The Pentagon is planning to implement a novel mission partner environment architecture on a live network in support of a maritime mission being led by the United Kingdom in 2025. The goal is to employ zero trust and data-centric security capabilities on a federated architecture, composed of “multiple secure, collaborative data services between partners and hosted users,” a spokesperson for the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told DefenseScoop in a statement.

“This enables us to create a global information sharing capability,” the spokesperson said.

The event will leverage previous work done by the Pentagon’s Project Olympus, according to a department news release. Led by the Joint Staff’s J-6 directorate for command, control, communications and computers/cyber, the effort looks to solve challenges that prevent international allies and partners from sharing critical warfighting data by testing, developing and integrating various enabling technologies via experiments and demonstrations.

During the 2025 maritime mission, the United States, United Kingdom and Canada will utilize zero trust and data-centric security capabilities that were previously tested during Project Olympus 2024, including the Indo-Pacific Mission Network and Collaborative Partner Environment, according to the spokesperson.

Other international participants include Norway, Australia, Chile, Spain, France, India, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Oman, New Zealand and Singapore.

“As part of this activity, we will assess command and control effectiveness and performance and CJADC2 capability maturity relative to a primary line of effort within the CJADC2 Strategy, Modernize Mission Partner Information Sharing,” the spokesperson said.

CJADC2 is the department’s new warfighting concept that aims to connect disparate systems operated by the U.S. military and international partners under a single network to enable rapid data transfer between all warfighting domains.

Although the Pentagon announced earlier this year that it had developed a “minimum viable capability” for CJADC2, there are still a number of technology and policy hurdles that inhibit the department’s ability to effectively share information with allies. As a result, the U.S. is adopting new mechanisms — such as zero trust and data-centric security standards — that allow for protected information sharing.

“We’ve historically looked at security as the antithesis for information sharing,” Jim Knight, the United Kingdom’s lead for Project Olympus, said in a Pentagon news release. “The security folks come in and want to sort of clamp down. With zero trust and data centric security, they are security mechanisms, but they are enabling information sharing.”

Zero trust is a cybersecurity framework that assumes adversaries are already moving through IT networks, and therefore requires organizations to continuously monitor and validate users and their devices as they move through the network.

The strategy differs from traditional “perimeter-based” security models that assume all users and devices can be trusted once already inside a network. It requires Pentagon components to modernize their IT infrastructures, as well as adopt new governance processes.

“I think that’s a key focus point,” Knight said. “For the first time, we’re getting that balance right in terms of applying more security. And by applying more security, we’re getting greater information sharing.”

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The report, “Navigating the Intelligence Community IT Roadmap,” analyzes key challenges facing the IC and outlines how existing and tested technology capabilities can help IC components gain a strategic advantage over adversaries.

The report’s timely release aligns with the IC’s five-year IT roadmap, which seeks to advance intelligence operations by promoting seamless collaboration, enhanced data sharing and management and the ability to deploy the newest tech innovations rapidly.

The report highlights a variety of currently available technical capabilities developed by GDIT as part of its long-standing work to support the U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, including:

• DeepSky — a private, multi-cloud, on-prem data center environment developed and maintained by GDIT that facilitates the testing of emerging technology and security capabilities from multiple providers in collaboration with government agencies and their partners. “It’s really difficult to ingest massive amounts of data from a bunch of tools and make it usable for an engineer, an analyst or an executive. So DeepSky helps make those tools work together,” says Ryan Deslauriers, director of cybersecurity at GDIT.

• Mission Partner Environments — a new generation of interoperable networking and data exchange environments. Originally designed to allow military units to exchange data with specific partners, these expanded information-sharing environments enable the selective yet secure sharing of sensitive and classified information with trusted military and coalition partners. MPEs make it possible to take a “full report, break out what can and can’t be released, and push it to the appropriate network virtually and automatically so that information gets to relevant users where they are in a timely fashion,” explains Jennifer Krischer, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer who now serves as vice president for defense intelligence at GDIT.

• Raven — a mobile command center tech suite developed by GDIT that fits in the back of a truck. It extends and deploys the data mesh concept to mobile environments. It can be utilized for disaster relief, special forces operations, or disconnected environments, enabling operators to collect and disseminate data from the tactical edge directly to users on the ground and back to the enterprise. Raven is an example of how GDIT “enables teams to conduct their mission without having to develop, build, maintain, and operate the services internally,” notes Nicholas Townsend, senior director at GDIT.

• Federated Data Fabric — creates a unified data environment through a centralized service platform designed to streamline data curation, management, and dissemination and enable seamless access to data independent of its source or security level. It allows users on the network’s edge to discover, request, publish and subscribe to information within a federated network environment.

Workforce commitment

The report also highlights GDIT’s distinctive approach to hiring and training professionals with extensive defense, IC, and technical experience who uniquely understand the needs of the government’s mission.

“Our workforce two to five years from now will need to be different from what it is today and prepared to take advantage of new technology,” notes Chaz Mason, mission engineering and delivery lead at GDIT. Recognizing this, GDIT doubled its investment in tuition and technical training programs in 2023. More than 20,000 employees have taken at least one of our cyber, AI, and cloud upskilling programs, he said.

GDIT’s staff currently numbers 30,000 professionals supporting customers in over 400 locations across 30 countries; 25%+ of the workforce are veterans.

Read more about how GDIT’s vendor-agnostic technology and decades of government customer experience can help achieve the Intelligence Community’s data-sharing vision.

This article was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and DefenseScoop and sponsored by GDIT.

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Central to those efforts is the renewed vision for creating interoperable “Mission Partner Environments” (MPEs), asserts a new Scoop News Group report sponsored by GDIT. MPEs will allow the military and its trusted partners to communicate and share sensitive information securely and in real-time with allied partners.

MPEs represent a logical extension of the DOD’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) strategy to federate, jointly access and act upon relevant situational data. However, according to the report, that strategy is also fueling a new commitment to integrate mission and coalition partners into evolving technical standards, capabilities and policies — and toward a global IT environment rather than a U.S.-centric one.

The conflicts and humanitarian crises in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere across the globe have added new urgency to the need for near real-time information exchange across multiple domains. They have also heightened how modern warfare has taken on new dimensions in contrast to previous conflicts, according to the report, including:

• Hybrid Warfare Challenges — Conventional military tactics are being fused with cyber and information warfare. This blending of domains necessitates seamless data sharing to effectively counter and respond to such multifaceted threats.
• Information Warfare and Disinformation — Adversaries in the Ukraine conflict extensively employed disinformation campaigns to shape perceptions and destabilize regions. Interoperable systems enable partner nations to collectively analyze and counter such narratives, ensuring a more comprehensive and coordinated response.
• Dynamic Battlefield Tactics — The conflict has underscored the rapid evolution of the battlefield, where situational awareness is paramount. Interoperability enables partners to share real-time intelligence, adjust strategies and respond swiftly.
• Civil-Military Coordination — The Ukraine conflict has also highlighted the importance of integrating civilian and military efforts in a comprehensive approach. Interoperable systems facilitate coordination among various agencies, ensuring a more cohesive and effective response.

While the concept of MPEs is hardly new, what’s changing is the need to collapse and improve the speed and effectiveness of an expanding array of networks to share information securely with coalition partners, says Eric Tapp, a 21-year veteran of the U.S. Army, and now MPE lead at GDIT.

“MPEs are moving from this massive point-to-point connection on a standalone network to the point where eventually all warfighters working in NATO or working in a coalition environment will be able to communicate effectively and share data,” he explains in the report. What’s missing, he contends, “is the operational art and the art of deployment.” 

Tapp, who led MPE development at USCENTCOM before retiring from the Army, highlights “the path to modern MPEs” in the report, the critical need for data-centricity and why MPEs must be transport agnostic if they are to fulfill the vision for real-time data sharing with coalition partners.

Read the full report on developing modern ‘Mission Partner Environments” and how GDIT is helping enhance interoperability with global partners.

This article was produced by Scoop News Group for DefenseScoop and FedScoop and sponsored by GDIT.

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The Defense Department submitted a “Rapid Response to Emergent Technology Advancement or Threats” proposal to Congress on April 12 that would give the services the ability to begin development of new-start programs up to their preliminary design review level of maturity. The authority is intended to help circumvent delays that often occur during the traditional two-year budget cycles.

The request was announced April 19 by Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, who told reporters during a media roundtable at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs that waiting on Congress to pass a budget each year has delayed kick-starting a number of key programs for the Air and Space Forces.

The proposal would allow the Air Force and other services to get around issues that occur when Congress fails to pass appropriations bills on time, said Bill Greenwalt, a former senior staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy.

When this happens, the Defense Department and other federal agencies must operate under continuing resolutions (CR) once the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Under a CR, the Pentagon generally cannot begin development of new-start programs that have likely already gone through a lengthy planning, programming, budgeting and execution process.

“What he’s basically saying is, ‘I’ve gone through all this time, I don’t want the Congress to stop me for six months on a CR — or what could be even worse, a full-year CR,’” Greenwalt, who is now a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, told DefenseScoop.

The authority would allocate money from coffers first created by Congress in 2003 to quickly buy and deploy capabilities needed during the post-9/11 wars, Greenwalt explained. The section has been amended since, and the current fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act states that it is reserved for “urgent acquisition and deployment of capabilities needed in response to urgent operational needs for vital national security interests.”

According to the proposal being pushed by Kendall, R&D initiatives initiated under the newly sought authority would not exceed more than $300 million each fiscal year, and efforts that begin under the new authority would transition to an acquisition pathway after preliminary design review.

“What they’re allowing the department to do is to move money around without requiring congressional approval,” Mark Cancian, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told DefenseScoop.

The Department of the Air Force is requesting $55.4 billion in fiscal 2024 for research, development, test and evaluation efforts, including the creation of 12 new-start programs. The time it takes to stand up these programs can be lengthy and poses a risk for the Air Force as it addresses threats from adversaries, said Cynthia Cook, senior fellow and director of the defense-industrial initiatives group at CSIS.

“This length of time is not a weakness in the system per se — it represents the opportunity for the elected representatives of the United States to review programs and how taxpayer dollars are being spent,” Cook said in an email to DefenseScoop. “However, the threat does not stand still during the necessary bureaucratic funding processes, and by the time services get the funds, their needs may actually change. A two-year delay is a long time.”

Cancian said that Kendall makes a strong argument that the authority could speed up the budgeting process, but that he and the Pentagon will still likely face apprehension from lawmakers.

“The pushback from Congress is going to be concerned that DOD will start a program that will then build momentum so that it cannot be stopped,” he said. “One of the great concerns about programs is that DOD gets them started before really appreciating what the long-term cost is going to be before doing an analysis of alternatives. And then the program gathers momentum, and even if it turns out to not be a promising approach, you’re sort of committed.”

The $300 million cap does limit how much the services could invest in these types of efforts in a fiscal year, mitigating the sudden creation of multi-billion-dollar programs, Cancian noted. Still, there is a risk that down the line the authority could be abused, he added.

“​​With new authorities, the Air Force could move more quickly to counter the threat,” Cook said. “The question is whether the Air Force would be able to offer sufficient communication and transparency to Congress about how they perceive the threat and the nature of their decision-making to rapidly counter the threat, to satisfy Congress in its oversight role.”

At the same time, Greenwalt said that the Air Force may be able to begin the development with existing acquisition tricks that either circumvent CR-related delays or are better suited for the programs it’s concerned about.

In the event of a continuing resolution, the Defense Department can request so-called anomalies attached to the CR that act almost like “mini-appropriations” and grant the department funding for programs like new starts, Greenwalt explained.

The Pentagon could also use a Middle Tier of Acquisition authority to rapidly prototype and test within three to five years, he said. Given the capabilities the Department of the Air Force seems most concerned about being delayed, Greenwalt said this existing authority would be more appropriate to quickly develop these programs.

“They asked for programs that need to mature to [preliminary design review]. Significant data point in the requirement there, because what it states is the department is thinking about traditional defense acquisition … because PDR is a gate that you use to go into engineering and manufacturing and development in that larger 15- to 20-year timeframe,” he said. “If that’s what they’re looking for, six months worrying about the appropriators isn’t going to matter.”

Greenwalt described the proposed authority as “using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito,” and said that while some lawmakers will initially consider it, Congress will most likely reject the proposal in the end.

“Believe me, the appropriations committees and staff deserve to be raked over the coals for not supporting speed and agility in acquisition,” he said. “But this provision is not the way to engender the type of reaction that’s necessary.”

DefenseScoop has reached out to the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee for comment on the DOD proposal. This story will be updated when responses are received.

Kendall, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman are scheduled to testify before the HASC on Thursday, where they may face lawmakers’ questions about the proposal.

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