By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
US Army ground-launched drones, US Navy surface warships, US Air Force fighter jets and even submarines and satellites are all increasingly capable of leveraging AI-applications to accelerate and streamline “joint” combat operations, in large measure due to ongoing collaborative, technical efforts on the part of DoD and the Army, Navy and Air Force.
While joint-combat networking has long been on the Pentagon’s radar as a huge area of focus, technological breakthroughs in recent years enabled by applications of AI, transport layer integration and various “gateway” systems able to integrate otherwise incompatible streams of data.
Young Bang, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, recently told reporters at the Army’s Technical Exchange in Savannah, Georgia that the intent of greater Army-DoD collaboration is to ensure the land-service and its joint partners can “fight tonight.”
Speeding up joint data-transmission technologies, better securing data flow and rapidly integrating AI to efficiently aggregate, analyze and “mesh” otherwise disparate pools of data. Specifically, Bang said the Army was closely aligning its modernization and technological development efforts with the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO).
“We have been working with them on the, for lack of better words, the objective architecture around the data mesh together,” Bang said, according to an essay in Defense Scoop. “We have been working specifically with them on how do we look at the data products, how do we decentralize those, how can we actually be a big player with them on the CDAO front and defining that future data mesh architecture? That’s kind of a work in progress as we kind of do the current as-is and kind of our objective areas.”
The Pentagon CDAO is likely advancing effort to expand data analytics and improve the process through which AI-capable systems aggregate disparate pools of incoming combat-relevant data from otherwise incompatible transport layer technologies to … bounce new combinations of data off of a vast database, perform analytics and solve problems, recommend optimal methods of attack or simply organize and help present time-sensitive combat data.
Bang explained this in terms of “Combined” Joint All Domain Command and Control, essentially referring to an effort to merge AI-enabled, Army-specific breakthroughs with the Pentagon’s widely known JADC2 program. Earlier this year, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks launched the formal “implementation” of JADC2, a technological effort to ensure that interfaces, IP protocols and technical standards are aligned across the services to enable land, air and sea platforms, sensors and weapons to quickly and seamlessly share information. Adding AI to this is the critical element of this, as AI-enabled algorithms can instantly identify moments of relevance, identify targets and process information collected from vast amounts of ISR data, perform analytics, and achieve unparalleled efficiency, speed and accuracy sharing information in multi-domain combat operations.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization and the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
