PLA MISSIONS BEYOND TAIWAN Compiled by Marc Miller The National Bureau of Asian Research KEY INSIGHTS:• The PLA is being assigned and training for an increasing variety of missions, including nontraditional battlefields such as outer space and cyber space, as well as nontraditional functions, such as United Nations peacekeeping operations.• These new PLA missions have created a large gap and resulted in tension vis-à-vis PLA capabilities and traditional missions such as internal security, as well as major questions about operational and doctrinal integration.• Clearly, China's neighbors are watching the modernization of the PLA and the expansion and redefinition of its missions very closely, especially those affecting Chinese border regions.On September 26, 2008, more than 70 leading experts on China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) convened at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, for a 2-day discussion on "PLA Missions Beyond Taiwan." The 2008 PLA Conference, conducted by The National Bureau of Asian Research, the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, and the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, sought to look beyond the PLA's primary focus on Taiwan to explore China's other military missions and objectives.Analysis of China's armed forces tends to focus on its role in a potential Taiwan scenario, which is understandable, given that the PLA retains a central mission in the reunification of Taiwan or prevention of its de jure independence. However, it is also becoming clear that China's interests and foreign policy objectives are growing in number and complexity in tandem with its increasing power and international stature. As a result, it is reasonable to expect the PLA to be asked to perform a wider variety of missions in support of Chinese interests and objectives than it has traditionally, from disaster and humanitarian relief and United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKO); to counterterrorism and border defense; to outer space and cyber space security; and extending even to the protection of ethnic Chinese abroad.With this in mind, the conference participants' core objectives were to examine the interplay between China's armed forces and its complex foreign policy and international security environment in order to understand the requirements of several newly emerging PLA missions, and to consider how these specific interactions affect policy towards Taiwan and the wider Asia-Pacific region. They Report Documentation PageForm Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferso...

Virtual Private Networking is a new communications technology that promises lower cost, more secure wide area communications by leveraging public networks such as the Internet. Sandia National Laboratories has embraced the technology for interconnecting remote sites to Sandia's corporate network, and for enabling remote access users for both dial-up and broadband access.2

A major portion of the Wireless Networking Project at Sandia National Laboratories over the last few years has been to examine IEEE 802.11 wireless networking for possible use at Sandia and if practical, introduce this technology. This project team deployed 802.11a, b, and g Wireless Local Area Networking at Sandia. This report examines the basics of wireless networking and captures key results from project tests and experiments. It also records project members' thoughts and designs on wireless LAN architecture and security issues. It documents some of the actions and milestones of this project, including pilot and production deployment of wireless networking equipment, and captures the team's rationale behind some of the decisions made. Finally, the report examines lessons learned, future directions, and conclusions. AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank the following people for their contributions to various aspects of this project:

This document highlights the Discom% Distance computing and communication team activities at the 2000 Supercomputing conference in Dallas Texas. This conference is sponsored by the IEEE and ACM. Sandia has participation in the conference has now spanned a decade, for the last five years Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Lab and Lawrence Livermore National Lab have come together at the conference under the DOE'S ASCI, Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiatives, Program rubric to demonstrate ASCI'S emerging capabilities in computational science and our combined expertise in high performance computer science and communication networking developments within the program. At SC 2000, DISCOM demonstrated a in6astructure. DISCOM2 uses this forum to demonstrate and focus communication and pre-standard implementation of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, the first gigabyte per second data IP network transfer application, and VPN technology that enabled a remote Distributed Resource Management tools demonstration. Additionally a national OC48 POS network was constructed to support applications running between the show floor and home facilities. This network created the opportunity to test PSE's Parallel File Transfer Protocol (F'FTP) across a network that had similar speed and distances as the then proposed DISCOM WAN. The SCINET SC2000 showcased wireless networking and the networking team had the opportunity to explore this emerging technology while on the booth. This paper documents those accomplishments, discusses the details of their convention exhibit floor. We also supported the production networking needs ofthe implementation, and describes how these demonstrations supports DISCOM overall strategies in high performance computing networking.

New network based authentication mechanisms are beginning to be implemented in industry. This project investigated different authentication technologies to see if and how Sandia might benefit from them. It also investigated how these mechanisms can integrate with the Sandia Two-Factor Authentication Project. The results of these investigations and a network authentication path forward strategy are documented in this report. 4 AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank the following people for their contributions to various aspects of this project: