Special operators are inundated with an ever-increasing amount of relevant data, their leaders are exploring better ways of managing the flow. They want to be sure that war fighters get the precise information they need when they need it.
Leaders from each of the four armed services’ special-operations community told a May 22 audience at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC) in Tampa, Fla., that the adjustment to this rapidly expanding technology would require application of lessons learned from both academia and industry.
Full adaptation would entail “people, technology and culture, and the changes required to get there,” David Spirk Jr., chief data officer for U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), told the audience at the event, which was sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA).
While no one on the panel believes the challenges are insurmountable, they all maintain that success is the only option.
“We have to get to the point where we can move much faster than the adversary. Whoever has [that] sense to understand, decide, and act faster will enjoy an advantage,” said Lt. Gen. Stephen G. Fogarty, the commanding general of U.S. Army Cyber Command.
With quick action comes a higher burden of risk, said Navy Rear Adm. Daniel B. “Brian” Hendrickson, SOCOM’s director of Network Effects.
“We own the operational problems. We need to apply these capabilities to those problems and try to balance the risk the best we can,” Hendrickson said.
Success also would require good chemistry between the systems themselves and the persons who must manage them, said Army Col. Mike McGuire, director of SOCOM’s Combat Development Directorate.
“We need to get the plumbing right. We need to be where the operator [has] the ability to make decisions and recommendations on the edge,” McGuire said.
Margaret Palmieri, director of the Navy Digital Warfare Office, concurred.
“We need to put the decision-maker at the center of our design process,” Palmieri said.
Daniel “Murf” Murphy, who represented the Air Force on the panel, talked about how preconceived notions he and his team had when they first addressed the data-management issue got stood on their head. His team thought initially that gathering the data would be the simple part, with most of the legwork coming with the development of the algorithm to manage it.
“It was completely the reverse,” Murphy said. “Three quarters of the time [was spent on] getting the data together, and then actually getting it to the [algorithm] developer.”
“We need to do it right – not just talk a big game and have shiny one-hit wonders,” said Bret Goldstein, the Pentagon’s new director of the Digital Defense Service. “We have enormous amounts of data.”
Managing it, Goldstein said, would require placing it in reusable platforms and sharing those assets.
