a red curly cord for the handset and also a red cable for the phone line. The buttons are also surrounded by some kind of red overlay:

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, meets with Defense Minister
Moshe Ya’alon and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, July 26, 2014 in Tel Aviv.
(Photo: Handout/Getty - Click to enlarge)

The dark gray phone at the left is a more common Nortel M3904 executive phone - a model which is also used at the NSA headquaters and at the office of the British prime minister. Nortel was a big Canadian telephone equipment manufacturer, but was dissolved in 2009.


The white telephone with the red cord also appears on a side table in the seating corner of Netanyahu's office, where before there was only a black phone. The latter is a more common Telrad Executive Phone 79-100-0000 from the Israeli telecom equipment manufacturer Telrad. This phone is also in the office of the Israeli defense minister and therefore it seems to be part of the (non-secure) internal phone system of both ministries.

Esther Pollard meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, December 23, 2013.
We clearly see the "new" white phone next to the existing black one.
(photo: Netanyahu's Facebook-page - Click to enlarge)

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
settle into their seats in Netanyahu’s office, January 2, 2014.
(Photo: US Department of State - Click to enlarge)

From the picture above we can make a close-up of the white telephone, which looks a bit different than the one in the first picture. It has no red overlay around the buttons, but instead a red lining around the display and red stripes on the back of the handset. Unfortunately the red letters above the display aren't readable:

The red markings and the red cords indicate that this phone is used like what in the US is called a "red phone". That's a telephone which is connected to a highly secured network for communicating with top level policymakers and military commanders. This doesn't necessarily mean that such a phone itself has to be capable of encrypting the voice data, that can also be done by an encryption device at the internal (secure) phone switch.

As the white telephone in Netanyahu's office is a rather large device, it could be possible that it can do the necessary encryption, although secure phones from other countries (like the STE used in the US) are often even bigger, so we cannot decide upon that.

Israel has its own manifacturer of secure communications equipment: the defense contractor Elbit Systems, which was formerly part of the Tadiran conglomerate. There are no pictures available of phones mabe by Tadiran or Elbit, so we cannot say whether the white telephone in the office of Netanyahu was made by this company.


The white telephone isn't actually very new, it is already in this picture from October 2011. Together with the black one from Telrad, the white phone is also on a side table next to another desk of Netanyahu, as we can see for example in this screenshot:

Prime Minister Netanyahu in one of his offices, October 9, 2013.
(photo: YouTube screen capture)

With the white phone not being completely new, it seems that it has been placed on Netanyahu's desk and in the seating corner on purpose: to show that the prime minister is always in charge and in contact with the military. Because of security reasons, it's rather unusual to see secure telephones with their classification markings in highly visible places like these ceremonial offices where guests are received and the press is allowed in.

Update #1:
A reader of this weblog has recognized the white telephone as a Coral DKT-2320 made by the Israeli company Tadiran Telecom. Although this is a spin-off of the same Tadiran from which Elbit Systems emerged, this is a common office phone without security features. Therefore the red markings and the red cords from the one in Netanyahu's office most likely indicate that this phone is connected to a switch where the calls are encrypted in bulk.

Update #2:
The phone with the red cord and the red surroundings of the buttons we saw in the first picture, now also appeared in two photos from a team within the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Intelligence Corps’ Unit 9900, which were published in a IDF blog posting from April 2, 2015:

In this photo we have a better look at the "red phone", which appears to be a distinct version of the generic white ones which are next to the other work stations. This telephone is different though from the Tadiran Coral DKT-2320 mentioned above.

Update #3:
On December 29, 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported about NSA's spying activities against Israel, saying that they had "a cyber implant in Israeli networks that gave the NSA access to communications within the Israeli prime minister’s office".

The red phone that was NOT on the Hotline

(UPDATED: March 5, 2016)

Today, it's exactly 50 years ago that the famous Washington-Moscow Hotline became operational. Allthough this link has always been for written communications only, many people think there are red telephones on the Hotline, as this is often depicted in popular culture.

One wide-spread image is from the article about the Hotline on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It shows a non-dial red telephone which is on display in the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta, Georgia:

(photo uploaded to Wikimedia by user Piotrus under CC-BY-SA)

Much of the confusion about the real purpose of this phone was due to the fact that in this picture, the text on the plate below the phone wasn't readable. But now, upon request of this weblog, the curator of the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum kindly provided the text, which reads as follows:

RED PHONE
During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the “red phone” was a hotline to the Kremlin in Moscow. A U.S. president could pick up the phone and speak directly to Soviet leaders in times of crisis.
Reproduction

The text is about a red phone used for the Hotline, but more important is the fact that the telephone which is on display, is just a reproduction. This is also confirmed by the curator, who said that this phone is a prop that the exhibition designer wanted to use.


Now it's clear that the actual red phone in the picture was never used on the Hotline between Washington and Moscow, nor on any other secure telephone network (allthough red phone sets were regularly used for predecessors of the Defense Red Switch Network, which is the main secure voice network of the US military).

The picture on Wikipedia shows just an ordinary phone set, like the ones that are quite commonly used for emergency telephone lines of any kind which don't require a dialing capability. Probably because the designer of the exhibition at the Jimmy Carter Museum also thought there were red telephones on the Hotline, such a common phone set was used to represent this.

For people visiting the museum it must have looked like a confirmation of their idea of the red phone hotline. When someone uploaded a picture of this phone to Wikipedia in March 2011, it soon found its way to articles about the Washington-Moscow Hotline in eleven languages, most of them erroneously saying the Hotline also having a voice capability. It was only after research done for this weblog, which resulted in an extensive article about the Hotline last year, that some of the Wikipedia articles were corrected.

UPDATE:
After the issue of the wrong attribution of the red telephone was raised here on this weblog, the Jimmy Carter Library noticed this, and replaced the description of the phone as of March 2016 with the following text, which is now accurate:

"During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the “red phone” was used to communicate with U.S. military command centers in a crisis. It was not the hotline to Soviet leaders, as is often shown in movies."

What the Washington-Moscow Hotline looks nowadays: the terminal room
at the Pentagon showing the secure computer link equipment
(photo: www.army.mil, 2013)

US State Department red phones

(Updated: March 7, 2017)

On February 1st, senator John Kerry became the new US Secretary of State, succeeding Hillary Clinton, who held this office since January 2009. John Kerry is just two weeks in office, but we already have a nice picture of him in his new office:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks by telephone with
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from his Inner Office
at the Department of State, February 5, 2013.
(State Department photo)

This picture is taken in the so called inner or private office, which is next to the bigger ceremonial office, where the secretary of state is most often seen, receiving and talking to his guests. The smaller private office is used for the actual work, and therefore that's also where the phones are (the US president also has a rarely seen private office, next to the ceremonial Oval Office).

On the desk we see a Cisco 7975 unified IP phone with a 7916 expansion module. With a close look we can see that the phone has a yellow faceplate, instead of the standard silver one, which indicates that it's part of the new, highly secure Executive Voice over Secure IP-network. This network connects the president with all major decision makers.

The phone which secretary Kerry is using in the picture, is a high end Avaya/Lucent 6424D phone set, which is part of the internal State Department telephone network. This phone can also be seen in many pictures of the ceremonial office. Finally, we see a really large videoteleconferencing (VTC) screen with camera on top.

Updates:

From the FBI investigations in the case of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton using a private e-mail server for government business, we learn that the secretary of state's suit of offices on the 7th floor of the State Department building, known as "Mahogany Row", is secured as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF).
Within that area, the bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) has a post called Post 1, where secretary Clinton's BlackBerry was kept in a desk drawer. State Department personnel was not allowed to bring their mobile devices into Post 1 or the SCIF. Clinton had no computer in her office, but she used to check her e-mail using a personal BlackBerry or a personal iPad on the building's 8th floor balcony outside the SCIF.
SCIF's were also created in Clinton's Whitehaven residence in Washington, D.C. and her home in Chappaqua, NY, but both rooms were not always secured, with doors left open and assistants bringing their personal laptops inside.

It was also reported that secretary Clinton preferred to read documents on paper rather than on a screen, so e-mails and other files were often printed out and provided to her either at her office or home, where they were delivered in a diplomatic pouch by a security agent.
However, her deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin, like many State Department officials, found the government networks to be cumbersome, making printing documents there troubling. As a result, she sometimes transferred e-mails from her unclassified State Department account to either her Yahoo account, or her account on Clinton’s private server, and printed the e-mails from there.

After Donald Trump became president of the United States in January 2017, rooms on Mahogany Row were rebuilt to create an "office space for a new team and a new concept of how State’s nerve center would function" - a concept that wasn't shared with most State Department people though.

It seems the Cisco phone and the VTC-screen are installed quite recently, because when former secretary of state Hillary Clinton showed her inner office in May 2010, there was at least one other type of phone, which was there already when Madeleine Albright held this office:

Video still of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showing her
private office to Scott Pelley of the CBS show 60 Minutes.
(click to watch the video!)

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in her private office
(Date unknown)

In both these pictures, we see a big white Integrated Services Telephone (IST) at the lower right corner of the bookshelfs. This futuristic looking phone was designed by Electrospace Systems Inc. and later on produced by Raytheon. It was part of the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN), which is the main secure telephone network of the US military.

As we saw in an earlier posting, the president had a newer version of this phone, the IST-2, on his desk in the Oval Office. In 2011 that phone was also replaced by a Cisco 7975 IP phone, just like the one which is now at the desk of the secretary of state. So it looks like these new IP phones of the top secret executive VoIP network are gradually replacing the so called red phones of the DRSN, which is still an old fashioned switched telephone network.

The phones of the Defense Red Switch Network are sometimes called "red phones", because in the sixties and seventies, the telephone sets connected to predecessors of this network were often red. A nice example of such an early day red phone is the one in this picture:

This is a very common phone without rotary dial, made by ITT. Phones like this are still available today, for example for hotlines or emergency lines of any kind. This phone was probably used for a predecessor of the DRSN, like the Automatic Secure Voice Communications Network (AUTOSEVOCOM). This is indicated by the label, which says: "Up to TOP SECRET Information may be processed on this system" with next to it, the eagle from the seal of the United Stated and the words "Bureau of Diplomatic Security":

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) is an agency of the State Department, which is responsible for protecting US embassies and diplomatic personnel and securing critical information systems, like for example the telephone networks.

Therefore, the red telephone in the picture was probably used for a secure telephone connection at one of the major embassies, at the State Department operations center, or maybe even in the office of the secretary of state of that time!



Links
- 1916-2016: History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the United States Department of State
- Washington Examiner: 21 things we learned from the FBI notes on Clinton's emails

The Israeli prime minister's red phone

(Updated: December 29, 2015)

Based upon popular culture, many people think both the US and Russian presidents have a red telephone on their desks, as part of the famous Hotline between both countries. In a previous article we showed that the Washington-Moscow Hotline is not even a telephone line, let alone there are red phones at both ends. But, as we can see in the picture below, the prime minister of Isreal does have a red phone on his desk:

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) and defence
minister Ehud Barak hold talks in the prime minister's office
(Photo: Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry/Flash90, November 2012)

The dark gray phone at the right, which Netanyahu is using, is a high-end Nortel M3904 executive phone - a model which is also used at the NSA headquaters and at the office of the British prime minister. Nortel was a big Canadian telephone equipment manufacturer, but was dissolved in 2009. The Enterprise Voice and Data division of Nortel was bought by the US telecommications company Avaya (formerly Lucent)

The red telephone seems to be a phone from the UD-series of the Taiwanese manufacturer Uniphone, but remarkable is that it has no cord! That makes it looks like this phone was placed there more like a prop, demonstrating the (military/nuclear) power of the Israeli prime minister.

However that may be, in the video below we get an ever closer look at the red phone set. There it sits next to two black phones, one used by Netanyahu for calling the Russian president:

Israeli prime minister Netanyahu calling the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin
thanking for Russia's assistance in fighting the fire in Israel's North
(December 3, 2010)

The flat black phone is the Telrad Executive Phone 79-100-0000 from the Israeli telecom equipment manufacturer Telrad. This phone can also be seen at the sitting corner of the prime minister's office and in the office of the defense minister. Therefore that phone must be part of the internal private branch exchange (PBX) system of both ministries. At least at the desk of the prime minister they were replaced by the Nortel M3904 by November 2012.

It's not clear what the red telephone is for, but a likely option is that it's connected to a military command and control telephone network, just like the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN) in the United States, for which long ago also red phone sets were used.

> See also: Another "red phone" for the Israeli prime minister

Update:
On December 29, 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported about NSA's spying activities against Israel, saying that they had "a cyber implant in Israeli networks that gave the NSA access to communications within the Israeli prime minister’s office".

Commander Petraeus' phones

Last week, David Petraeus resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), after admitting he had an extramarital affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell. This led to many news reports and also many pictures on the internet.

Some of them give a nice look at the telecommunications equipment which general Petraeus used when, from July 2010 to July 2011, he was commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan:

ISAF Commander Petraeus being interviewed by Paula Broadwell
(Photo: paulabroadwell.com, date unknown)

In this picture we see the following telecommunication devices:

Video conferencing screens
On Petraeus' desk we see two Centric 1700 MXP video teleconferencing screens, made by the Norwegian manufacturer Tandberg. In 2010 this company was bought by Cisco Systems, and so the 1700 MXP screens are often used by US military officials. They are equipped with a HD camera and have a widescreen LCD screen, which operates both as a video conferencing system and PC display.

STE
Left of the personal computer screen we see a Secure Terminal Equipment (STE), made by L3 Communications. The STE is a phone capable of encrypting calls up to the level of Top Secret/SCI. This phone can be used to have a secure line to anyone with a similar device.

IST-2
Right behind the chair of commander Petraeus is an Integrated Services Telephone 2 (IST-2), made by Telecore Inc. This is a so called "red phone", which is part of the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN), connecting all mayor US command centers and many other military facilities. This is the primary telephone network for military command and control communications.

VoIP phones
In the picture above we see three of four Voice over IP (VoIP) phones: at the right end a Cisco SPA and the other three being phones from the Cisco 7970-series. It's likely each of these phones is part of a separate telephone network. Nowadays many military phone networks use Voice over IP, often with Cisco IP phone sets. These phones have no encryption capability, but their voice data networks can easily be secured with specific network encryptors.
In the picture below we can see al four VoIP phones, neatly aligned on a shelf and with an organizational chart at the left side of them:

General David Petraeus in his office at the ISAF headquarters in Kabul.
(Photo: Adam Ferguson/The New York Times, March 8, 2011)

Printers
Also in this picture we see three printers on a table at the left side of the room. Apparently there are separate printers for different computer networks, in order to keep documents of different classification levels separated.

At the upper left corner of the front of at least the first two printers we can see the colored classification labels: a green label for Unclassified materials on the printer in the foreground and a red label for materials classified as Secret on the printer in the middle. The third printer seems to have no marking, but we can assume this one is for Top Secret (orange label) or Classified SCI (yellow label) documents.


This kind of communications equipment is typical for US military commanders in similar positions. Therefore one can quite easily recognize it also on other pictures of American military commanders and command centers. Contrarily, pictures in which we can see the equipment used in Petraeus' last office, that of director of the CIA, are very rare - but we keep looking!


UPDATE February 5, 2013:

A reader of this weblog kindly noticed me of another picture of general Petraeus in his office, with clearly visible another kind of communications device. It's an HH2G Tetrapol handheld radio device, sitting in a desktop adapter, so it can be more or less used like a phone:

General David Petraeus in his office in ISAF headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan
(Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images Europe, October 21, 2010)

The Tetrapol secure voice and data radio network was installed in 2004 by Cogent Defence and Security Networks, the UK operating company of EADS Defence and Communications Systems Group. This trunked Tetrapol ISAF Command Network, with end-to-end security, provides command communications coverage for the NATO Area of Responsibility in the Kabul region.