This article originally appeared on Government Technology Insider.
Last month, the Sigma Defense team had the incredible opportunity to attend the annual AFCEA West Conference. Hosted each year in San Diego, California, its organizers call AFCEA West the preeminent sea services event on the West Coast. But it’s much more than that, really. It’s an opportunity for many of the military’s senior decision-makers across the U.S. Navy and other services to come together to discuss their largest challenges in the single most important AOR on the globe today.
The INDOPACOM AOR contains not one – but two – of America’s near-peer and peer adversaries. These pacing threats have driven our nation’s military strategy and priorities since a strategic shift away from the asymmetrical threats of the War on Terror. These adversaries represent the largest threats to our national security because of their advanced military capabilities that are beginning to challenge our technological superiority across numerous domains.
Much of the rapid advancement these adversaries have made is a result of their systems and government. Since the government controls industry, they’re able to move quickly with little concern about fairness, corruption, or anti-trust issues. This has created a unique challenge for our military – how to move quickly to keep pace while still adhering to our culture and principles.
This need to acquire new capabilities quickly to keep pace with near-peer adversaries cut across practically every conversation and presentation at this year’s AFCEA West. In fact, the show’s main theme asked, “Are Acquisition and Readiness on Pace to Meet Global Security Demands?”
Imperative to the military’s efforts to prepare for these pacing threats is CJADC2, the ongoing military initiative to enable seamless data sharing and connectivity across the joint force.
Why is CJADC2 so Important for Today’s Military?
As Marine LtGen (Ret) Dennis A. Crall recently explained to the Government Technology Insider, “…CJADC2 is about warfighting. It seeks to use the ever-increasing, disparate data flows across all domains, reveal non-intuitive insight via automated and AI-enabled processes, and deliver the results to the U.S. and Coalition warfighter at unprecedented speed.”
However, there are three large questions that the military is still facing regarding its CJADC2 initiatives:
- Is the right data getting to the right place at the right time and in a way that benefits the warfighter?
- Can we connect everything together to generate and disseminate actionable intelligence?
- Is the defense industrial base (DIB) meeting its promise to the military to provide effective solutions to the warfighter that deliver technological overmatch?
Let’s look at the first two of those three questions individually. We’ll explore why they’re important to the future force and examine the roadblocks keeping the military from answering “yes” to both.
Question One: Can we Get the Data to the Right Place?
One overarching technology trend we’ve seen across countries and industries is the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and endpoints.
Today, sensors are proliferating across ISR aircraft, unmanned vehicles, and other platforms to generate more battlefield information and intelligence. They’re being developed and deployed to constantly gauge the health and maintenance of individual vehicle parts and components. They’re even being leveraged to monitor fuel levels constantly and remotely. These sensors are increasing in number and can now be found practically everywhere on the battlefield – especially in places and use cases where highly-dangerous manned activities can be replaced with sensors.
This proliferation of sensors is ultimately a positive. It keeps military personnel out of dangerous environments and scenarios. It creates massive amounts of data that can be analyzed for actionable insights. It also creates resiliency and redundancy – ensuring that data is always generated even if some sensors are destroyed or denied.
But this also comes with challenges. The sheer amount of data generated creates a bottleneck, forcing agencies to bring data back from the battlefield where analysts can hunt through haystack after haystack to find the precious few needles that will benefit the warfighter. Only then can those actionable insights be sent back to the warfighter in the field – effectively creating a disparity between the data they’re receiving and the real-world situational awareness they desperately need.
This is the goal of the CJADC2 initiative – to connect every sensor to every shooter on the battlefield and make it easier for military personnel to share data, regardless of which service they represent. It will also make it easier to share that data between the joint force. But none of that matters if the data being generated can’t be rapidly and effectively analyzed for actionable insights, and the most important intelligence is then sent to the warfighters who need it.
This is where the concept of sensor fusion and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) at the edge is needed.
Leveraging edge computing and AI/ML, the military could create a scenario where intelligence from multiple, disparate sensors is generated and immediately analyzed by software at the tactical edge where it can then be shared directly with the warfighter. AI/ML wouldn’t necessarily make autonomous decisions, but rather aggregate data from all sensors, sift through it rapidly for the most important intelligence, and then make recommendations to the warfighter based on that data.
The military has continued to make slow and steady progress toward the CJADC2 goal of connecting every shooter to every sensor. However, the warfighter will not benefit from access to all of that sensor data if sensor fusion, edge computing, AI, and other solutions are not available to analyze the data and present it in a clear and actionable way. Pushing these solutions out to the edge is difficult as it often requires infrastructure and information technology skill sets that are not typically found in forward tactical environments. Innovations are required to allow these highly complex technologies to thrive in the operational environment.
Question Two: Can we Connect it All Together?
As the warfighter becomes more dependent on applications and advanced technologies on the battlefield, keeping them connected becomes essential. This means that the military needs resilient, redundant networks capable of delivering connectivity even if elements of the network are degraded or denied.
Incredible advancements have been made in new network and connectivity technologies. In space, we’ve seen the introduction of new innovative spacecraft and satellite constellations that circle our planet in increasingly close proximity to Earth’s surface. We’ve also seen the introduction of mobile mesh networking solutions capable of meeting basic connectivity requirements through the creation of rapidly deployed, ad-hoc networks.
All of these technologies could and should be brought to bear for the warfighter – but concerns about diligence and security often hold the military back.
For the military to enjoy truly resilient and redundant networks that are “always on” for the warfighter, they will need to be less concerned about their ability to control, manage, and secure networks. If they’re in a near-peer conflict, they’ll need to use whatever connectivity options and networks are available – even if they’re commercial networks. They’ll also need to bake redundancy into their networks by establishing resilient, multi-modal comms – even if some communications methods aren’t the most sophisticated or emergent.
But just having redundant and resilient networks isn’t enough – especially if data can’t flow between disparate networks and different systems. This is why software and IT modernization is needed to open systems up, and middleware that allows systems to talk needs to be developed.
Finally, the military has to operate under the assumption that networks will either be denied or degraded. This means they need to put things in place at the edge that allow soldiers to “sense, make-sense, and act” even when comms go down.
Not the Desired Answer
Unfortunately, the military still cannot answer “yes” to the first two of the three questions that I posed at the beginning of this article. That’s because CJADC2 is complex and requires advancement and innovation on numerous fronts.
The benefits the military seeks to achieve from its CJADC2 initiatives require resilient, multi-modal networks that are always on to keep the warfighter constantly connected. They require sensor fusion and advanced AI and ML capabilities to make data actionable. And they require integrated solutions that incorporate all of these technologies in a way that allows for new capabilities and applications to be deployed to the edge rapidly and securely.
In my next article, I’ll explore the third and final question and discuss why integration is key to reaping the benefits of CJADC2.
The author, Matt Jones, is President and CEO of Sigma Defense.
