Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall, chief information officer (CIO) of the Joint Staff and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, recently addressed how the military’s future network-of-networks operational construct, Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), can increase innovation and agility by leveraging big data, FedScoop reported on Wednesday.
Crall said the solutions he is looking for range from data management and tagging to identity, credential, and access management (ICAM). “Everything we do from this point forward, it really is all about the data,” he said.
He added that one way to improve JADC2 solutions is to move away from data standards, because the military data from sensors in battle will be presented in a variety of formats, measurements and readability.
“There is going to be diversity; you have got to embrace the diversity,” he said. Crall added that the Joint Staff is looking to incorporate “light” and “nimble” interfaces across a data lake that can help sift through and sort incoming information.
Crall added that, in order to send, share and collaborate with data securely as part of JADC2, there must be solutions to verify the identities of users and data sources on a network. He said it’s one of the core building blocks for the military’s use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Last year, Crall further discussed JADC2’s strategy and how his unit will work to advance the network, as well as technology solutions.
In Nov. 2020, Crall said that the JADC2 Strategy will formulate objectives for JADC2 around three areas, including collecting data from every platform on the battlefield and accelerating the transmission of data to warfighters for use in decision-making.
“We’re looking at things that really are open, easy to see, easy to adjust, easy to manipulate, and truthfully work well with other things,” Crall said. He added that the Department of Defense (DoD) does not want to rely excessively on proprietary technology platforms for JADC2 and is not interested in vendor lock-in arrangement.
“And industry has asked us, ‘Would DoD please lead and tell us what those standards, attributes, interfaces and architectures are?’ And that’s precisely what we’re building in the annexes that go with the strategy document for JADC2. So that will soon be revealed — exactly what these inputs and outputs look like from a mission engineering perspective,” Crall stated.
