The Army presented two two-star generals and three intelligence specialists Thursday to defend its $2.5 billion battlefield intelligence processor, which has failed operational tests and has been criticized by soldiers as being too slow to analyze the enemy and help find buried bombs in Afghanistan.
In a news conference at the Pentagon, the Army specialists lauded the Defense Common Ground System, an array of computers, servers and programs that is the ArmyÂ’s principal processor of huge amounts of battlefield data.
The Washington Times first reported in July about an internal battle within the Army. Commanders and intelligence officers in Afghanistan complained in messages to Army headquarters about the Defense Common Ground System.
Some asked for permission to buy Palantir, an off-the-shelf software platform that specializes in linking disparate bits of information to form a clear picture of the battlefield.
In some cases, Army officials involved in shielding the Defense Common Ground System from possible budget cuts viewed Palantir as a competitor and worked to shut off the requests.
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