The Army tackled one of its toughest challenges: Creating a common operating picture for all of its allied partners.

The recent Yama Sakura 85 exercise demonstrated how the Army, the Australians and the Japanese could securely share information by using an architecture based on zero trust principles.

Col. Rett Burroughs, the chief information officer & G6 for the Army’s I Corps, said over the course of the 10-to-12 day training event last December, the Army successfully brought their allied leaders onto a single and secured network at the tactical edge.

“What we are looking at is properly being distributed across the entirety of the Pacific. We could have a command and control node anywhere in Australia, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Hawaii, Guam or Alaska, and back here at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington so that now every node has roles and responsibilities. How do we ensure that conductivity happens across all of those different nodes that are very disparate and spread out? And then how do we leverage the technology of transport to ensure that we’re getting applications all the way to the edge?” Burroughs said on Ask the CIO. “We spent months preparing to ensure we had right safeguards in place. In its simplest form, in the application for the warfighter, which is definitely my area of concern, it brought the Australians and the Japanese together because before it was the Australians and the Americans, and then it was the Americans and the Japanese. The Australians couldn’t be in the same Tactical Operations Center as the Japanese. Now we have the ability for the first Australian division commander to talk directly with senior generals from the Japanese Ground Force Command.”

Burroughs said in previous exercises, the Americans and Australians would talk, and then the Americans and Japanese would talk, with the Army acting as the “go-between” for the Australians and Japanese. And Burroughs readily admits everyone knows what happens when you play the game of telephone.

“Our goal here was to establish one common operating picture and the ability to voice video chat, and share specific information,” he said. “The application of this proved critical in the ability for staff to make informed recommendations, and for commanders to make informed decisions. We weren’t just slinging all this data just because commanders need and want everything.”

Broader application than just the Army

The success of the Yama Sakura 85 exercise proved this shared network and zero trust concept for more than just the Army, but any federal organization can take the basic concepts to create a common operating picture.

John Sahlin, the vice president of cyber solutions for General Dynamics-IT, which supported the Army with integration expertise, said these same approaches could help agencies such as FEMA, which has to create shared networks to help cities or states recover from disasters.

“I’ve been fascinated by this problem set ever since I deployed for the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts back about 15 years ago. We started thinking about a military mission for that humanitarian assistance effort and it turned very quickly into an interagency and even local government support mission,” Sahlin said. “We had good communications. We had a good sight picture. We had good mapping data, which nobody else in the area did. We had to quickly share that data with first responders, the local hospital, the parish sheriff, non-government organizations like the Red Cross. I think that these are lessons of zero trust at the tactical edge for information sharing to inform that on scene commander, are lessons that can be learned, not only for the military at the tactical edge, but for any organization that has field-deployed, forward-deployed organizations that need to share data to execute a mission rapidly and make those changes dynamically with first responders with interagency support, things like that.”

Burroughs added this approach of creating a distributed network supported by zero trust tools isn’t just important for the tactical edge, but for Army commanders in garrison or commands who have to coordinate with the National Guard or local first responder communities or anyone outside of the service.

“Now we don’t have to have these disparate networks that do not talk to each other because of classification and policy, which you clearly went through during the Katrina catastrophe,” he said. “Now what we’re doing is we’re taking need to figure this out on the fly out during a catastrophe. We’re actually getting ahead of it now by addressing it before the next catastrophe. So when something does come in competition or crisis, we’re actually able to deal with it in a methodical way instead of reacting.”

Shift toward data-centricity

In many ways what Burroughs and Sahlin are describing is how the Army, and really every agency, must be more of a data-centric organization.

Lt. Col. Roberto Nunez, the chief of signal services support for Army I Corps, said the implementation of zero trust capabilities forces the end users to shift that data culture because they have to tag and label information much more specifically and consistently.

“You can say ‘all right, here’s all my data that I want to share, all my users that are also tagged and labeled as well as what they’re authorized to use and what they cannot use. Therefore, you can plug in with other mission partners to share that information and you can create that common environment moving forward, whether it’s joint coalition, at least from a DoD point of view,” he said. “If you want third parties to join in, whether it’s corporate America, academics, other organizations or other government agencies, you can do that if everything’s data-centric, labeled and tagged accordingly. This is what is great about zero trust.”

Burroughs said planning for the next Yama Sakura 87 exercise in December already is underway. But he said these capabilities aren’t turned on during the exercise and then turned off. The network is always on and therefore the Army is always iterating how to make secure information sharing better, faster and easier.

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Phil Dieppa, a senior services engineer for Army I Corps, said what the Yama Sakura 87 exercise and other demonstrations have shown the service that the “come as you are” model works because of the zero trust capabilities.

“The great thing about zero trust is that we don’t trust anything until we explicitly have that conversation and say that ‘I trust you.’ Once we do that, then we can start communicating and making those services available one at a time,” he said.

The post How the Army is always testing, training on zero trust first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The Defense Innovation Unit and the Army are joining forces to ramp up the service’s nuclear power capabilities. The Army is looking to develop and test a prototype of a nuclear reactor as part of the service’s push to bring nuclear energy to its installations. The service is heavily dependent on off-site electricity providers to obtain energy and conduct its missions. If successful, these micro-reactor power plants could be operational by 2030. The Army’s effort along with the Air Force’s microreactor pilot are paving the way for deployments of nuclear power technology across military installations.
  (Army seeking to develop nuclear reactor prototype - Defense Innovation Unit)
• Former senior government officials are joining the growing calls against Schedule F. The former officials from the Bush administration said civil service reform is necessary, as is holding federal employees accountable. But they said Schedule F is not the answer. The now-revoked policy from the Trump administration aimed to reclassify feds to make them easier to fire. In a letter to House and Senate leadership this week, the former officials are calling on Congress to pass more protections for government workers in national security and law enforcement. The letter to lawmakers comes in light of former President Trump’s plans to revive a policy akin to Schedule F if he’s reelected.
  (Ensuring the accountability of the federal civil service: An urgent call to action - Former Bush administration officials)
• Nurses at the Department of Veterans Affairs are pointing to staffing shortages that are making it harder to treat veterans. The VA employs 122,000 nurses, which is the largest nursing workforce in the U.S. That is also a record high for the department. But the National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) and National Nurses United (NNU) said the VA is leaving thousands of positions unfilled and spreading nurses thin. Irma Westmoreland is NNU’s vice president and a registered nurse who works at the VA medical center in Augusta, Georgia. She said VA nurses are being assigned more patients, which is contributing to burnout. “We feel that we are chronically understaffed in nursing, and that is erodes the patient care that we’re able to provide for our veterans," Westmoreland said.
  (VA touts its largest nursing workforce, but union says they're 'chronically understaffed' - Federal News Network)
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development has put the help wanted sign out for a new chief information officer. Beth Niblock, who has been CIO since July 2021, transitioned to a new role in May, the senior adviser for disaster management. One reason for the move is Niblock was a political appointee and HUD is moving the CIO's position back to a career job. The CIO job announcement closes June 13. Sairah Ijaz, who has been deputy CIO since March 2023, is the acting CIO until HUD hires a permanent career technology leader.
  (HUD searching for new CIO - USAjobs.gov)
• DoD's chief information officer is stepping down. John Sherman is moving on to a new role at Texas A&M University, where he will serve as dean of the Bush School of Government. Sherman has led the CIO's office since December 2021. Before that, he was the intelligence community's CIO. Defense officials said they still have not decided who will fill the DoD CIO role when Sherman departs at the end of this month.
  (DoD CIO John Sherman to step down at end of June - Federal News Network)
• Starting in August, service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses will no longer be able to self-certify status for set-aside or sole source prime or subcontracts. The Small Business Administration's final rule issued yesterday requires companies to obtain approval through the SBA's Veteran Small Business Certification Program (VetCert). Without this certification, agencies and prime vendors will not receive socio-economic credit for contracting with these firms. Previously, SDVOSBs could self-certify they met the criteria, but Congress changed the requirements in the 2024 Defense authorization bill. The rule becomes effective August 5, but SBA is accepting comments through July 8 and reserves the right to withdraw the rule if it receives enough significant adverse concerns.
  (SBA takes self-certification for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses mostly off the table - Federal Register)
• Senate Democrats are heightening their push to create better access to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments and medications. New legislation that the lawmakers introduced this week rolls together several previous bills aiming to expand the fertility treatments. Under the bill, there would be increased access to IVF coverage through the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, as well as coverage for veterans. The new bill comes in light of a growing push from federal employees to offer more fertility-related health benefits. The Senate is slated to vote on the Right to IVF Act next week.
  (Right to IVF Act - Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.))
• The Defense Department is continuing its push to consolidate its purchasing for wireless services. A new memo from the DoD CIO told all DoD components that they will need to use the Navy’s new “Spiral 4” wireless contract vehicle to buy their mobile services for employees in the continental U.S. The Navy awarded seven separate indefinite, delivery indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts last month, including to the big three wireless providers. All together, those IDIQs are worth up to $2.7 billion over the next decade.
  (Memorandum for the Senior Pentagon Leadership - DoD)
• The Postal Service is putting the first of its custom-built, next-generation delivery vehicles to work. USPS received its first Next-Generation Delivery Vehicles from the manufacturer Oshkosh Defense. They are the first of about 60,000 custom vehicles USPS will buy over the coming years. Electric vehicles will make up at least 75% of the next-generation fleet. USPS is sending its first round of vehicles to a large facility in Athens, Georgia.
  (First NGDVs delivered to the Postal Service - National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association )
• The Marine Corps has opened a new center to focus on the future of war. The General Robert B. Neller Center for Wargaming and Analysis, named after the 37th Commandant of the Marine Corps, will help the service develop capabilities through experimentation, doctrine and policy review, and science and technology examination. The center will be maintained by the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory and will feature next-generation technology, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. The center is located on the Marine Corps University campus near Washington, D.C.
  (Marine Corps opens up advanced wargaming center - DVIDS)

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Maj. Gen. Jeth Rey ended his three-year tenure as the director of the Army’s Network Cross Functional team last week. When he started in 2021, Rey laid out a four-pronged vision to move the Army toward a data-centric environment.

Rey, who moved to a new job at the Pentagon as the director of architecture, operations, networks and space at the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-6, said the Army has made tremendous progress to become a data-centric organization over the last three years.

“The problem said that we had in the Army, and across DoD, is we didn’t have a data problem, we had a data management problem,” Rey said in an interview at the Army TEMS conference. “Therefore, we tried to find a way to get to data centric using agnostic transport to move the data as freely as possible to where it needs to go, a cloud-enabled asset to catch and move the data, and then, obviously, you needed a layered security architecture. We wanted a multi-level security architecture where we can move the data from one classification to another seamlessly.”

Brig. Gen. Patrick Ellis, the former deputy chief of staff, G-3 for the Army Europe-Africa took over for Rey in early June.

Under the Network Cross Functional team, Rey’s four pillars were:

• Agnostic transport
• Moving to a data-centric environment from a network-centric environment
• Implementing a multi-level security architecture to include a zero trust architecture
• Ensuring cybersecurity is considered early as part of system development

Rey said he worked closely with Army Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications Tactical (PEO-C3T) and the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) Center in the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command to take the vision and make it into a reality.

“My role is setting the vision and then keeping the momentum going forward. I would set a timeframe that I would want to see a part of the project achieved, and then I just continue to drive the momentum going forward,” Rey said. “We are the influencers as the Network Cross Functional team to get to the end state and keep people focusing on track.”

Army’s transport is now multi-threaded

The Army demonstrated its progress in advancing these capabilities over the past few years at Project Convergence and NetModX, which is one of their major exercises that is run by the C5ISR.

Rey said one way the Army is better off than it was three years ago is how it processes data across multiple infrastructure approaches.

At one time, the soldiers could only use one type of approach, or single threaded, such as only using Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES).

He said the C5ISR office created an automate planning for primary, alternate, contingency and emergency (PACE) communications plan to create the multiple threaded approach to transport.

“I wanted to see if there was a way to automate pace that we could go from 5G to low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite to GOES to medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites. I think, three years later, we are almost there as an accomplishment when it comes to that part of our pillar,” Rey said.

A second pillar where Rey believes the Army has made significant progress in is moving to a data-centric environment. He said the advancements in the network architecture is a big part of this change.

“I believe that the way data is being approached today is a little different. I think what we need to think about is the way we create data because today data is stored on your laptop or it’s stored on your phone or it is stored in a data center or it stored in the cloud. It’s still really siloed, and from my perspective, we need more of a in a large data fabric where we can catch and make sense of data by using artificial intelligence and machine learning,” he said. “We need open application programming interfaces (APIs) in order for us to be able to share data. If we get to a point where I’d like down to the attribute base level of data sharing. Until we actually get there, we will continue to have data siloed the way we are today.”

The Army took a big step in this direction in January, starting to implement its unified data reference architecture (UDRA). The service recently completed version 1.0 of the UDRA while also building out an implementation plan of the framework in partnership with the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM).

Keep the momentum going

The Army expects UDRA to bring together principles and efforts for data mesh and data fabric. While data mesh involves a decentralized approach where data product ownership is distributed across teams and domains, the data platform will facilitate seamless access and integration of data products from different formats and locations.

Rey said the concepts that make the data mesh and data fabric work go back to creating a unified network, especially in the tactical environment.

“There are two separate areas that we’re trying to unify together. In the tactical space is where we believe the data fabric is more important for us today because of all the sensors that are on the battlefield and in order to make sense of the information that’s out there,” he said. “That is the catcher’s mitt that needs to ingest the data, use analytics and then egress of data for the commander to make an informed decision across the board. I think we’re we have a lot of momentum right now. We’ve talked about the next generation of command and control systems that’s coming, and that’s going to be an ecosystem that allows us to really have a more robust type of data environment that will move data and echelon.”

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George on May 28 signed off on the Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) Capability Characteristics (C2 Next).

Rey said creating data in a way that also foresees wanting to share it remains one of the biggest challenges for the Army.

“The only way you can share it is if we decide what those attributes are going to look like, whether I’m with a partner or whether I’m just dealing with a US entity,” he said. “So, attributes are going to be key with how we tag label the data, and then be an in are able to share it at the end of the onset.”

As for the new director of the Network Cross Functional team Rey said his advice to Ellis was simple: “Don’t allow the momentum to slow down.”

The post Gen. Rey reflects on leading Network Cross Functional team first appeared on Federal News Network.

Over the last year, the service conducted multiple studies examining its cyber and electronic warfare resources and capabilities, including the 120-day study conducted by the Cyber Center of Excellence team, followed by a series of classified studies conducted by Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Last month, the service held an EW tabletop exercise at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, where participants, including I Corps, III Corps, XVIII Airborne Corps and Multi-Domain Task Force, among others, examined over 70 different EW capabilities across the service. The goal was to understand how those capabilities fit into current operational scenarios, identify gaps and develop potential approaches to operational challenges.

“Some of the gaps — it was more of a scenario-based. But fundamentally, just understanding what you look like in the electromagnetic spectrum, what your adversaries look like and how you can be influenced is really one of the the main areas that we walked away from,”  Brig. Gen. Ed Barker, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said during a C4ISRnet event Wednesday.

“It really validated that you got to have that kind of layered approach to address those gaps. I think the takeaway was we have to treat the EMS as terrain — you have to be able to hold terrain, you have to be able to maneuver inside of it and you also have to be able to affect the enemy. That was probably the biggest takeaway.”

Due to the unique nature of different operational environments, the U.S. forces can’t rely on a single solution. For example, given particular characteristics of the Pacific theater, air-launched effects, or the ability to deploy EW capabilities from a distance, are needed. 

At closer ranges, EW capabilities are needed to protect specific platforms, such as tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles, against threats like inbound drones.

“If you want to non-kinetically effect inbound drone to ensure that it misses a tank, that’s similar physics, but the ranges and the outcomes are somewhat different. So you’re doing something in a very long range. And then you’re also, you know, making sure that you can protect those close-in assets,” Baker said.

“From a technical standpoint, it’s definitely a significantly different problem — protecting something within 500 kilometers versus protecting something within the last 500 meters.”

Data challenges 

Despite units having to rely on different systems and capabilities depending on their geographical location, they need to be connected to share real-time data and intelligence.

The Army Cyber Center of Excellence is currently conducting an EW pilot to develop a unified EW data architecture that will allow seamless data integration from different sources and regions.

“We have to just be comfortable with the fact that they’re going to be geographically dispersed and have to operate independently, but then also be interconnected. The data conversation is absolutely real – you have to understand the fundamentals underlying data challenges associated with the EW space,” said Baker. 

Sharing data with partners

The Army and Marine Corps are conducting a pilot to develop common data standards and capabilities.

The Army recently decided to shift from the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool’s electromagnetic warfare and spectrum management capabilities to the Tactical Assault Kit (TAK) framework, where applications for situational awareness data and geospatial visualizations can be built. The effort is being led by the Electronic Warfare Integration product management office.

“It aligns ourselves with the rest of the fires in the maneuver communities to achieve a commonality across software development, user interfaces, common experiences, underlying data and it’s part of that overall TAK architecture,” said Baker.

The post Army develops its approach to electronic warfare first appeared on Federal News Network.

As a proposal to create a separate Army drone branch advances in the House, Army leaders continue to push back against the idea.

Gen. James Rainey, who leads the Army Futures Command, said it is “too early” for the service to establish a drone corps.

“I think unmanned aerial systems are going to come to bear at echelon. I think individual soldiers [need to be able] to employ them just like they employ their weapon.  So 11 Bravos, I think, the tanks should be able to have a robot sitting next to him that can launch UAS. I think every maneuver person is going to need them. They have huge sustainment implications,” Rainey said during the Center for Strategic and International Studies event on Monday.

Given the existing occupational specialties for enlisted soldiers and warrant officers that focus on UAS and various drone-related programs and training, the service should prioritize integrating the technology into “every formation, at every echelon,” said Rainey.

“I don’t know that it’s going to warrant its own branch. And certainly, I’d say it’s too soon for that. The bigger thing is getting UAVs into our formation at echelon right now. We [need to] have good requirements and good acquisition approaches for UAVs at echelon. We need to stop buying a thing and buy a capability,” said Rainey.

Gen. James Rainey is the latest Army official to push back against the House Armed Services Committee’s proposal to create a drone corps.

The committee wants the new branch to serve as a command center for all drone-related activities. It would help integrate drone systems across the service, conduct research, development and testing of those systems and provide personnel with specialized training in such aircraft.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Virginia), chair of the HASC Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, has long advocated for better counter-UAS capabilities. During a hearing in March, he further pushed the idea, saying that “it is time to give serious consideration” to setting up a drone corps within the Army.

“Unlocking the full potential of unmanned platforms for the Army will require soldiers to develop specialized skills and a deep understanding of various associated technologies. A drone corps may better lend itself to allowing the broad array of expertise required to mature within the Army and for these systems’ unique capabilities to grow beyond their role primarily as enablers to the current combat arms branches,” said Wittman.

Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo, however, said creating a new institutional structure would distract from the service’s current efforts to bring the technology to soldiers and adopt it at scale.

“I think the institutional implications of it, to me, are secondary at this point as opposed to figuring out how we’re going to employ the technology and what technology works the best. It’s important, in my view, to get after giving units these [commercial off-the-shelf] UAS capabilities to let them experiment. I want to better understand the [tactics, techniques and procedures] about how they’re going to employ them at different echelons and to be able to understand how that affects the way that our formations will fight,” Camarillo said last month.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that drone warfare is moving fast and the service needs to be able to organize around those weapon systems to keep pace with the technology.

“Giving drones to the old branches that are going to worry about whether they’re now competing for resources may not be the best idea. What you want to do is you want to innovate not just the hardware, but the tactics. So having somebody that’s got resources so it’s not competing for resources from the people it’s trying to displace. If it was its own branch with its own funding to do procurement and acquisition and operations, then it can show up to the formations and go,  ‘Look, here’s what we got,’ as opposed to, ‘We need to take money from the helicopter program in order to do it,’” Ferrari told Federal News Network.

“What I would say is the Army is not at risk of moving too fast. It’s at risk of moving too slowly on this.”

The House Armed Services Committee adopted the measure last month but it will need to pass the rest of the House and Senate to make it into the final defense bill.

The post It is ‘too early’ for an Army drone branch, Rainey says first appeared on Federal News Network.

For the Army, the command post of the future will need to be agile, resilient and intuitive.

It will be a big lift not only for the Army, but for the contractors who are building the technology to support it.

This is one of many reasons why the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George on May 28 signed off on the Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) Capability Characteristics (C2 Next).

The Army released a notice on SAM.gov to say the characteristics of needs are available, but vendors have to “apply” to see them as they are not public.

George and other Army senior leaders, speaking at the Army TEMS conference in Philadelphia last week, offered a preview of the characteristics, outlining key concepts and insight into what command and control of the future needs to encompass.

George said with the network being the Army’s top priority, these new characteristics are a key building block.

“I was out at the National Training Center I think it was March for Project Convergence. One of the things that I challenged everybody a year ago, and especially Army Future Command, was I want to be able to be on the network and I want us to be able to operate with tablets, phones, software-defined radios in a very simple architecture. What I saw when I was out there in March is that the technology exists now to do those kinds of things,” George said. “We had a platoon leader talking to a company commander or talking to a battalion commander talking to a brigade commander, and they were talking on tablets. All those big systems that we used to have, the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) is one of them, can be an app. It can be on that tablet. So rather than having a truck or two trucks and 10 people, you have an application. That’s where we have to go.”

George said the commanders were excited about these capabilities because it speeds the decision process and makes them more lethal.

Army details C2 Next

The Army developed this initial set of C2Next characteristics to support the concepts George talked about: Speed to decision, the lethality of the units, the ability to adapt and be agile based on real-time threats, challenges and needs.

Joe Welch, the director of Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance Center (C5ISR) for the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, said what’s in the characteristics are not just capabilities to build or have, but they give you the ability to tailor and adapt C2 for the commander and their staff based on their needs and information requirements. He said these characteristics aren’t even necessarily the nuts and bolts of the capabilities of systems.

Welch outlined several focus areas for C2 Next, starting with a key ingredient agnostic transport, meaning the data gets to the users no matter the infrastructure such as cloud or satellite or on-premise data center.

“[It has to be] robust and resilient. We’ve been making lots of progress in terms of that, not just in the variety of transport paths that we have for our networks to be able to support data transmission, but to do it in an automated way and a highly secure way,” Welch said. “I see this as a continued evolution. In the characteristics of need, we talk specifically about being threat informed in this area. We started from a perspective of, we just need to be able to communicate; we need to be able to get the data where it needs to go in order to accomplish the mission.”

A second area that will be critical, Welch said, is a robust services architecture that is cloud native and based on open systems standards that let commanders easily iterate new capabilities.

“A consistent theme here recently is as-a-service. We’re seeing that in more and more areas. What’s really meant by that is that we don’t want to be fixed on any particular thing. We want to be able to experiment, prototype, move very quickly into deployment, and use something as long as it’s working, and be able to challenge it when there’s something that’s better out there when the need changes or the technology changes,” he said. “That gets into a lot more mechanics than the concepts or the capabilities that we’re describing. But it’s a very fundamental underpinning of where we’re looking to go.”

Testing C2 characteristics

Welch added C2 Next is part of a necessary and complete revamp of the way that the Army will generate, produce, consume and discover data, and it’s necessary in order to apply machine learning on to it at all.

He said if the Army wants to be able to do informed and enabled decision making much faster than the adversary, then the characteristics of need will play a huge role.

The Army has been testing many of these concepts over the last 12-18 months and improving them as it went along. Most recently at Project Convergence, an annual technology and capability demonstration, Dr. Jean Vettel, Next Generation C2 chief scientist for experimentation at Army Capabilities Command for C5ISR, said they measured some of the benefits of the C2Next characteristics.

“In the characteristics of need, you’ll see that we’ll talk a lot about modularity or…this really focus we have on composability. What does that actually mean?” Vettel said.

As an example, Vettel said commanders developing a plan to set up a command post in minutes versus hours using commercial technology called Raspberry Pis.

“Within that they had 16 Raspberry Pi’s that they put out, where they emulated the electromagnetic signature of the command post as decoys. Whenever we think about adaptability, what is the metric of adaptability that would be successful for Next C2?” she said.

The idea was to protect the command and control technologies from jamming or other cyber attacks. Vettel said this is an example of how the C2 Next characteristics emphasize adaptability.

“If it’s adaptable, that means that in the fight, whenever a pure adversary now has identified that we’re creating our decoys with electromagnetic signatures, then our warfighters need to have access to data that they couldn’t tell us they would need beforehand,” she said. “They have to have the ability to know what data they have available and how do they try to spoof or create a different decoy because they have access to the data because it’s adaptable to what they need to fight the peer adversary.”

She added this example also shows building capabilities in modules that can be plugged into, removed and changed as necessary is another key piece in the C2 Next characteristics.

A living document to be updated

C2Next characteristics are out for review and comment for industry and other folks in the Army.

Welch said the intent is to make C2 Next characteristics of need a living document that will be updated every six months or so.

Additionally, the Army Futures Command is in the early stages of planning a new contract vehicle to help bring these C2 Next characteristics into technology capabilities. While it’s still early, the Army may use an Other Transaction Authority type of approach as a way to bring multiple companies into the mix and experiment with different parts of the characteristics.

“I think what you’ll see is the characteristics of need, which may sound very principled and very large overarching statements, I’m expecting that they’re going to get iterated into some greater and greater levels of detail as we continue through Next Generation C2 experimentation,” Welch said. “We’re certainly moving fast and in alignment with the chief’s objective to be moving with speed and urgency. We’re going to be moving in conjunction with our partners at Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASA(ALT) as we look beyond experimentation and prototyping and into delivery of Next Generation C2 capability.”

The post Agile, adaptable, modular: The future of Army C2 first appeared on Federal News Network.

PHILADELPHIA — The Army is making a major change to how soldiers and civilians access data through their email and other applications in early June.

Starting on June 11, the Army is shutting down the network port that lets users pull data through commercial internet providers onto their laptops or cell phones.

Maj. Gen. Chris Eubank, commander of the Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM), said the decision to turn off what is commonly known as “Flow 3” came down to two factors. One is basic cybersecurity and protecting data and networks. The second, however, was the maturity of the Army’s virtual desktop initiative (VDI) and overall network architecture.

“What we’re really going to shut down is the ability to go into the Army’s network and pull the information through the internet to your device, whether it’s a government furnished device or a personal device. What we’re doing is we’re going to cut off that access so you’ll still be able to get to those services, via your personal device using a Common Access Card (CAC) or from a government furnished piece of equipment using a CAC using the commercial internet, but it’s all going to be through virtual means,” said Eubank during an interview with Federal News Network at the Army TEMS conference last week. “Using technologies in our bring-your-own-device, remote capable workforce portfolio like Azure virtual desktop, individuals will still be able to plug in via the commercial internet CAC enabled get to that information, but they will not be able to pull the information out of that environment. It will stay resident in in the cloud. When they disconnect their session, there’s nothing left behind [on the device]. It’s really about protecting both the network and our workforce.”

The Army has provided this type of access through the commercial internet for years, specifically for members of the guard and reserves. This capability became even more critical during the pandemic when more soldiers and civilians worked remotely.

Army needs to increase data protections

Eubank said because the threat landscape has changed so dramatically in the last three or four years, the Army made the decision to shut off the ability to download data through commercial internet providers. Eubank signed a strategic communications message in the beginning of May to initiate this change.

He said NETCOM is trying to make this transition easier for soldiers and civilians by providing them with a QR code to download the VDI application.

“They can click on a link and it’ll sign them up for Azure virtual desktop. They can do the same thing on Hypori. That enables them to get that account setup and then if you have any questions all you have to do is reach out to NETCOM,” he said.

Jared Shepard, CEO and President of Hypori, said in an email to Federal News Network that these steps will make a big difference for how the Army provides secure access unclassified network resources, while also reducing the attack surface and potential loss of controlled unclassified information (CUI) data.

Jeff Duran,  an Army Reservist who also serves as a contractor to Hypori as their Army evangelist, said in an email to Federal News Network that getting his email through is phone makes his reserve job easier.

“As a senior noncommissioned officer, there’s a lot of coordination I have to do and being able to do that without being on an Army computer makes my day a lot easier. If I’m not on my personal computer, a whole day could go by without knowing I had an important email,” he said. “Now, I’m no longer causing delays and people aren’t waiting on me.”

Transitioning from JRSS to SD-WAN

Eubanks said the Army is able to shut down this type of access because of the success of its VDI roll out over the past year or more.

He said the number of users are increasing and the number technology is proving itself out.

“We are still testing a mobile access management solution for mobile use as well,” Eubanks said.

Along with the VDI roll out, Eubanks said he also focused on the move away from the Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS) and to a software-defined wide-area network. The Defense Information Systems Agency told the services it will shut down JRSS in 2027 so Eubanks said the Army is in the middle of planning to transition to the new capabilities over the next few years.

“All the planning now is the goal and then [implementation] will really, really start in earnest probably in the fall. Behind the scenes what we’re doing is we’re asking all of our theater signal commands, all of our signal brigades and the network enterprise centers, as DISA looks down to shut down the JRSS, here’s the services it gives us, what it means to you and what your timeline looks like to move off of it,” he said.

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The Army has seen enough from its six pathfinders using digital engineering tools and techniques that it’s ready to go all in on.

A new memo, which Gabe Camarillo, the undersecretary of the Army, signed Tuesday, sets the stage for broader adoption of digital engineering capabilities and practices.

“We are looking to benefit from that utilization of digital engineering tools to be able to help establish the right processes in the Army, the right training and really how do we adopt adapt our institutional approach to be able to accommodate more digital engineering,” Camarillo said in a speech during the AFCEA NoVa Enterprise IT day. “The commercial automotive industry does this already. The commercial aircraft industry obviously has been doing this for a really long time. And we’ve actually taken some significant steps in this area….We’ve got a toehold, if you will, in the Army in those areas. We want to expand on it and really accelerate some of the efforts in those three areas, and then the goal is we would expand it out.”

Camarillo said the Army has been using digital engineering tools and capabilities in three areas, ground vehicles, aviation and sensors, which the policy also calls out.

The policy outlines four lines of effort. The first is to create digital engineering focus areas as centers of gravity to be able to begin to accelerate the adoption of digital engineering tools.

“The reason why we’re taking this approach on this first LOE is we recognize that you know, the way DE is employed varies or its varied based on the commodity area that you’re talking about. It’s very mature in a lot of these domains,” he said.

Army taking commodity-focused approach

The Army has applied DE tools and capabilities to the XM 30 Bradley Infantry Combat Vehicle replacement program, the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft effort and the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier. All three of these pathfinders are in sustainment funding mode.

The second line of effort is around shaping interoperability and standards for implementation. Camarillo said the Army doesn’t want to just pick one or two tools, but use a more commodity-focused approach.

Camarillo added the Army needs to understand the standards around interoperability or cybersecurity, for example, and then be more consumers of the market versus dependent on one tool or a set of tools.

“If we’re going to be consumers in this market, we have to articulate what we need to industry. I think over time, the software will evolve to accommodate us,” he said. “We’re already seeing a lot of great dialogue with multiple vendors along this side. I think part of it is also standardizing our contracts approach so that we know what we’re asking for and that we do so in a in a rational, consistent way.”

Third line of effort is to continue to test out these concepts through Pathfinder programs.

“These programs range the lifecycle of a weapon system from early design, like I mentioned with the XM 30, all the way to some programs that are well under sustainment as legacy programs to be able to identify how we can utilize them. The goal here is to just think about how do you change our processes? So if you’re doing a preliminary design review of a system in development, or if you’re doing the need to identify cost driving parts for a legacy system? How do you get after that by looking at some of these Pathfinder programs?” he said. “The fourth [LOE] is workforce, developing our workforce, ensuring that they have the right training. And then of course, looking at opportunities to train with industry, particularly with those partners that have really evolved digital engineering capabilities and practices, and doing the right kinds of talent exchanges with industry to be able to permeate some of the best practices over to the Army.”

Looking for workforce training

As with any new policy or new initiative, the workforce tends to be the biggest challenge. While digital engineering isn’t necessarily a brand new concept for the Army, it will need to find some of those champions and experts and then start to spread the knowledge.

Camarillo said the opportunities to learn from industry experts who have been using digital engineering for some time and have Army employees bring back some the best practices from these vendors.

“We have some pretty robust training with industry programs and private party talent exchanges. We’re looking to expand those to include some of these digital engineering companies that have pretty robust practices in place,” he said.

The policy also calls on the Army to develop recipes and guidelines as well as creating standard contract language and contract data requirements lists to ensure consistency in the products vendors deliver to the Army.

The private sector has been using digital engineering for many years. Simply put, digital engineering relies on data, advanced technologies such as simulation and modeling and traditional systems engineering practices to create digital models instead of the more traditional paper based models. These virtual representations can change over time as the needs of the organization or technology changes and they make it easier for the developers to understand a host of challenges ranging from cost to sustainment to how this system will work with other systems.

Digital engineering isn’t new

Digital engineering is not a new concept for DoD. The Pentagon issued a digital engineering strategy in 2018. That strategy outlines five elements necessary for the digital engineering ecosystem including, formalizing the development and use of models, providing an authoritative source of truth, incorporating technological innovation, establishing a supporting infrastructure and environment, and transforming the culture and workforce to adopt and support digital engineering.

The Army’s policy is building on the work done by DoD as well as other services over the last few years.

Camarillo said the policy will help the Army in its race to catch up with the private sector.

He said the entire effort is about accelerating the adoption of these tools, after the Army’s six pathfinders showed the potential and value of digital engineering.

“The benefits to us is it’s going to be the way that we do business in terms of developing warfighting capabilities in the future,” he said. “It enables our ability to identify requirements tradeoffs earlier in the process, to plan more adequately for sustainment of both hardware and software. It identifies cost drivers in the operation of weapon systems in the future. And it helps us to identify and mitigate technical risks through more robust modeling and simulation and the development of digital twins.”

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The Army relies on its civilian workforce for a myriad of crucial tasks to support readiness and operations. Now it has launched a first-ever campaign to recruit civilians into the Army. For more on the Find Your Next Level program, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked with the Army’s chief marketing officer, Brig. Gen. Antoinette Gant.

Interview Transcript: 

Antoinette Gant A lot of this is about awareness, you know, as we think about the U.S. Army, most people think about those that are serving in uniform. But what they don’t know is that we have over 260,000 civilians that are actually working alongside those soldiers in regard to ensuring that we can continue to be successful in our mission.

Tom Temin Give us some more numbers. I mean, you mentioned a big number of civilians. What do they generally do and how does the workforce break down in broad terms?

Antoinette Gant Yeah. So, you have civilians that are doing a number of different jobs. We have what’s called a government system, a GPS system. So, you can go from a GS of five or even a two, which is a student intern, all the way to a GS 15. So, there are different levels. There are different types of jobs. More importantly for this campaign, we are really highlighting some of our STEM, our science, technology, engineering and math, positions that we actually have. We found that that as well as Logisticians are kind of the top jobs that we’re looking for right now, across the Army in a variety of different locations of which they can serve.

Tom Temin So science and technology and math, this would be mostly in the research function.

Antoinette Gant It’s a little bit of everything. I’ll give you a really good example. So, prior to this job, I was with the Army Corps of Engineers and internal to the Army Corps of Engineers. We actually have engineers of all types, electrical engineers, civil engineers. We also have scientists, biologists. Some people don’t even realize that we have interior designers. So that’s still within, form of a, you know, a technical field of which we, support. But it is a variety of, of jobs in those positions. So not necessarily just on research, but research is very important to us as well.

Tom Temin By the way, what interiors do they design out of curiosity?

Antoinette Gant That is, you know, any real estate, or design of a building that we’re doing. They are responsible for actually doing the layout for those buildings. Another good example would be our DoDea schools. They’re not designing just here in the United States, but also in areas of Japan. And, then the islands, wherever there’s a DoDea school they’re designing what that school actually looks like. The economics of the actual, the chairs and things of that nature that the, the students will be in, in those particular locations. How do you actually look at in designing a location where it can serve dual purposes, a lunchroom as well as an auditorium? So, there are just so many different things that they bring to the table that to have your own internal interior design is a pretty, pretty neat.

Tom Temin And just a brief question on the logistics side, because, of course, you know, the professionals in the Army talk about logistics. That’s the old saying and not about battle strategy. What do Logisticians do? That’s a lot of functions that need logistics.

Antoinette Gant Absolutely. If it’s getting, supplies from one location to another, if it’s actually making sure that, we have the right supplies in the right locations. I mean, logisticians, from a data analysis standpoint, they’re looking to make sure we have the right amount of what we actually need. So, there are just a number of different things that our logisticians actually bring to bear, especially in the transportation standpoint.

Tom Temin Therefore, agencies like the Army Materiel Command could be a place where they would go.

Antoinette Gant This is our transportation hub at it’s got Air Force Base and that’s another location. Installation, command. Those are various locations DEFCOM I mean, I can go on and on in naming the various agencies internal to the Army or commands that utilize Logisticians as well as some of our STEM careers.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Brigadier General Antoinette Gant. She’s chief marketing officer of the army. Let’s get to this program you have for recruitment here for civilians. Again, it’s called the Find Your Next Level program. What form does it take and how are you going about getting the message out to people that might want to work for the Army?

Antoinette Gant The fact that this is the first campaign for Army civilians that the Army is actually have, I think, is an enormous step of actually identifying that how important our army civilians are and what we actually do. And so, we’re getting the word out in a number of ways. On Netflix is a one of the locations of which you will see some of our Army ads. Mainly this is in the streaming area. You won’t see it on linear television just yet, but in various different forms from a streaming standpoint.

Tom Temin So Netflix and other media where you think people might be watching.

Antoinette Gant And most folks now these days are actually doing a lot of streaming versus watching linear television. So, we’re trying to be in those spaces. As a matter of fact, LinkedIn, you can actually if you go to our go army.com website or even our Army civilian career.com website, you can be able to talk to you about the various career, opportunities. I think right now we have about 3800 job openings listed. And this just continues to it’s very fluid. It doesn’t stay. It might be 3800 today and tomorrow it might be 3820. So, it just depends on what the what we’re actually looking for.

Tom Temin And do you have means that you can use to target people say through LinkedIn, there’s millions of people on some of these platforms and get an ad in that will go to people that might be ripe for this, depending on their characteristics, in their profile.

Antoinette Gant And most influential way to be able to do that is on our army civilian career.com because there would give you a link where you can actually it’ll explain to you what you need to do as far as inputting your resume. USAjobs.com is the other area of which you can go to. I wanted to bring up a point of the fact that we have just also launched what’s called the Total Army Career Fair, and we did our first one in Arlington, Texas, and it just happened in a couple of weeks ago in April. And we’ll be doing another one the 13th and 14th of September. And this is an opportunity to be at and this will be in Houston. But it’s an opportunity to be at a large location where we know there are a number of people, entry level, as well as middle management that are looking for either a career change or just a new, entry level position. And there they can be able to talk to individuals on the spot about career opportunities that the Army actually has. I think this is this is the second time we will be doing this and what a great opportunity it is, especially in some of our large metropolitan areas.

Tom Temin And he plans to do campus recruitment.

Antoinette Gant Campus recruitment goes on all the time. And a lot of that is actually done with various organizations. I mentioned the Army Corps of Engineers, but they are Army Materiel Command also is another one where they look at the career fairs that are happening on the college campuses, and they are, attending those, to ensure that they are getting the best and the brightest, especially looking at a army with, I mean, a career with someone like the Army, where I always say you can do things that you never thought were possible.

Tom Temin And are. Is the Army able to speed up the civilian hiring process so that you’re faster than the average federal job.

Antoinette Gant And on average, it takes about 90 days? It depends. If there’s something that has to do with security clearances and things of that nature. But we have this thing that’s called direct hiring authority, which allows our, the, the various organizations that are at these job fairs to be able to hire individuals or give them a tentative job offer on the spot. So, with that, that definitely is a win for us. And being able to know that, hey, we are wanting you to come and join our team.

Tom Temin And what about the veterans preference? Because that is in place for every federal agency, particularly military and veterans affairs, where there’s a large percentage of the workforce that is veterans.

Antoinette Gant Absolutely. And we do have the Veterans Preference Program. Of course, there are policy and laws that apply with that, and we utilize them, in all that we do.

Tom Temin All right. And just a final question. I wanted to get at that social media outreach idea because people receive ads on social media platforms based on their profiles and the algorithms. I see, the ads I get, and they know me pretty well. Are you able to tap into that ecosystem? Can the government fairly do that?

Antoinette Gant The ads that I get, I know I’m getting them because of the things that I’m looking at. So, we are definitely looking at it from, a I guess it’s an algorithm that actually happens, depending on what it is that they’re looking at, to make that determination of, hey, this could be a potential place for you to.

Tom Temin Be because that’s where marketing is going nowadays. Right? As opposed.

Antoinette Gant To. Absolutely. You know, you don’t want to know how many ads we I mean, I’m sure you think about something and all of a sudden an ad actually shows up, right?

Tom Temin Yes. It’s a little spooky sometimes, but, you know, the Army used to have a spot, you know, with a song, you know, on the Carol Burnett Show or something. Those days are long gone.

Antoinette Gant This is about, again, looking to ensure that we find the best and the brightest. And again, as I said, so those individuals, whether they are just newly forming, coming out of college, looking for a job or those that are just looking. What? Career change? The Army is a place that we have a diverse population of individuals. To be able to come and actually work as a civilian with us.

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“Having a branch, or a [Center of Excellence], or anything like that — it’s not going to help us buy anything faster or get us more resources against this problem set,” Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said during the Center for a New American Security event Friday.

The service currently has 22 branches, each focusing on specific aspects of Army operations.  The Corps of Engineers branch, for example, provides engineering support and the Army Finance Corps manages financial operations for the service.

The new branch would oversee programs and projects related to small and medium-sized unmanned aircrafts that weigh less than 1350 pounds and UAS and counter-UAS systems. 

The corps would serve as a command center for all drone-related activities. It would help integrate drone systems across the service, conduct research, development, and testing of those systems, and provide personnel with specialized training in such aircraft.

The House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to mark up the defense policy bill next week, and while the provision might be discarded — there is a chance it will be included in the bill. 

Camarillo said creating a new institutional structure will distract from the service’s current efforts to bring in those capabilities to soldiers and adopt them more widely across the service.

“I did see the language in the initial draft of the House bill. I would say that it’s animated, I think, by a recognition that this is a very real threat. It is a problem that the department and the Army, in particular, have to confront. We definitely share that focus,” said Camarillo.

“How do you go about it? My view is that creating a corps or other institutional kind of structure to get after it, in some ways, could take away some focus from some of the things that we’re actually doing. It’s important, in my view, to get after giving units these [commercial off-the-shelf] UAS capabilities to let them experiment. I want to better understand the [tactics, techniques and procedures] about how they’re going to employ them at different echelons and to be able to understand how that affects the way that our formations will fight.”

For the past year, Army senior officials have been thinking about ways to reorganize the service’s units and what equipment those units would need.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George recently introduced a concept dubbed “transforming in contact,” which uses unit rotations to figure out what technologies and capabilities soldiers will need in the future.

Camarillo said efforts such as “transforming in contact” are more likely to help the service better understand what technology they need out in the field and speed up their acquisition processes.

“Things that we’re doing, like transformation in contact, or some of the experiments that we’re performing today, are critically important. I think the institutional implications of, it to me, are secondary at this point, as opposed to figuring out how we’re going to employ the technology and what technology works the best. And most importantly, do we have our buying processes in place in order to be able to get there?” said Camarillo. 

When it comes UAS effort, the service recently stood up the joint counter-small unmanned aircraft systems office to provide counter-UAS capabilities to the service. And the Joint Counter Small Unmanned Aerial Systems University trains drone operators.

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“What we learned is there are some advantages and some disadvantages,” Mark Kitz,  chief of the Army’s program executive office for command, control and communications-tactical, said during the AFCEA Belvoir Industry Days event Wednesday.

In this scenario, commanders need to understand the operational risks when deploying different network options and the trade-offs associated with those choices. That includes potential exposure to location data or voice data and identifying which data is more perishable and which is less vulnerable.

The Army, Kitz said, needs to create a flexible network environment for those commanders to meet their operational needs instead of providing a one-size-fits-all solution.

“I firmly believe that the way we enable that commander is by providing options for that commander. If the commander wants to employ SIPRNet, he should have the opportunity to do that. If the commander wants to go unclassified across his whole formation, we should be able to provide him an opportunity to do that. And we should be doing that in a way that he understands trades,” said Kitz.

“I think that’s one of the real lessons of Ukraine. Everybody thought it was going to be one type of fight, then it wasn’t, then it evolved to another type of fight. GPS got jammed like crazy. Then everybody learned where those jammers are — now I can target GPS jamming. And that spectral environment has evolved over the last two years just in that one specific domain — really important domain.”

To provide this flexibility where commanders don’t have to make these rigid decisions, the Army needs to build flexibility into its programs, said Kitz.

Kitz, who leads the Army’s program executive office for command, control, communications-tactical (PEO C3T), was charged with modernizing the service’s enterprise and tactical networks and bringing modernized network communications gear to its soldiers.

The service’s program executive offices in charge of modernizing its networks recently went through some organizational changes. PEO C3T absorbed PEO enterprise information systems’ integrated enterprise network (IEN) portfolio, tasked with providing tactical and emergency communications worldwide. 

The office will undergo more organizational changes over the summer, according to Kitz. But there are some changes happening right now — Brig. Gen. Camilla White, who currently serves as the deputy, will depart from her role in two weeks. Col. Kevin Chaney is stepping in to take over her position. 

“We have 14 different command changes across the organization. It’s quite a bit. Over the next few months, we’ll be engaging with industry on who’s who at PEO C3T,” said Kitz.

One of the main goals for Kitz since taking over the office has been delivering a network to soldiers that is adaptable and flexible, which means that the office’s portfolios need to adjust in order to deliver those capabilities.

“This is important because the network of today is not going to work, it’s not going to be the network of three years from now. But I’m going to  engage with industry on a five-year contract because that’s how we do things,” said Kitz.

“How do I engage with industry on a contract that can be more dynamic  and more flexible so as my commanders are going into a fight, they can go with a network that they need, that can be on demand, rather than the network I gave them three years ago.”

The service has adjusted the way it acquires capabilities in some instances. A couple of years ago, the service adopted an approach where it would buy capabilities for its tactical network in tranches rather than purchasing everything at once. 

“That’s really what I think agile does for us in the government — these agile acquisition programs can more directly tie commander needs to how we build our programs,” said Kitz. 

The post Army needs flexible contracting to deliver its network first appeared on Federal News Network.

Part of that effort is implementing a secure internet protocol router (SIPR)-consolidated security suite (SCSS), which will allow soldiers to access classified networks securely from anywhere in the world. 

“Global Secure Network, formerly Global SIPR Network — that is basically the enterprise solution to actually allow separate traffic to route commercial networks based on NSA’s CSfC technology,” Lt. Col. Xkoshan Arnold, the Global Enterprise Network Modernization — Americas product manager, said during the AFCEA Belvoir Industry Days event Tuesday.

The Global Enterprise Network Modernization — Americas product office, which is part of Project Manager Integrated Enterprise Network (IEN), is tasked with bringing standardized and modernized networking solutions across Army’s facilities.

For the past four years, the Army has been working toward its unified network plan. The goal is to collapse the majority of the Army’s networks and link its tactical battlefield networks with enterprise networks by 2027. 

Global Security Network is also a priority for the Global Enterprise Network Modernization —OCONUS product office. Tom Dunaway, the office’s product manager, said although Arnold’s office is in charge of the effort, it’s crucial the two offices are aligned.

“I was out talking to the Pacific folks and to the Europe folks last week. This is a critical enabler for them. To the point where what used to keep me up at night, but I feel a little less worried about — and that is commanders often would go out and buy their own capability because the [product manager] couldn’t move fast enough. And that’s the reality that we live in,” said Dunaway.

“Now, for the last three years, we’ve been trying to get commanders aligned with where we’re going. And I think we’re starting to get there where 2nd Signal Brigade commander in Europe told me last week, ‘I’m really putting the handcuffs on commanders in theater that want to get their own CSfC solution. But you got to feed us faster.’”

In addition, Dunaway said the service expects to award the Army Global Unified Network contract at the end of the year.

“We’re really looking forward to awarding that contract in the fourth quarter and delivering one of the top three priorities for Lt. Gen. John Morrison in the G-6,” said Dunaway.

Arnold’s office has also been focused on voice modernization, an important effort for the Army to reduce the overall phone count and transition its soldiers to internet-based communication systems. The service is phasing out the time-division multiplexing (TDM) switches and removing primary rate interface lines — a type of digital telephone line — by March 2025. 

“We are neck-deep in that,” said Arnold.

Dunaway’s number one goal is also divesting of all the legacy telephone hardware.

“We’re in the midst of doing that; we finished Southwest Asia and Pacific. We’re full steam ahead in Europe, getting rid of the last 26 to 30 TDMs and getting them on a [voice over internet protocol] infrastructure,” said Dunaway.

The product office also has a request for proposal out for the Comprehensive Modernization (COMPMOD) Program, which will provide support for modernization and expansion of all types of IT systems for the Army. 

“The overall concept of COMPMOD is delivering all the capabilities that we’re charged with under one systems integrator,” said Arnold.

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When it comes to software development, the Army is going to stop worrying about the color of money.

That’s because as part of its new approach to software modernization, the Army is rethinking what sustainment means.

Margaret Boatner is the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for strategy and acquisition reform, said one of the main tenets of the policy signed by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth in March is to reform several legacy processes that is keeping the service from adopting modern software development approaches.

“We are targeting a couple of really key processes like our test and evaluation processes, and importantly, our cybersecurity processes. We really are trying to modernize and streamline those as well as changing the way we think about sustainment because software is really never done. We really have to retrain ourselves to think about and to acknowledge the fact that software really needs to stay in development all the time,” Boatner said in an exclusive interview with Federal News Network. “Right now, our systems and our acquisition programs, once they’re done being developed, they go through a process that we call transition to sustainment, meaning they’ve been fully developed and are now going to live in our inventory for 10, 20, 30 years. We’re going to sustain them for a long period of time. When a system makes that transition, the financial management regulations dictate that they use a certain color of money, operations and maintenance dollars. With that color of money, we can really only do minor patches, fixes and bug updates. So that’s an example of a legacy process that, when you’re talking about a software system, really tied our arms behind our back. It really prevented us from doing true development over the long term with the software solutions.”

Boatner said under the new policy, software will no longer make the transition to sustainment. Instead, the program office will keep operating under research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) funding.

“It’s recognizing that a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) model software is never done. That way, our program managers can plan to use the appropriate color of money, which in many cases might be RDT&E, which is the color money you need to do true development,” she said. “So, that will give our program managers a lot more flexibility to determine the appropriate color money based on what they want to do, such that our software systems can really continue to be developed over time.”

The Army has been on this path to software modernization path for several years, with it culminating with the March memo.

With the lessons from the 11 software pathways to testing out a new approach to a continuous authority to operate to the broad adoption of the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, Boatner and Leo Garciga, the Army’s chief information officer, are clearing obstacles, modernizing policies and attempting to change the culture of how the Army buys, builds and manages software.

Army updating ATO policy

Garciga said by keeping programs under the RDT&E bucket, the Army is recognizing the other changes it needs to complete to make these efforts more successful.

“We need to relook at processes like interoperability. Historically, that was not a parallel process, but definitely a series process. How do we change the way we look at that to bring it into this model where we’re developing at speed and scale all the time?” he said. “I think we’re starting to see the beginnings of the second- and third-order effects of some of these decisions. The software directive really encapsulated some big rocks that need to move. We’re finding things in our processes that we’re going to have to quickly change to get to the end state we’re looking for.”

Since taking over the CIO role in July, Garciga has been on a mission to modernize IT policies that are standing in the way. The latest one is around a continuous ATO (C-ATO).

He said the new policy could be out later this summer.

“We’ve told folks to do DevSecOps and to bring agile into how they deliver software, so how do we accredit that? How do we certify that? What does that model look like? We’re hyper-focused on building out a framework that we can push out to the entire Army,” Garciga said. “Whether you’re at a program of record, or you’re sitting at an Army command, who has an enterprise capability, we will give some guidelines on how we do that, or at least an initial operational framework that says these are the basic steps you need to be certified to do DevSecOps, which really gets to the end state that we’re shooting for.”

He added the current approach to obtaining an ATO is too compliance focused and not risk based.

Pilot demonstrated what is possible

Garciga highlighted a recent example of the barriers to getting C-ATO.

“We started looking at some initial programs with a smart team and we found some interesting things. There was some things that were holding us back like a program that was ready to do CI/CD and actually could do releases every day, but because of interoperability testing and the nature of how we were implementing that in the Army, it was causing them to only release two times a year, which is insane,” he said. “We very quickly got together and rewickered the entire approach for how we were going to do interoperability testing inside the Army. We’re hoping that leads to the department also taking a look at that as we look at the joint force and joint interoperability and maybe they follow our lead, so we can break down some of those barriers.”

Additionally, the Army undertook a pilot to test out this new C-ATO approach.

Garciga said the test case proved a program could receive at least an initial C-ATO in less than 90 days by bringing in red and purple teams to review the code.

“I’d say about three months ago, we actually slimmed down the administrative portion and focused on what were the things that would allow us to protect our data, protect access to a system and make a system survivable. We really condensed down the entire risk management framework (RMF) process to six critical controls,” he said. “On top of that, we added a red team and a purple team to actually do penetration testing in real time against that system as it was deployed in production. What that did is it took our entire time from no ATO to having at least an ATO with conditions down to about less than 90 days. That was really our first pilot to see if we can we actually do this, and what are our challenges in doing that.”

Garciga said one of the big challenges that emerged was the need to train employees to take a more threat-based approach to ATOs. Another challenge that emerged was the Army applied its on-premise ATO approach to the cloud, which Garciga said didn’t make a lot of sense.

“We put some new policy out to really focus on what it means to accredit cloud services and to make that process a lot easier. One of our pilots, as we looked at how do we speed up the process and get someone to a viable CI/CD pipeline, we found things that were really in the way like interoperability testing and how do we get that out of the way and streamline that process,” he said. “In our pilots, the one part that we did find very interesting was this transition of our security control assessors from folks that have historically looked at some very specific paperwork to actually now getting on a system and looking at code, looking at triggers that have happened inside some of our CI/CD tools and making very difficult threshold decisions based on risk and risk that an authorizing official would take to make those decisions. We’re still very much working on what our training plan would be around that piece. That’ll be a big portion of how we’re going to certify CI/CD work and DevSecOps pipelines in the Army moving forward.”

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The Defense Department, once again, dominated the President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition. Service members from the Army and Marines Corps and a team of DoD experts won the individual and team competitions at this 5th annual event run by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

But civilian agencies are starting to close the gap.

Michael Harpin, the competitions section chief for the President’s Cup Competition at CISA, said once again the competition let federal workers demonstrate their cyber skillsets and gain some recognition for their talents.

CISA completed the finals of the 5^th annual competition on April 26 and the Office of the National Cyber Director will honor the winners at an award ceremony at the White House on May 20.

The results of Track A for defensive operations:

1. Army Maj. Nolan Miles,
2. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Michael Torres
3. Air Force 1st Lt. Sears Schulz

“We primarily focused on cyber defense incident responder and the cyber defense forensic analyst positions,” Harpin said. “In that competition, we had some challenges, like recovering from a ransomware attack. You also had to explore some network traffic to find an eight digit code for flood gates in a dam system. So we wanted to try and create some of these real-world type situations within our competition.”

The results of Track B for offensive operations:

1. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Michael Torres
2. Army Capt Brian Welch
3. Jakob Kreuze of the Air Force

“Some of the challenges they had to go through for this year’s competition included one was exploiting SCADA systems on a spaceship. In that, our challenge server would constantly check the environment that you’re in and provide you a flag if you properly overheated the reactors of the spaceship,” he said. “That was actually one of my personal favorite challenges this year. In another one, the individuals had to analyze a public GitLab site, so they could compromise a continuous integration and continuous delivery pipeline.”

The results of the Team competition:

1. Artificially Intelligent — whose team included members of the Army and the Air Force. Four of the members were also on the winning team in 2022.
2. Touch grass.txt — whose team included members of the Department of Defense
3. Cyber Warfare Extremists — whose team included members of the Navy

Harpin said the team competition was one of the closest ever with Artificially Intelligent winning by just 60 points over Touch grass.txt out of a total of more than 30,000 points.

“Our team’s competition is broken up over two days in the finals. The first day we incorporated an industrial control system escape room developed by the Idaho National Lab. That was something new that we incorporated this year to give them a different experience,” he said. “In the ICS escape room, they were actually hands on some hardware. It was a fictional story of insider threat of a chemical company being acquired by a new company. So these people weren’t very happy. They raised pandemonium, which was the name of our of the escape room, with within the company. The goal was to restore the systems and then validate that you can complete an automated batch and they had to find some programmable logic controllers. They had to restore some human machine interface displays and even some virtual reality goggles as well within the escape room, so that that was a good new experience.”

Harpin said this is one area where a civilian agency team stood out. He said the team called the “Justice League” from the FBI was the only team that managed to escape during the competition.

Harpin said CISA already is planning President’s Cup 6 for next year. He said there are three things that the planning committee will take from this year’s competition.

“One is in continuing to incorporate new environments like the industrial control system (ICS) escape room. How can we give the finalists a new experience that can contest maybe even some soft skills like communication that’s why I wanted to shout out the team from the FBI that during that escape room. You had to constantly communicate a puzzle you solved or a password you found, and they are the ones who are out there, putting it on a whiteboard more than the other teams,” he said. “We want to find some hardware challenges as well that give them some new experiences. Another is continuously taking feedback from our participants. Getting back to our finals in person has been really valuable for us that we can have these open conversations with the finalists afterwards. And that’s been great. That’s how we grow the competition every year.”

Another possible change for future competitions is how to recognize individual or team efforts outside of the winner’s circle, such as fastest time to solve a challenge or top performing “rookie” competitors.

Harpin said next year’s competition is scheduled to start in January and go through April.

In the meantime, he said CISA is putting this year’s puzzles and challenges on the President’s Cup website for everyone to try and gauge their skillsets.

“We’ll have, at this point, over 200 challenges and within the coming weeks, we’ll make sure all of the challenges we used in Presidents Cup 5 finals are available. We post all the solution guides for those challenges on CISA’s, GitHub repository for individuals that get stuck. I can all admit that’s me a lot of times when I’m playing through the challenges, and it’s a great learning tool,” Harpin said. “If you have that step-by-step guide, it’s still a learning process to understand how to how to do a lot of these tasks. Since we stood up that President’s Cup practice area in September of 2023, we’ve had over 8,000 attempts so far. We’re excited to see that grow and continue to get used, all of that material can be found through CISA’s website.”

Harpin said the practice area is open to federal employees, and the GitHub repository is open to the public.

“We’re getting out to do more workshops using our President’s Cup material will be at the NICCE conference in Dallas, Texas in June where we are hosting a workshop called using games to motivate train and retain a cybersecurity workforce that will give people an opportunity to play through a handful of challenges, and how we build them on some open source applications,” he said. “We want to be able to scale that out how can we how can we do that more for the public and more for state and local governments. We’re exploring different ways that we can use that do that with the content we build within the President’s Cup competition.”

The post DoD continues domination of President’s Cup competition first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The Army's Chief Information Officer continues his march to revamp technology policy, with two new ones on tap in the coming months. The Army's next set of policy updates are around generative artificial intelligence and large language models, and the continuous authority to operate. Leo Garciga, the Army CIO, said the GenAI and LLM policy is weeks away. "It's really going to be focused around mostly data protection, and what we think the guardrails need to be and what our interaction between the government and industry will look like in this space," Garciga said, adding that the continuous ATO policy will focus on six critical controls. It is expected out later this summer.
  (Next Army IT policy update: GenAI, C-ATO - AFCEA NOVA)
• The Defense Innovation Unit launched a new emerging technology portfolio, which will focus on technologies including quantum, hypersonics, advanced materials and propulsion, microelectronics, nanotechnology and additive manufacturing. The portfolio will coordinate closely with National Security Innovation Capital, which funds companies developing emerging hardware technologies. This is DIU’s seventh portfolio. The portfolio’s first solicitation is already live.
  (DIU launches new emerging technology portfolio - Defense Innovation Unit)
• The Office of Personnel Management is brainstorming ways to make in-office work more appealing to federal employees. Things like special in-person events, team building activities and strategic planning sessions could help ensure in-person work makes sense, OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver said. At the same time, Shriver said OPM is also focused on bringing more attention to employees’ mental health and wellness, especially now in a hybrid work environment. OPM is looking to bridge together in-person opportunities and mental health awareness in the hopes of improving the overall employee experience.
  (From burnout to balanced: A conversation with the nation’s doctor - Office of Personnel Management)
• A watchdog report said breakdowns in leadership led to the Department of Veterans Affairs paying nearly $11 million in bonuses to career executives not eligible to receive them. VA’s inspector general office said the department gave critical skills incentives to more than 180 executives. But Congress authorized those incentives to retain in-demand workers, such as police officers, housekeepers and food service workers. VA said more than 90% of critical skills incentives went to eligible recipients and that it continues to recoup bonuses it shouldn’t have awarded.
  (VA improperly awarded $10.8 million in incentives to central office senior executives - VA OIG)
• The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is in need of "cultural and structural change" to reverse years of workplace harassment, discrimination and other interpersonal misconduct. Those are the findings of the Special Review Committee of the FDIC’s Board of Directors. The committee issued the report in late April, as requested by the FDIC board, after a scathing Wall Street Journal story in November found systemic problems with the workplace culture. In the report, the committee made seven recommendations, including developing a more transparent and timely process for communicating about workplace investigations, and implementing leadership and management training focused on creating a working environment that is psychologically safe.
  (Special committee concludes FDIC needs cultural, structure changes - FDIC.gov)
• DoD’s new software acquisition pathway has gone some way toward speeding up software development, but Defense officials said the procedures have not taken off as quickly as they hoped. To help speed up adoption, the assistant secretary of Defense for acquisition is standing up a cadre of software experts. Their job will be to consult with program managers on how to use the software pathway and adopt agile methodologies. Congress first ordered the creation of that team in the 2022 Defense authorization bill.
  (DoD stands up ‘SWAT team’ to help speed software acquisition - Federal News Network)
• Federal records requirements for UFOs are coming. The National Archives and Records Administration released guidance for information needed to create and manage the unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) records collection. The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act required NARA to establish the collection to make federally held information about unidentified aerial phenomena available to the public. Agencies have until October to review, identify and organize each UAP record in its custody for disclosure and transmission to the National Archives.
  (National Archives releases guidance on unidentified anomalous phenomena - National Archives and Records Administration)
• An in-depth Air Force study to Congress recommends moving all National Guard space missions into the Space Force. But pushing against the move are all state governors, a bipartisan group of 85 lawmakers and the Air National Guard. The 2024 defense bill required the Pentagon to examine the feasibility of giving the Space Force its own Guard component, leaving things as they currently are, or moving Guard space units to the Space Force. The study found that overall costs for all options are about the same and that the Air Force has the capability of executing any of those options.
  (Air Force study recommends moving Guard units into Space Force but opposition mounts - Federal News Network)

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