It was written by a wonderful writer named Dale Minor.
When Dale Minor was off on vacation, I became one of the people who filled in for him.
Once when I was filling in for Dale Minor, who was writing for Cronkite, Cronkite himself took vacation.
And this young guy named Dan Rather came in.
So I wound up writing for him.
Then Dan became the anchor at CBS.
And I became his daily radio writer of his commentaries, which was a fabulous job and was like doing a column every day.
Peggy Noonan, with her book, A Certain Idea of America, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
Army officials discussed modernization efforts, including bridging the gap between industrialized processes and digital age problems.
Lockheed Martin's Vice President for Strategy and Business discussed artificial intelligence and autonomous aircraft missions.
The Association of the United States Army held this annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
It's an hour and 10 minutes.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm Sebastian Springer.
I'm the Global Affairs Editor for Defense News.
Thank you for joining us this morning for this session on Army modernization.
I can tell from the packed room that's very much a topic of interest.
This session is sponsored by Lockheed Martin.
It will be recorded and archived on defensenews.com.
During the main discussion, following ours, we will have a microphone available for the audience to ask questions.
If you are watching online, click ask the question button to submit a question.
My guest today is Dan Tenney, Vice President of Strategy and Business Development for Lockheed Martin.
Welcome.
Rotary and Mission Systems.
Oh, that's part of your title.
You may have heard of Lockheed Martin.
Dan, thank you for joining me.
Ah, pleasure to be here, and great to be here with you to kick off this great event.
So appreciate the full room here this morning and look forward to the discussion, Sebastian.
So since we're on the topic of modernization, I want to pick your brain.
What is it your company is working for when it comes to Army modernization at the moment?
Yeah, so modernization is extremely important, as all of you in the room know and those online.
We're working on a lot of facets together with the military.
And by the way, if I can, just take a second and just say how great these events are.
Having spent 27 years of my life in government and now being in industry, I think we all know the ability for us to come together as a team and talk about how we stay ahead already, the threats around the world, is extremely important.
So I want to thank all of you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us here at AUSA.
It's a great forum, and it's a great time to interact.
You know, modernization is extremely important to us.
And as we serve the Army in particular, there's a couple things I think are really important, Sebastian.
One I want to talk about is kind of AI and autonomy.
And the other is the importance of open systems architecture.
So you're going to see over the next couple of days, we're going to demo the autonomous Blackhawk.
This is a fantastic machine.
You're going to see that we have the ability now with modern day sensors, algorithms, and technology to enable the aircraft to work completely autonomously.
And so we're going to demo.
We're going to actually, it's pretty cool with Sebastian.
We're going to have a tablet.
You push a button and it will go through all the pre-flight checks.
It'll start.
It'll take off and perform that mission.
And we're not talking about a remote control.
We're not talking about program waypoints.
We're actually talking about putting a mission into the aircraft and allowing it to perform it.
And that becomes extremely important as you can think about supplementing a pilot.
You know, if you have a pilot flying and there's other mission objectives they need to be working on, they can autonomously fly the aircraft, not just an autopilot, but actually tell it to do the mission.
It'll adjust because of weather, it'll adjust because of geography or threats that are out there that are being detected through sensors and space capabilities.
And so you can also then send it other signals and have it go perform a different mission.
Now, that, though, is enabled by our systems architecture.
And so we think it's extremely important and we're really vested in open systems architecture.
And I say that, Sebastian, because open systems architecture allows companies all around the world, medium, small, new, to integrate new applications and new technologies into the aircraft.
We're committed to that.
We think it's extremely important.
And so it's a great machine.
We're going to demo it here at AUSA.
I think we have six demos that we're going to do over the next two days to show the ability of autonomy.
And I think we all know when we think about modernization, the future fight, crewed and uncrewed will be a big part of that.
And so the ability to have autonomous aircraft that operate together and are interlinked across domains and platforms will enable us to really advance the fight.
Now, when you say open systems, that's sort of been the holy grail of DOD and industry for as long as I can remember.
What's the status of sort of making it happen and making it efficient?
Yeah, so we have something that we call MOSA.
That's our system that we're enabling, and it is open system, meaning we can integrate third-party apps.
We can do software updates.
We can have new providers that come in with new technologies that the Army may want to integrate in the aircraft.
And it's not a problem.
It's not proprietary.
It truly is an open systems architecture that we developed in such a way that multiple people can contribute to that advancement.
So we think that's extremely important.
And I think, Sebastian, it's a way of bringing innovation.
So, you know, we're committed to if we have the best capability and best product, we're going to bring that to our customer.
And if somebody else has it, we're going to bring that.
And so we think that's extremely important to enable that open system, if you will.
And I know one of the sticking points has always been data rights.
Where do you fall on that?
Yeah, so in this case, because it's not proprietary, because the way we're designing it now, it has controls, obviously, of what the Army would want to do.
But enabling an open system allows us to have other providers come in.
And you don't have to just come back to Lockheed Martin to integrate new systems and technologies into the aircraft.
So that's extremely important.
And what you mentioned, AI and autonomy, sort of in the balance of that, autonomy on the one end and full AI on the other.
Where is the technology currently that you see?
Yeah, so it's in place.
And so through a series of sensors and algorithms and technologies that we have, you know, today, when we fly the Blackhawk, the demonstration we're going to do today, the Blackhawk is going to be located in Stratford, Connecticut.
So we're going to fly it from here.
We're going to use space capabilities and other things to connect the aircraft, which also is showing that Blackhawk is a node in the network.
Now, the autonomy comes in of truly saying this is the mission we want you to perform.
And then when the aircraft goes through algorithms, it says this is the best way to perform that mission and adjust.
So when you have ISR and other capabilities that are interlinked across platforms and domains, it's a very intelligent aircraft, if you will.
And so the AI comes in where it's not a remote control.
There's not somebody behind the door controlling this.
And it's using something we call Matrix.
Matrix is just the software application that's enabling it.
Matrix can be used on all sorts of aircraft and all sorts of other domains.
I mean, we're enabling autonomy on surface vehicles or undersea vehicles, if you will, that kind of thing.
But it truly is the machine going through thousands of algorithms and saying this is the best way to perform a mission.
Give me an example of what a mission might look like, where it sort of sits at the hub of controlling theater.
So, let's say you have a Blackhawk flying in theater and you have troops on the ground that need an emergency medevac or an event like that.
They could send a message to the Black Hawk, and the Black Hawk could reroute.
Now, they'd have to have the right parameters to do that, okay, but they would send it.
The Black Hawk would accept that mission, turn around, find the best place to land, and perform it.
We've actually shown this.
We actually did one where we mede-vac some blood, you know, to show the capability to do that.
So, that would be an example, right, where it has a mission it's performing, but a new mission is then sent to the aircraft.
The aircraft would analyze it, determine the best parameters of how to perform it, and then actually change course and go perform that mission.
And is this part of the, and I just learned this the other day, launched effects that the Army is doing?
Is this part of that picture?
Yeah, launch effects would certainly be part of what we're going to modernize, right?
We know talking to the Army that that's a priority and it's an area that we're working on extremely hard.
It's one of our number one priorities when we think about Black Hawk modernization.
So, launched effects will be integrated into that as we modernize, but it's a different system, right?
So, it's where this AI autonomy I'm describing is in place right now.
We have it available, and we're going to, as I said, show it over the next couple days.
Okay.
What other, when you think of modernization, what other sort of fires are you dabbling in?
Yeah, so you know, I think that you know, working cross-domain across platforms is future.
That's going to be the future, right, of how we think about the future fight.
We're doing a lot of work in that area.
Software is really becoming the, if you will, a lot of the currency of the day to enable speed.
A lot of times, we can see the hardware may stay the same.
But if you think about radars, radars, you know, the Q53 or Sentinel A4, these are software-defined radars, which means that we can now push software updates to the radars themselves to make them more intelligent, to make the sensing better, to work out maybe false alarms that are occurring.
That's occurring today in theater.
And we've been able to show that even in the Aegis system on ships, just as another example of pushing software, we did that in theater while it was in theater.
And then, so what that does is we're now reducing the cycle times to update a system from months and weeks to literally hours.
So, software is what we're putting a lot of time and effort into to modernize.
Because many times, as we said, the hardware is there.
The hardware is going to be enabled.
But software makes it smarter, makes it more intelligent, and it's what allows us to then connect across domains and platforms.
And does the hardware, when you say it's there, it's there as is, or does it need to be made receptive to that, to those yeah, both.
So, you know, many times if you think about an aircraft, the aircraft itself can remain.
But if you think about Blackhawk, for example, part of the modernization is to enable fly-by-wire, right, to have a lot of the linkages that come out of the aircraft.
That itself puts us the ability to control it with software, right?
So, when we're fly-by-wire and we take out many of the mechanical linkages, we can then have crewed uncrewed, we can have autonomy into those systems.
But you don't have to change the entire structure, for example.
Or if we think about radars, right, we can make radars better, more accurate, just by pushing software as we learn about what's happening in theater and false alarms and those sort of things.
Okay, and a final question: we talked about software.
Anything you're getting from the European theater, from the U.S. Army, that is sort of a pressing need?
Yeah, our military has been extremely helpful of enabling new partnerships with Allied nations.
We've learned a lot from Ukraine, as you all know, of what's happening there.
And I think that we're seeing a great awakening across Europe, right, of partnerships and them wanting to advance and modernize their capabilities.
We think that's extremely important, is to have Allied nations working together to deter the threats that we face in the modern theater.
We've seen the government, especially the U.S. government, move quicker and faster to want to enable these kinds of capabilities for these countries.
And so it's extremely important.
And I cannot thank our partners here enough for helping us do that.
It's important to our military to have strong allies across Europe.
And so we're seeing Europe invest.
We're seeing a lot of opportunities across Europe to create a more robust supply chain across the global allies.
And we think that's really important.
You know, we think, you know, we all think I saw under COVID the fragility of the supply chain.
One of the ways to help with that is to have allied nations that have robust capabilities.
So we create multiple suppliers across the world.
And that's part of it, right?
So when we see it's not just having different weapons and systems in theater with those different countries, but it's having investments of industrial base within the countries.
And that's where I think a lot of the advancements are coming with Europe.
Okay.
That's all the time we have.
Thanks for listening.
Thank you very much, Sebastian.
Good to go.
All right.
All right.
Good morning.
I'm Jen Judson, Land Warfare Reporter for Defense News.
Thank you for joining us here at our first session at AUSA on Army modernization.
Hope everyone is all set with their coffee.
Feel free to get over there and grab it if you haven't.
I know it's early.
The session will be recorded and archived on defensenews.com.
We have a microphone available for audience questions.
If you're watching online, click the ask a question button and we'll get to as many as possible.
My guests today are Army Chief Information Officer Lionel Garcia, Lieutenant General John Morrison, Deputy Chief of Staff Cyber, Lieutenant General Maria Barrett, Commanding General, U.S. Army Cyber Command.
Welcome and thank you for sitting down with me on day one of AUSA.
So this panel on Army modernization, and I think it's very telling that, based on who is up here, that the network and operating in the cyber domain is central to a modernized force.
So the Army will not be doing anything effectively on tomorrow's battlefield without a robust, hardened, efficient, accessible, usable network.
I probably left out some important descriptors there, but you get the idea.
There are just a few short years before you hit 2027, which is the timeline goal you have for establishing the unified network.
So the Army is making headways in streamlining disparate networks.
Generally Morrison, you and I sat down and talked a little bit about this about a month ago, but broadly discussed what this has entailed and what you're working toward.
And can kick it off with Mr. Garcia?
Where do I even start?
So many of us.
I think we spent a lot of time talking about what we love to refer to as KIT, right?
So great stuff that industry is selling us.
But I think a lot of the focus over the last year, not just kind of this idea of converging the networks, right, and really simplifying the network at echelon.
You can get some other piece of the rest of the.MLPFP, right?
A hyper-focus on rethinking the way we do business, right?
So we often talk about we're just going to change policy.
I think it's a little bit more than that, right?
It's like, how do we re-engineer how we deliver capabilities?
So, a couple three areas that we've been hyper-kind of focused in this space to lay down what I would consider as a policy foundation that lets us get to that 2027 space.
One is rethinking cybersecurity.
So, how do we think about operationalizing cybersecurity in today's world, especially when we're looking at it from a frame of there's new technology that's come out, our policy is kind of industrial age, how do we really upgrade that really quickly and let the force get some shaping guidance to deliver cybersecurity in a much better way.
I think the next big piece has been really this idea of how do we lay the foundation for AI and ML and data, right?
So, for those who've been watching, we've spent a lot of time kind of rethinking who owns data in the Army, right?
Pushing a lot more work to the functionals, really having them focus on their problem set, right, to really shape technology where it's going.
And as we look at some of the work that we're doing right now to enable like LLMs across the Army, is what does that really mean from a policy perspective, right?
Security, data protection, what does that look like?
A lot of work there.
And then the last piece, which has been kind of interesting, you'll hear a lot more during our Warriors Corner this week.
But this idea of moving towards continuous ATO, right?
So, we've done a big push over the last year on software modernization.
How do we get policy around that that really allows programs to move a lot faster, right?
And actually operationalize DevSecOps.
We say it, we say we're going to operationalize agile, but we haven't built that framework to really get that done.
So, big focus has been kind of laying that foundation to then be able to turn around and operationalize it as we move to 2027.
I would just add a couple thoughts.
So, when we started this notion of the unified network four years ago, it's hard to believe that it's been that long.
It was really just to get the Army moving in a common direction.
I would say that we're blowing past that at a very, very good clip because it's now becoming a realized operational capability.
And we can talk more about how we're crushing the artificial barriers between theaters that allow us to rapidly deploy folks and organizations around the world seamlessly.
How we're crushing the false divide between our enterprise network and our tactical networks because it all must work in a united fashion.
Excuse the pun.
But I would tell you that the most important thing we're going to do, and we are doing, is we're changing the institution.
And I leave you with the thought that institutional change is lasting change.
So, we have changed the way that we govern and prioritize requirements at the headquarters department of the Army.
We have changed the way that we align resources to those requirements, all being co-led by the CIO and my office.
We've established one PEO to deliver the network.
PEO C3T, which used to be just for tactical, is now PEOC3N for the network.
Mr. Mark Kitts is the PEO who's responsible for delivering it.
And then, under that unified governance, now we've got unified requirements, we've got unified delivery of those capabilities based off prioritized requirements.
Most importantly, we now have a single operational commander who's responsible for operating, maintaining, securing, and I would submit to you, maneuvering the network on behalf of our Army.
A completely different approach than how we've tried it before, where we were very, very bifurcated, we were very, very siloed, and the reality of it is we could not achieve any network modernization based off of zero trust principles by 2027 if we're trying to do it against 69 different networks.
If you do it against one, you got a fight and chance.
You can do it against 69, absolutely no chance at all.
So, how are we doing with network modernization?
I'm going to turn it over to the operational commander responsible for it.
Perfect.
So there is so much going on.
And I'm going to actually say, from an offensive cyber standpoint, show me a network that is in transition and I'll show you one at risk.
And so everything that we're doing in support of the network modernization is a deliberate transition.
So everything from when the transforming contact elements are going out to JRTC or JPMRC next month, or this month.
This month, I mean.
You know, we will have red teams on the ground looking to see and trying to penetrate them and testing what it is that we're laying in every step of the way.
As we execute this modernization and we employ zero trust principles for every aspect of that that we're laying in, it's being red teamed.
And we're thinking about our business processes and our organizations too.
General McPhail at NETCOM, now because some of the services are not regionally provided, they're not provided by units.
They're centrally provided.
We have transitioned RCC CONUS into a global cyber center to really operationalize.
So as issues come up or we see things in the network that need to be addressed, now this is the synchronizing body behind it.
So it almost goes to Mr. Garcia's point.
This isn't just about the material solutions that are being employed.
There's organizational change, there's process change, and then throughout all echelons, getting to that operational level as well.
Okay, well, I'd love to dive a little bit deeper on that in terms of the organizational changes that are required to get after this.
So can you highlight a few ways that you are changing the organization to be able to accommodate this type of unified network and to ensure that it is functional on the battlefield?
What are some of the things that you have to do organizationally specifically to get after all that?
All right.
So I'll let Joe Morrison talk about raising complexity up on the battlefield.
But this idea of the central delivery of services, the one thing, the global cyber center, to orchestrate all of that and to see across the global span of what is happening on the network, both from a performance standpoint and also from a security standpoint.
I think some of the other things that we're doing is the orgnet convergence is a really big thing.
That allows us to see ourselves so much more clearly.
It's not just more efficient in terms of how we acquire services, but that collapsing of the networks and being able to provide centrally provided services.
Some of the things that we're employing are just smarter too.
Army unified directory services allow that global plug-and-play.
So no longer do you have to reimage a computer when you go somewhere else or PCS or deploy.
And so those types of more globally provided services, and I think this is really going to be underpinned furthermore on the battlefield.
When we start talking about that integrated data layer, it has to extend throughout the enterprise, all the way down into the tactical space.
And operating this way really does make sense.
And do you want to elaborate on that?
So This notion of central delivery of service and raising complexity up in our formations are not exclusive.
They're mutually supporting, I would submit to you.
And when we talk about central delivery of services, think about Army 365, one location from a cloud environment providing the vast majority of, quite frankly, even on our mission network, the vast majority of our business operational support and our day-to-day collaboration.
If we were fielding capability sets, we were doing it for all the right reasons.
We were supporting a very rigorous deployment schedule.
We weren't deploying as divisions.
We were deploying as brigades.
They had to be self-contained formations.
But when we did that, we inadvertently pushed all the complexity to include the organizational structure down into the BCT.
That caused a lot of problems, especially as we started transitioning back to thinking about large-scale ground combat operations.
I actually have made the comment, and I grew up in divisions, I can't imagine maneuvering one of our division formations today with the network we have because it was so siloed.
So as we've embarked on C2 fix and soon to be next-gen C2, it's all about pulling that complexity up to give it to the folks at the appropriate echelon who have the time to deal with the problem.
Think about this.
We had our highest end cyber security operators pushed into BCTs.
But at BCT's maneuver, they actually had no time to conduct that very critical test.
But if you place that capability, that people, that organizational structure at the division, or even inside some of the regional cyber centers for downward reinforcing, now you're able to take that complexity out, but still provide that critical capability that we will need against a thinking adversary.
Making it as simple as we possibly can and putting the right people at the right location to deal with the more complex tasks is absolutely essential part of our journey.
I think the next couple of years is going to be interesting to watch, right?
We're watching in real time kind of organizational transformation, right?
So some services are getting centralized really fast, so we're like kind of really moving to contact on those.
And some of them have now matured to a place where it just makes sense to kind of put the Lego block in the right Lego set, right?
So like we had cloud at the headquarters, probably the worst possible idea on the planet.
Let's go run operations out of the headquarters.
So we moved cloud operations to our cyber, right?
Like it just makes sense.
It was mature enough.
It's time.
Other things like thinking through this process of where we've removed complexity at Echelon and moved things up.
Now we've also kind of done two things, right, which are really interesting.
We kind of democratized the ability to build capability at the edge, right?
And at Echelon with a bunch of no-code and low-code platforms out there, some data platforms that we said, go to town if they're available to you.
And then we empowered folks at Echelon on the data side, right, and said, you own your data, you need to operationalize it.
And those two things are really forming what I call little microorganizations out there within commands and at Echelon, which are now driving that bigger change, right?
I think that's what you'll see over the next couple of years is a whole kind of, at all echelons, this transformation that's happening, a little bit more heavy data, kind of figuring that out, a little bit more heavy on the cybersecurity side, but maybe not so much the network, more about software.
And then it's also kind of created this opportunity to build these smaller teams, which may or may not be episodic, right?
I feel like we did this cloud thing in the Army as an episodic, like put it at the headquarters, get it scaled, then move operations to the right place.
Doing the same thing on software, right?
Build a small team, the triage team, they go help commands, get the software piece right.
Probably looks a little different in five years, a little bit more streamlined.
And maybe we don't need that anymore.
So I think you're going to see a lot of flex like that where we get some pop-up stuff to triage and then kind of shape it into how we operate on a day-to-day basis.
And I really don't think when it comes to organizational design and the training of our leaders and our people, I don't think it's ever a done deal.
I think that it's going to continue to evolve over the course of time.
And when you think about what transforming contact is, a lot of folks get hung up on the capabilities that are being fielded.
Transforming contact is really about transforming the way that we fight and the way that we're organized to fight and not waiting for some modernization cycle because we're just too busy as an Army.
And so I think this is going to be continuous.
And it's not just about, as Leo said, the bright shiny kit.
It's about being able to think our way through adaptive organizations and quite frankly, the skill sets that we're going to need over time.
Okay.
You've talked a little bit about how policy needs to change in order to accomplish what you need to do.
So what policy gaps, big ones that remain?
I mean, I'm sure there's plenty that you have yet to discover.
But what policy needs to be amended generally in order to enable the Army's goal to establish the network?
It's so hard to not be flippant when you ask that.
Look, there's a lot.
I will tell you, I've been sitting in this seat for about a year, and I have looked at stuff that was written and the Army is using before I was born, which is terrifying, by the way, when it comes to the network.
So here's what we've been doing, right?
We've taken a little bit of a different approach.
Historically, it's been like, hey, one policy to rule them all.
We've been working really hard to kind of segment that and really focus on policies that shape capability.
So a couple of areas that are real critical right now.
I think on the data piece, we continue to mature that space.
It's been a space that historically has been an all-or-nothing kind of thing.
It's been like, hey, you can't release any of this data.
It's all an OPSEC issue.
Kind of really refocus that space right there.
Almost everything we're doing in the Army, whether it be name your buzzword, ML, AI, cyber, it doesn't matter, big data, whatever you want to call it, all dependent on a data piece.
Army really didn't have any policy on that.
So we focused a lot on empowering functionals to own their data and shape not just the problems they were trying to solve with that data, but have accountability for making that available to other folks.
So when we talk about big challenges, right, is how do we get it so it's not in the system and the system owner says, no, I can't share my data.
But the folks that have the problem are actually the ones making that decision.
I think we've made a lot of headway on there as we look at kind of some of the stuff we're doing in LLMs.
It's a new space now, right?
So we're kind of fighting the new fight there.
So that's been an area where we've been shaping the gap and I think there's still a lot more work to do.
I think the next piece has been around kind of balancing this space between acquisition and non-acquisition, right?
And what I mean by that is there's capabilities out there, right?
Whether you're talking no-code, low-code, where you know, soldiers, civilians, and some of our vendors, right, are operating in those platforms.
Is that an acquisition?
I don't know.
There's other areas where folks are making really quick, dynamic, perishable software.
Does that count as an acquisition?
Does that need our DTE?
Spending a lot of time right now on putting some boundaries and some definitions around that, right?
So we can still keep forward momentum and not get stuck in the bureaucracy of old and give some space.
When I think about big challenges, that's probably one of the biggest ones we have, right?
It's stopping folks from delivering because we're kind of living back here.
Same thing for requirements, right?
It's kind of this whole plethora of the traditional way that we deliver capability.
A lot of work is going there.
We've done an initial cut with the data platform memo signed between myself and the acquisition executive at ASALT.
We're going to kind of expand that now moving forward, right?
So, what we did it for these platforms, why don't we do it for all our NOCO loco platforms, right?
Let's really democratize that.
So, a lot more work to do.
And then, the last space is probably the place where we need most of the work right now, where we're kind of putting out micro-guidance to get folks moving in the right direction.
But we have pretty old cybersecurity policy.
Today's Army, from a policy perspective, it is all about compliance 100%.
And you've got kind of, I know General Morrison and I have been talking for months about operationalizing cybersecurity and moving folks from this compliance-based environment to that.
That's the big muscle movement that I think we're going to see over the next probably 24 months, is a reimagining of that entire process and the policies around that.
It's going to take some time, it's going to take a lot of cultural lift to get there.
But to me, those are the three areas where kind of we've got some holes in our swing, or again, industrial age process for digital age problems.
So, how do we kind of bridge that gap as we move to more digitally enabled policy?
All right.
Want to weigh on that?
Okay, no?
All right.
So, since we're talking about policy, obviously, you've mentioned the software policy a few times, and that's a big push for the Army right now is to get the software policy right, you know, to help enable modernization across the enterprise.
So, you know, much is dependent on software upgrades to add capability, whether that's a combat vehicle or missile defense radar or a C2 system or the network.
So, from your vantage point, what does the software policy enable your work?
How does it enable your work?
And why is it important?
And what does it do?
What does it not do at this point as it's taking shape?
Yeah, I think the big thing it does, which is probably the most important part, is right, I love being buzzword compliant.
So, we talk DevSecOps and Agile and all these things, and everybody's got it on their little pamphlets, and this is what my program is doing.
But when you go down and look, kind of nobody's really doing that, right?
We're kind of playing at it still.
I think, number one, the big thing it does is it sets a foundation to actually be able to do those things, right?
Build software at speed and scale in a secure fashion, right?
Because we could talk about doing it all day long, but if none of the policy framework to support that enables that, then it's kind of hard to get it done.
So, I think you'll see the first real true, like, oh my God, moment is going to be here shortly, right?
We're about to release a couple of things.
One, here's how the Army will approve of DevSecOps pipeline.
This is what it takes.
Here are the tools.
Doesn't matter where you get them, who you leverage from, that you can use as long as it's within this framework.
And the last piece, which I think is a critical piece, is and here's what that means for you if you want to be in what, in a continuous ATO in a secure fashion.
Really big.
The other piece is this idea of where do we help where folks need help.
And what I mean by that is build smaller teams that can go out and help commands or programs that are challenged in the software space come up to speed really quick, right?
Get the agile piece into their programming, get the tools that they need to deliver software.
And the most important piece, because this is the gap of gaps, make sure that your cybersecurity people are sitting in the room and adjusting those Rhiostats for all these capabilities.
I think that's the big piece on the software modernization that we've been focused on.
Still a lot of work to do on the contracting side.
The Center of Excellence is going to be a big help, right, to get folks the help that they need when they need it.
A lot of the work that ASALT's been doing, kind of re-looking at requirements, especially, has been really big.
I think the other piece to this is rethinking, test, and evaluation, right?
This idea of we could build software fast.
We finally got folks to realize there's a security component to it.
Now, the next piece is: can we build software fast with a security component and actually test it in a way that makes sense?
And that's the next piece where you're going to see a hyper push: is what does testing really look like and how do we reimagine that in the Army moving forward?
It sets a foundation for us.
And I would ask from our industry partners, I would ask for some tactical patience because much like we were talking before about our organizations are going to continuously morph as technology and capabilities, mature, the network is going to continue.
Boy, think about it in the software space.
That is really going to start taking off on us.
But at least now we have a foundation, Mr. Garcia was saying, from which we can pivot.
And that is really, really, really important because sometimes you just need to get started and then learn by doing and then make the smart puts and takes that you need to mature yourself.
And again, I don't think this is one where we're going to hit a home run since we're in Major League Baseball playoff season.
But I think we're on base and I think we're going to continue to move people around those bases.
Well played.
Thank you.
General Garrett, I did want to ask just to pull a thread on the test and evaluation side a little bit and how that, you know, that is, how are you working through, you know, is test and evaluation set up right now to allow for cyber security testing, other cyber testing, or does test and evaluation need to be revamped in some ways that will enable you to better evaluate capability from your vantage point?
I think, you know, Mr. Garcia and I are working very closely, our two organizations, working closely on the policy and on the DevSecOps piece of this in order to develop a process that makes sense, that actually can end up with product at the end, but in a secure manner.
So I think this type of partnership gets us to that end of making smart changes in the way that we do business in order to achieve both the security.
I think as we think about we're embedded in each one of the project convergence experiments, doing overwatch of the experimentation, looking at also, I think providing to the test and evaluation and to the acquisition community, here's what we're seeing from a threat standpoint, here's how the threat is changing, this is what they're taking advantage of.
To be able to share those insights also beyond the borders of Army cyber is super important so that they can be integrated into the work that's being done.
And, you know, especially on the software side of the house, everything is going to be driven by software.
And as I take a look at some of the trends, you know, in the threat environment, while the number of zero days haven't necessarily increased, the particular areas that they're focused on, you know, security appliances and software, that has absolutely increased.
And that, you know, that keeps me awake at night.
And so being able to receive products that not only are secure, but have the wherewithal to respond rapidly to a particular threat and issue a patch, that's critical.
You know, so when we look at who we want to do business with from the standpoint of defending the networks, this is what we're asking: you know, how effective, what is your process for moving quickly to change something, you know, in your operating system, you know, should you find out that there's a critical flaw?
I think that has to be part of the conversation.
I think the other piece as we move to more as-a-service type models, which look, there's a lot of benefit to taking advantage of industry deliver capabilities, whether it's Starlink, Chimeta, any cloud-type service that's out there, having this conversation, you now are an operational partner.
And so, if something happens within your environment, whether it's nation-state actor or natural causes, we have to have this operational linkage where you're calling me or I'm calling you and saying, where are we, how do we move forward on this?
And I think that's a big change that we'll see evolve over the next couple of years.
And on the TE piece, right, so that's really interesting.
So, three years ago, we did the first program of record that was really in the cloud.
And I happened to be part of that effort and saw, wow, we had no idea what we were doing.
When we talked cyber survivability, it was like, well, we kind of think it's this, right?
That's everybody.
That's purple team, red team, the testers.
I think where we are today is so different right now.
The last couple of TE events that I've seen it, and we're talking for big programs, right?
The idea that, one, our cyber is in the conversation, right?
That the red team and the purple team, we're all, everyone's talking together, and we're rethinking the skill set we need in that space to make sure we're testing against the right things.
Like, where we are today is like 180 degrees out from where we were even three years ago.
So, it is a moving target.
I think it'll continue to mature.
But, again, General Barrett's point, right?
As we move up the stack, which is what I keep saying, right?
A lot of the capabilities moving up the stack, it's changing what we look at.
And that's going to be the big piece: how do we manage and equip to support that?
Yeah, it's a two-part question that you really asked, right?
There's the institutional components of how do we build our PORs.
And is that foundation set the way that we want it?
As Mr. Garcia just sat there and said, it's trending in the right direction.
We still have more work to do.
And then, quite frankly, as the threat changes, our testing is going to have to change.
But I take you back to the actions that we've been doing with C2 Fix.
Our cyber red teams attacking the architecture that we had deployed with the 101st, now out in the Pacific with the 25th, doing the same thing.
And it's not just doing an assessment of the network from a cyber perspective, it's also wrapping in how are we doing the electromagnetic spectrum as well.
Because, quite frankly, on today's battlefield, that's probably a greater threat than what we're facing on the cyber side.
And we're seeing that play out in conflicts around the world.
And so, having that operational red team actively trying to do something to the network, it's making sure that against the pros from Dover, we're fielding a capability that we can operate, maintain, secure, defend, and maneuver in support of combat operations.
Could you elaborate more on what the Army is learning from the red teaming that you're doing at experiments and exercises through real-world examples on approaching approaches to hardening the network capabilities, C2 systems, against very capable enemies?
Yeah, so I'll share three really big thoughts about what we're starting to see.
So first off, we can raise complexity.
We don't need to push it all the way down and we can make things very simple for our operators who really just need to figure out how they're maneuvering and fighting.
And the quote that we got when we went down to the Joint Readiness Training Center from the Observer Controller was, we're not fighting the network anymore.
The unit is now fighting the enemy.
That is a completely different shift than any conversation we would have had about the Army's tactical network anytime in the past.
So that's one, when we are able to do it.
Two, we do not have the echelonment of who's responsible for doing what from a cyber defense perspective nailed down yet.
We're getting straight inside our tactical formations, but the big ideas are going to be hooked back to the broader, our cyber enterprise, I'll call it, where you have that layered defense so that the regional cyber centers and eventually the global cyber center and then all the way back to our cyber headquarters itself, a common view across that entire continuum.
Because again, we don't want at the tactical level folks trying to do counter blocks on cyber actors.
We want that done someplace else where folks actually have time to see what's happening and then take the appropriate measures.
So we have a little bit more work to do on that component of it.
I will also tell you that this notion of putting simple and intuitive kit in the hands of our soldiers, it is also working.
Our TOCs, which used to take upwards of a day or even longer to install and get to an operational capability, we have units that are now doing it in less than 30 minutes.
45 minutes at night with night vision goggles on.
A sea change in how we've been operating, and it's because the network is simple and it's able to be delivered to formations as opposed to them trying to establish their own network by themselves.
I don't know if you guys want to add anything.
Yeah, I'll just amplify the contested nature of the battlefield.
I think commanders at Echelon are more cognizant of the fact that they will be operating in a contested electromagnetic spectrum.
So what does that mean?
It is the mobility piece, the appreciation for the fact that they can move their C2 with little or no disruption, the idea that they have to keep moving, the idea that they have to be aware of what their signature looks like and also be able to see the adversaries or the OPFORS signature as well in the electromagnetic spectrum,
giving them the tools to do that and then make decisions about how they array themselves to reduce their signature.
I think that was also some of the feedback from JRTC was that that was probably the best signature reduction of a command post that they had seen in a while.
And so I think that also we're seeing it reflected in the commanders on the ground and how they're thinking about how to employ their forces.
And I think that's a really good news story.
But it also, it's because they are watching what is happening in Southwest Asia, what is happening in Ukraine.
The transparency of the battlefield can't be overstated.
So I think that's one of the other big things that I would underscore.
Okay, okay.
You know, going smaller and more agile versus huge command posts that we've seen in the past, that sounds great, tablets in the back of a tank for commanders to coordinate missions also sounds great.
But what are some of the trade-offs to consider when reducing that footprint?
There are great benefits, of course, but what are some of the downsides that you're discovering as you go through some of this experimentation evaluation in the past year or so?
Yeah, I mean, I'll take a stab and then throw it over to General Morrison.
But whatever it is that we are deploying, whatever application or service it is, it's got to work at the edge first and then bring it back into the enterprise.
If you're doing this and trying to re-engineer an enterprise capability to work at the edge, it's generally, which has been our normal approach to that, it doesn't work.
And so, if we can get that at the edge, and I think the other thing is really having this really robust conversation with commanders about how do you want to operate, how do you maneuver, how do you make decisions?
And then that informs really where does the data need to be, where does the processing, the compute, and processing need to be at echelon on the battlefield?
Does it really need to be all the way down to the platoon?
And what classification are we operating at?
I think that conversation is really helpful to coming up with this integrated data layer that's going to be vital for not only just operating the network and enabling C2, but actually all of those mission command systems that commanders are employing.
Yeah, I think, and I know we talk about this at length, right?
Cloud solves all, not really.
I think that's been our big thing, right?
Is we've watched the almost hyperdependency now on reaching back to cloud.
So, what does that really mean?
I think this idea of edge, though, right, it's us also redefining what that means.
Because I think depending on the capability and the data, I think the definitions may be different.
So, a lot of the work that we've seen and kind of the drawbacks has been, you know, have we gotten enough reps to understand where we have some of the challenges there and where we're going to have to adjust fires?
I think that's going to be a big piece.
I think the next couple of exercises are really going to demonstrate that to a much greater effect.
So, hopefully, that should start shaping some of our acquisition work around that space.
But this idea of where edge is, where data needs to be, where do you really need storage compute as we kind of experiment, we're refining that.
And General Barrett's point, right?
It's fundamentally about we're changing the way we're fighting, right, in real time.
So, there's going to be some back and forth on what that looks like.
So, I think both Leah and Maria really hit it, but I will add a couple thoughts.
You know, so C2 fix and next-gen C2 is not about a capability only, it is about changing the way that our Army operates and redefining what those echelons are going to be doing and getting the complexity out of the brigades, getting it to division and corps or even higher, so that brigades can go back to doing what they're supposed to be doing, maneuvering against an adversary and destroying them.
And right now, the formation is overly burdened with its own task to be doing that.
Again, I take you back to the notion of fighting the network instead of the network's fine, now you're fighting the adversary.
And that's what we really need to get to.
And this notion of distributed data is going to be absolutely critical.
We know we don't have that right yet, and we have very, very positive signs coming out of what we're doing with both C2 fix and next-gen C2, but we also need to realize we have an adversary out there, and we will be operating in degraded environments at times.
I will tell you, you used the word, what's the downside?
One of the downsides that we're seeing, and it goes back to this notion of data, is too much information.
And I had one commander, and this is a great problem to have, go, I have so much information, I finally shut down some of my systems so I could just concentrate on fighting, and I would talk to people when I needed to talk to them.
Because the information and the data that was available to me would just overwhelm me, and I had to just go back to the basics of natural maneuver.
And so too much information, unfiltered, is one of the things that we're definitely going to have to work our way around because for lack of a better term, we've opened Pandero's box.
The network is not the problem accessing that data anymore.
Now we've got to figure out what's the right data and what echelon we really need to have it at.
I did want to ask about connecting to the network.
If you have things like Starlink, so many options now.
So how are you working on connectivity solutions for the network?
And how are you building relationships with industry that have these commercial capabilities?
What's changing the game and what challenges remain when it comes to that?
I'll let General Morrison deal with SATCOM as a service.
But I will say this.
I think the environment, so we've kind of touched on it a couple of times, but this really big move to SaaS, right?
We look at a lot of our provided capabilities out there right now, kind of fundamentally different delivery model.
One of the things that we've been really focused on is making sure that we tighten our partnerships with some of those SaaS providers, not just from a cybersecurity perspective, but also just from a business perspective, right?
How are we going to operationalize some of these capabilities?
It's kind of changing the model for how capabilities get delivered.
So it's been kind of a lot of work between our team and CIO and ASOT really focusing on how do we start shaping that so it makes sense and so that there's a viable delivery and acquisition model out there for those capabilities.
So I think in that space it's been interesting to watch the last couple of years.
One of the interesting things is not only driving cybersecurity change, right, but really driving acquisition change.
A lot of the things that we've seen, even from some of the work that's been done in experimentation, is us having to rethink the guidance that we've given some of our acquisition folks on the contract side and our contracting officers and reshaping that.
So hopefully folks out in industry are starting to see kind of the benefits of that piece, which is the Army really doing a big push to kind of update some of the work in that space.
But I do think it's going to be, again, right, it's like everything else.
The model's changing really fast and we're changing this whole entire institution at the same time.
So the big thing is going to be we're going to probably get it 80% right, I think, most of the time.
Sometimes we're going to get it really wrong.
But it's going to be some work on making sure we can flex across those, especially as a service capabilities that are out there.
They're really changing the way we not just buy, but leverage, right?
I always tell folks, my number one question in all of these is when something goes bad and I pick up the phone, who's on the other end of that phone, right?
That's like my number one question is who do I call?
Because that's what we all do as humans, right, when something breaks.
So I think that's going to be the big one is really continuing to flesh out that who do I call problem.
You know, 20 years ago, or when I came in the Army, a long, long time before that, the Army would deploy its own network and take, we would just pick up, go to the field, and that was it.
Those days are gone, right?
We will never deploy a solely military network again.
It will always be infused with commercial capabilities.
And I don't like to use specific vendors' names because I think it's going to be a really, really big tent as we start working our way through this.
But why wouldn't we do that?
Because if we try and field a military network only, No joke, a few years ago we were planning on fielding network capabilities out into the 2040s.
What business would think of the networker IT in that fashion?
Your Army shouldn't think of it that way either.
So, if we really want to get into the spin of how things are going, we have to have a base architecture that we land on that we can rapidly plug things to, very, very software-defined, so that as a new capability comes on from one of our industry partners, we can rapidly spin it in.
Or if we have a change in the threat environment, we can rapidly spin it out.
But the biggest change, and it's going to take all of us, is the conversations have to be completely different.
There can be no more a this is my secret sauce, and that's yours, and when we put them together, it looks great.
When you have a capability that's landing in a foreign country that is housed by one of our industry partners, we need to understand what that security is.
More importantly, you need to understand the security that we're going to be layering in so that we can work together.
And quite frankly, you should be demanding threat intel from us so that we can tell you what's happening in an operational environment.
Because if that capability fails, your Army could be put at risk.
And if our Army's put at risk, bad things are happening.
And so, it's going to force a different dynamic and a different conversation amongst all of us.
And we need to head into that brave new world with our eyes wide open and full of energy.
You know, once upon a time, commanders love to hug their servers.
You pointed at me once upon a time.
No, because you're going to identify with this, right?
Commanders love.
Commanders love to hug their servers, right?
And we have changed that paradigm.
And the reason why they hugged it was because they wanted to be assured that it was protected and it was going to perform.
And I didn't need to depend on anybody else.
And I think this, now that we are going to take, we will always be using industry services.
That risk profile, we now have, I have to be able to articulate that risk to a joint force commander, to the chief, to the secretary, in a way that we all understand it clearly.
And I would just kind of use that to amplify General Morrison's points there because that ability to articulate risk at any given time or to have that risk conversation with an industry partner, I think is vital.
Okay.
I do want to open it up to anyone that has a question in the audience.
If you do, please feel free to step up to the microphone to ask your question, and there's one on either side.
If not, I can keep going with my own questions.
I'll give you a chance to stand up if you have one.
Okay.
Hope you're not asleep out there.
I did want to ask about how, you know, C2FIX, NextGen C2, big effort this year.
You know, NextGen C2 started as essentially a pilot program at the beginning of the year.
Got to see it out at Fort Irwin in March.
But you've had further iterations on this, including some work done at NetModEx, I believe.
So if you could talk a little bit about the evolution of this, how this has been growing, and what you're taking from it, and how you're going to potentially build a program off of this effort that you're rapidly iterating.
I'll offer a couple thoughts.
So I would caution against thinking of C2FIX and NextGen C2 as two separate and distinct activities.
They do have two separate and distinct focuses.
C2FIX is exactly what it sounds like.
We know that the network that we have inside our divisions today is not the network we want to take to combat.
And so it is about fixing that network architecture so we can fight tonight.
Very, very near-term focus, not really doing new programmatics around it, but we are making sure that we're infusing the appropriate commercial capabilities into it, that it makes us much more enabled.
We are bringing in higher capacity satellite capabilities.
We're leveraging 5G.
We're reducing the computing requirements that are required inside our brigade headquarters and then echeloning that appropriately so the division can maneuver and the brigades can fight.
And so that is what C2 Fix is about.
And it stayed very, very focused on really two aspects.
Fixing the network components of it, but really getting the C2 echelonment straight between the division and the brigades, to include the enabling brigades, which is also a significant departure from how we were fielding capabilities in the past, where the brigade combat teams had everything, but the Combat Aviation Brigade or the Sustainable Brigade or the Division Artillery Brigade did not have light capabilities.
And so even inside the division, we weren't interoperable to the point that we needed to be.
I feel that the network components of C2 FIX are definitely trending in the right direction.
We've had red teams go against it.
We're watching the signature at the brigades be dramatically reduced.
And we're watching the brigades be able to actually get back to what they're supposed to be doing, hopping and popping and maneuvering, as opposed to a day to set up attack, mere minutes.
That is all trending in the right direction.
Next Gen C2 is now taking that C2 apparatus.
So think about the warfighting function systems.
So Intel, fires, maneuver, sustainment, integrating that at the data layer and then laying that C2 apparatus over the network that will emerge from C2 FIX.
So instead of these stovepipe mission command systems that we have out there today that just simply do not integrate the way that they need to and are overly complex and are very stovepiped, now it's going to be integrated at the data layer and applications will ride on top of that infrastructure.
All cloud enabled, cloud-based, but as Mr. Gargasigo was sitting there saying, it will have to be distributed because we will be operating against a foe and we know we're going to be in a contested and congested environment, especially when it comes to the electromagnetic spectrum.
So C2FIX, three divisions in 25.
We will be going to the 101st and fully kidding them out, the 25th Infantry Division out in Hawaii, fully kidding them out, and then the 82nd Airborne at Fort Liberty and getting them kitted out.
And then we will identify a fourth division, most likely one of our armored formations, at a point to be determined.
We're still working through the physics of that.
Meanwhile, NetMod X was a great foundation for NextGen C2, leveraging many, if not all, of the network components that are coming out of C2FIX.
And that will be moving towards Project Convergence 5, Capstone 5, in the March timeframe.
And then we'll make some informed decisions as we come out of that experiment.
I hope that laid it out.
Yes, absolutely.
I will tell you the one thing.
So NetMod X is the only place I've been when I left and I got tasked up.
I don't even know how many policies.
I walked out of there and I was like, oh, I had a huge list.
Like, here's six different things that we have not told the Army how to do.
So I think one of the things that we are finding is uh-ohs, right?
I think that removing some of the complexity, giving some more flexibility at Echelon is kind of showing some interesting gaps in that space.
So I think we got a lot more work to do there.
Okay.
All right.
I did want to ask one last question because I know we have like about one minute and it's a little bit involved, so if we run over by a few minutes, I'm sorry.
But how are you thinking about incorporating AI and autonomy into networking functions?
You know, it's a buzzword, and you know, talk about incorporating it into everything.
But where are you seeing potential for that making the most sense?
You know, where could these capabilities be useful for you?
What are you looking at?
Go ahead.
Yeah.
To apply it over a vast network like this is that's really tough.
You have got to start in a very focused manner and then get that going.
So we do have an effort that we're doing called Panoptic Junction.
It is a prototype that we did in conjunction with Cyber Command that looks at how to reduce the complexity of what some of our analysts have to do in terms of identifying threats to the network.
And so we're going to move that into a pilot this year, hopefully.
But I think the other piece of this too is: I'm going to go back to this industry.
A lot of the capabilities of the services that our industry is providing has an AI or ML component to it.
And those type of tools resident in the service that they're providing, we're taking advantage of and really operationalizing those.
So there are going to be two ways of implementing AI or ML, but things that we generate for very specific mission purposes.
And then there's going to be some more general capabilities that we need to take a look at and make sure that we're operationalizing as we, and especially take this as part of the zero trust journey as well.
Again, most of what we're doing, we can leverage those things very effectively to achieve greater outcomes.
And again, reduce the organizations are not going to grow.
So we do need to unburden some of our defenders from chopping wood and really apply them to taking a look at some of the more sophisticated things we need them to be doing.
I'll give you the CIO perspective on this.
So a couple things, right?
I think the biggest part kind of last couple of months has been, you know, we put some guidance out to the Army on LLMs and Gen AI, and it was really, we got great feedback on it, but it was like, you just told commanders to go do.
I said, yes, that's exactly what we did.
We opened the aperture up and said, let's run, but not with scissors, but let's run, and started opening the environment up in cloud, especially to let commanders and let folks with really good use cases come in and start doing stuff.
And with a purpose, right?
And the purpose not being like, let's do cool AI stuff, like, let's figure out the business model here.
Because I think that's the biggest piece we're finding is we don't have that business model quite figured out.
So how do we get an environment open with good commander use cases where we have a small company that comes in and does a kind of hold-your-hand approach?
We have a large integrator who's working on an enterprise POR who's doing something that's considerably more complex.
We have native cloud services at DAI work, and we have soldiers on it, and we've got PhD folks on it, and really start experimenting against those use cases to figure out a couple of things, right?
One, how we want to deal with the data, because we found out very quickly that that's a thing, right?
Can't have 10 people pull every Army piece of doctrine and build their own rag against it.
Not a good idea.
So what does that look like?
So a lot of work into kind of shaping the guidance around that.
Because one, we have to and two, we can't afford not to.
And then the other piece is to kind of go back to industry and say, your cost model really doesn't work, right?
We got folks charging by prompt.
We got folks charging by tokens.
Then we have folks that are charging as a service.
And I'm like, the Army can't buy that way.
So how are we working really with industry to say, hey, we need a more standardized approach to this?
We're really right now very at the foundational level, especially for those services that can be democratized out to the workforce.
It really is about building, one, the digital foundation that we can secure around.
That's number one.
The digital foundation that we can get kind of these pockets of data by functionals in a good place.
And then that last piece is a viable, sustainable business model, which I think we have a lot of work to do on that.
So I call this very much in the infancy stage of how we're going to operationalize some of this technology.
All right.
Well, unfortunately, that is all the time we have.
Please join me in thanking our panelists as well as our sponsor, Lockheed Martin.
Thank you for joining us.
South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace has introduced a bill that would ban transgender women from using female bathrooms and other facilities at the Capitol.
She acknowledged that with the legislation, she is targeting freshman Representative Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware who's also the first transgendered person elected to the U.S. House.
In response, Speaker Mike Johnson today released a statement that reads in part, all single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House office buildings, such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms, are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.
He went on to say, it's important to note that each member office has its own private restroom and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol.
Women deserve women's only spaces.
Representative Elect McBride posted a response writing, I'm not here to fight about bathrooms.
I'm here to fight for Delaware's and to bring down costs facing families.
Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country.
Coming up Thursday morning, a discussion about the incoming Trump administration agenda and women's issues.
First, we talk with California Democratic Congresswoman Sidney Komlauger Dove.