Army, Air Force collaboration leads to improved SIPR email service

by Maj. Brooke Brander
Air Force Space Command Public Affairs

10/2/2013 - Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. -- In continued collaboration between the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army, the entire Air Force will migrate to Secure Internet Protocol Router, Department of Defense Enterprise Email over the next year.

Approximately 150,000 SIPR Network users will migrate to the Defense Information Systems Agency SIPR email enterprise services over fiscal year 2014. The Air National Guard will be first to transition to the SIPR email enterprise.

"The SIPR DEE migration allows the Air Force to leverage an enterprise JIE capability and improve secure email delivery services," said Brig. General Kevin Wooton, Air Force Space Command director of communications. "The migration to SIPR DEE provides significant operational efficiencies and allows the Air Force to focus on our cyber mission sets rather than email infrastructure."

The migration to SIPR DEE will reduce Air Force Operations and Maintenance cost while modernizing infrastructure. In addition, the migration will converge infrastructure services and make available enterprise services, providing operational capabilities that will enhance the Air Force cyber mission.

"The continued spirit of cooperation and partnership between the Air Force, Army, and DISA as we move toward JIE is greatly appreciated," said General William L. Shelton, Commander of Air Force Space Command. "The SIPR DEE migration will allow us to more efficiently use our cyber professionals, ensuring the cyber domain is secure as we continue to operationalize capabilities."

The SIPR DEE migration is another step toward the Air Force's move toward the Joint Information Environment architecture.

"The Air Force is very committed to JIE and we want to make sure we do it the right way," said General Shelton. "There are great opportunities that the Air Force is leveraging with SIPR DEE; however, there are still challenges with enterprise services on the NIPR Net specifically in the area of cost efficiencies."

The SIPR DEE migration is in addition to the new architecture-sharing and modernization agreement among the Air Force, the Army and the DISA focused on next generation network configurations and regional security stacks that will increase bandwidth and network security and avoid more than $1 billion in future costs.