“It’s about bringing all of those traditionally stovepiped elements together — and employing them at different times and in new and innovative ways,” Col. Michael McFeeters, chief of Transcom’s special activities division, told DefenseScoop last week.

During an exclusive tour of the command’s headquarters at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, he and other officials shared new details regarding ongoing efforts to fuse information operations with cyber operations in Transcom’s non-kinetic arsenal, and some of the latest trends they are observing from U.S. adversaries in cyberspace.  

“A lot of this is intel-driven to wherever the threats are. And what threats are we talking about? Are we worried about China, Iran, Russia? Because they’re very, very different in how they conduct themselves and how they execute operations to contest logistics or the battle space that we’re trying to operate in through. So, you know, we have to … think differently based on whatever adversary where we’ll go up against,” McFeeters explained.

Transcom is a functional combatant command charged with executing global logistics and the transport of personnel and equipment for the Department of Defense and its components. 

The command relies heavily on data, digital systems and commercial partners to meet its mission, all of which requires significant cybersecurity protections.

“We’ve tried to change the way we do cyber operations. In the past, Transcom really focused on just the stuff that we own and operate. But the joint deployment distribution enterprise is a global enterprise,” said Patrick Grimsley, director of Transcom’s J6 command, control, communications and cyber systems directorate.

Over the last few years, command officials have expanded operations and been moving to better ensure they can present senior decision-makers with the greatest understanding of existing and emerging cyber risks — beyond the elements they operate within the DOD Cyber Defense Command (formerly known as the Joint Force Headquarters-DOD Information Network, or JFHQ-DODIN). 

“We’re also becoming a lot more active in information operations. So not just looking at cyber in and of itself, but it’s really cyber is part of the non-kinetic portfolio. So how do we fight through or combat some of the threats that are coming at us, again, outside the things that just Transcom controls? And how do we integrate and work with the other combatant commands to do that, too?” McFeeters said.

“I’d say the majority of what Transcom does is defensive cyber operations. And this is part of thinking in a new way [about] how we leverage the IO side of that to help execute Transcom’s mission,” he added.

Information operations involve the employment of capabilities to influence adversaries’ decision-making and protect friendly forces.

“[U.S] adversaries, they’re all out there — and their focuses are very different. Like, Russia is still focused right now on being able to understand and predict when aid and munitions are crossing the border to get into Ukraine, so they can interdict it before they actually get into the hands of the fighters … who can then employ those. China — completely different. China is just trying to get into everything [in cyberspace]. They’re not facing that same existential threat that Russia is. So, they’re playing more of a wait-and-see, and let’s get in there and have effects ready to shut down systems or critical infrastructure,” McFeeters told DefenseScoop.

DOD leadership expects all military and civilian components to follow its zero-trust cybersecurity framework to protect critical national security data and information. As its name suggests, the zero-trust concept presumes all networks are compromised from the get-go.

“You won’t always be able to keep the bad guys out of everything, right? You have to assume they’re there. But I would say that’s where, by bringing together those non-kinetic disciplines becomes important, [for] intelligence and awareness. For instance, if the bad guys get into one of our systems and we know they’re there, we may not want to kick them out. We may want to take advantage of that,” McFeeters said. “And as long as we know where they’re at and we’re confident they have not laterally maneuvered in that space, we may intentionally start putting stuff into that system so they will see or think something that is not reality.”

When asked for an example, he pointed to a scheduling system Transcom might rely on to coordinate deliveries.

“We may put false schedules in there, right? So that if an adversary is watching and they think something is going to go out of a certain place at a certain time, carrying certain goods, that may not be the case. We have done that in the real world before. We will do that again,” McFeeters said.

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“Right now, [the lab is] working with Transcom’s Surgeon General on how to build analytic tools with patient data to handle a mass casualty event,” John DeLapp, the futures division chief at the command’s analytics center, or TCAC, told DefenseScoop.

Other projects include but are not limited to advanced AI for large-scale in-flight messaging analyses, and algorithms to inform global air refueling missions. They’re all unfolding via a well-established partnership that the command has dubbed the MIT Lincoln Lab Living Plan. 

Officials briefed DefenseScoop on this collaborative initiative during an exclusive tour of the command’s headquarters at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, this week. They also shared new details about an upcoming exercise that aims to optimize data transmission across a broad spectrum of operations.

MASCOT

Launched by the command in 2011, the lab’s “living” plan was conceptualized to be more dynamic than typical static business initiatives — and to enable the two partners to adapt as technologies, circumstances and demands change over time.

“Back then, and even to an extent now, Transcom has had some of the same challenges — stovepiped systems and data, and getting it all together. So, the idea was for Lincoln to help us assess data architectures and to build flexible and robust planning tools, and analytics that would tie planning and analysis together, and propose cross-cutting solutions to that,” DeLapp explained. 

“And what’s happened over time is there have been projects where Lincoln has worked with our air component, Air Mobility Command, on predictive maintenance. They’ve worked with our J6 [command, control, communications and computer systems directorate] in the cyber area. They’ve worked with the J2 [intelligence directorate] in characterizing foreign influence using open-source information,” he said.

Lab officials don’t build and maintain the widgets or systems, but instead prototype technologies and then hand things off to the command or a vendor to fully produce and deploy them. 

“For example, in the air refueling area, our analysis models — with contested environments and all the new challenges — these models are being asked to do more. The model run times are getting slower. It’s getting harder to do them. So, we’ve brought Lincoln Labs on to go research and develop newer algorithmic approaches to speed up techniques and to speed up those algorithms. And then that will get handed off to the contractor that builds and updates it, and then they’ll take that and then incorporate it into the model,” DeLapp said.

In fiscal 2020, the command asked MIT researchers to conduct a comprehensive assessment to gauge which of its directorates were the most and least ready candidates to adopt AI and machine learning in tailor-made use cases.

“That was pretty telling because you can have all this technology, but if the directorate doesn’t know what data they have, or they don’t even know if that data exists, if they don’t even know what a tool can do and what it can’t do, or what it should do — then the time’s not right for you to just go and embrace that,” DeLapp noted.

Roots of the lab’s ongoing analytic and AI-enabling efforts for Transcom’s Surgeon General stem back to challenges pinpointed in that eye-opening assessment. Among its weighty, far-reaching responsibilities, the command serves as the Defense Department’s sole manager for global patient movement, which often involves the rapid and high-stakes transportation of ill and injured military personnel. 

The speed of conflict and urgency of such medical operations can make data-capture and processing typically more complex for Transcom in this context.

Spotlighting such challenges, Transcom public affairs official Erik Anthony told DefenseScoop: “There are some locations where we’ll get paper documentation for these individuals. So when you have even 10 patients moving — and then you do this at scale with thousands of patients — and you have medics running to an aircraft with papers, and then these papers have to make it to three other stops where they’re doing continuity of care.”

The patient movement mission set was identified during the lab assessment as potentially being well-suited for application of AI and ML technology. In fiscal 2021, MIT Lincoln Laboratory began working with the U.S. Transcom Command Surgeon to develop an AI-assisted routing tool to support that mission, he explained.

Now, that’s just one in a suite of tools the lab is developing and refining to facilitate the scalable handling of patient data, automate identification of key patient movements, and support planning for clinical and air assets.

“The Mass Casualty Operations Toolkit — MASCOT — uses [AI and ML] to enhance accuracy, improve workflows, and provide critical insights for both routine patient transport and mass casualty events,” Anthony said.

Once prototyped, the outputs can go on to be maintained as separate tools or used as a specification for incorporation into the Transcom Regulating and Command and Control Evacuation System.

According to Anthony, by applying natural language processing and large language modeling in their toolkit, the lab will assist the patient movement community “in reducing their cognitive load when processing patient movement requests resulting in reduced errors and faster decisions, allowing for increased velocity of patient movement operations.”

“This effort seeks to aid clinicians and airlift planners in decision-making, focusing on addressing operational needs for effective medical transport, particularly during a mass casualty response,” he said.

Another in-development tool in the MASCOT arsenal is what officials referred to as a synthetic patient generator.

“When command officials do exercises, they’ll go ‘We want to exercise some conflict. How are we going to move all these thousands of patients?’ Well, what type of patients are they? They’ve all got different requirements and some have different demands on critical care teams. So, if you want to really exercise that, you’ll want to have a capability to be able to generate a variety of patients, and not just do that manually. So the lab is building that out,” DeLapp said. 

This generator capability produces realistic synthetic patient data tied to computer-based scenarios. 

“When there’s a conflict — [with] the pace and the need — you’re going to need tools like that to be able to address those challenges,” he noted.

Up next

In DeLapp’s view, the long-term, flexible nature of the Living Plan is key to enabling the lab and command to access a combination of capabilities that are targeted for — but rapidly evolve with — its complex mission set.

“Because one of the benefits, again, of this partnership and the length of it, is that some of the people on the lab staff have been familiar with [staff like] the Surgeon General — and their processes and their challenges — for several years now, and then also they know where they can help in other areas,” he told DefenseScoop.

Command officials’ next chance to test out the MASCOT suite of decision-support tools being developed and refined by the Massachusetts-based lab will occur later this month, during the Ultimate Caduceus 2025 (UC25) exercise. The event — which is designed to test Transcom’s ability to conduct medical evacuations in both the field and computer-simulated settings — will be hosted in multiple locations this year, including at Travis Air Force Base in California.

“MIT Lincoln Laboratory will generate the patient data based on requirements from the UC25 exercise planners. In the future, this capability will be provided as a tool that planners can use directly,” Anthony said regarding the in-the-works synthetic patient generator.

Another tool in the pipeline for the exercise will streamline patient movement request data reviews at the Transcom Patient Movement Requirements Center.

There’s also a variety of other projects under the Living Plan umbrella that span beyond the command’s medical portfolio.

For one, Lincoln researchers are essentially helping officials in Transcom’s Air Operations Center (AOC) gain capacity to pull key datapoints from massive volumes of instant messages shared between personnel in real-world operations to inform senior leaders.

“A flight manager will chat a message to the crew and the crew will message a chat back. That’s thousands and thousands of chats. So the AOC is working on trying to, one, collect all that, and then two, make sense of all that. And using natural language processing and some generative AI, [they aim to] collect and gain insights into maybe something’s going on in one part of the world — like a runway that is flooded — and it’ll more rapidly inform the senior decision-makers that there’s a problem out there,” DeLapp said. 

“They’re doing that prototyping work and then handing it off to one of the Air Force software factories who then build it out,” he told DefenseScoop.

Due to the unique nature of the initiative, TCAC must evaluate projects to sponsor under the Living Plan each year. DeLapp’s team is now gearing up for their fiscal 2027 review.

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Reed — a command pilot with more than 3,500 flight hours — held a variety of joint, headquarters, and base-level roles, and steered a numbered air force, wing, expeditionary operations groups, and a flying training squadron before he assumed leadership at Transcom late last year. 

He’s in charge at a time when the command’s assets, workforce and close commercial partners are in high demand to move Defense Department equipment and personnel by rail, road and waterway in support of a broadening range of contemporary missions. 

On any given day, Transcom has more than 400 airlift sorties inflight, roughly 200 railcars and 1,500 freight shipments en route, 15 or more ships underway, and an estimated 10 patients in air evacuation, according to its most recent statistics.

“I frequently get the question, ‘how is Randall Reed doing, and how does he feel about Transcom?’ And I tell them that as a warfighting commander, I cannot imagine commanding anything else, anywhere else, or serving with anybody else. And one of the things that makes this such an incredible opportunity is the nation needs us — and we’ve always been there,” the commander told DefenseScoop in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the recent Sea-Air-Space summit.

During the discussion, Reed shed light on his near-term technology priorities and some of the command’s most recent high-stakes operations, including those in support of the Trump administration’s mass deportation missions.

Better connectivity

The Maven Smart System is one of several AI-enable software options in Transcom’s technology arsenal that improves the commander’s decision-making on a daily basis. MSS processes imagery and video from drones, sensors and other sources and applies advanced algorithms to inform real-world battlefield and logistics operations.

“I see it as a tool. Maven is not the end-all, be-all,” Reed noted. “But it’s helping us do what we do, better.” 

He detailed how the Transcom team and some of its partners sought to “stretch” the system’s use during the Turbo Challenge exercise in recent weeks.

“In the course of the exercise, we worked really hard to see, one, how good we are at doing our job to support theater commanders, and in this case, the Pacific. And then as we start laying in the system, specifically Maven, how are we using it now? Is it truly satisfactory? And how can we stretch that? And then where can we inject it to everything that we do to go forward? And let’s assess that. What I can share with you is that Maven will continue. Everyone’s very excited about what we discovered, but the biggest piece is not the system itself, it’s that we’re actually changing behavior, and that’s the most powerful,” Reed said.

Each combatant command accesses their own custom interfaces in the platform.

“What it actually allows us to do is use authoritative source data. At the moment, I really don’t care if it’s 100 percent correct. But it is the source data that the subject matter experts actually use and they already trust, and so as they bring their source data to the front, they’re actually allowing the rest of us to become literate in their area but use our own experiences to think critically about that and make the connections,” Reed said.

As this continues, he said meeting times are being reduced because participants are clued in from the jumpstart and can share common operating pictures.

“The other thing too is with such a powerful way to level the understanding, we’ve actually changed the meeting schedules. And we actually have added layers to it, and now all the commanders are meeting every day, using Maven as part of the meeting to very quickly level the understanding, get onboard together in terms of how we’re going to start the day, and then we start the day,” Reed told DefenseScoop.

Regarding his big picture aims while commanding Transcom, the general said he hopes his legacy will be as “one of those energetic folks” who pushed connectivity forward — on both a technical and practical level.

“For the good of the crews, I need all of them in every conveyance we work with to be connected. I need the connectivity to be secure. I need it to be reliable, and in most cases, near instantaneous. And the more connected we are, the more folks that are going to be aware of the battlespace, and they’ll be able to make the local decisions they need to make to survive and actually get the job done,” Reed said.

The ‘unforeseen’

Shortly after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January mandating the U.S. military to take on a direct role in securing the southern border, the Pentagon announced plans to send 1,500 active-duty service members and additional air and intelligence assets to support the effort.

Early on, Transcom was named as a key member of the U.S. Northern Command-led task force launched by DOD to oversee the quick implementation of Trump’s border-related directions, in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security.

In Reed’s view, the interagency immigration and border security missions have improved connectivity and interoperability between DHS and DOD over the last few months.

“[That’s] been my experience whenever the interagency gets together to respond to something, if we’ve worked together on something before, we kind of pick up where we left off,” he said, adding that “in this case, for the most part, it’s the first time for folks to work together” on this particular issue.

Reports have indicated that the command supported deportation flights expelling migrants that the Trump administration deemed to be “high threat.”

“Northcom is actually the lead combatant command for this portion of the mission. And then if anything goes to [U.S. Southern Command], then Southcom is in charge of that piece. So we support them both. And so, we are working with them to plan for things that they know are coming up that they need to do. We support them in that. Otherwise they, for the most part, give us a tasking to fill, and we fill the tasking. So doctrinally, it’s fairly standard,” Reed said.

When asked if the border-related missions have been disruptive to the command’s capacity to carry out its many other responsibilities and deliveries — particularly as certain shipping routes in other parts of the world have become increasingly contested — he told DefenseScoop that his team uses data analytics and other capabilities to monitor its posture and “forecast” its resourcing and financial needs.

“Built into that forecast is an understanding that we always come into contact with reality and something will happen somewhere that we didn’t plan on. And historically, there seems to be a certain amount of that that drives a certain amount of use for the platforms and crews. And so we kind of build something in for that unforeseen. And right now, this just happens to fit into that unforeseen [realm]. But it’s not so big that it’s really consuming all of the unforeseen,” Reed explained.

In recent years, Transcom has played a major role in the delivery of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine. And over the last few months, the command has also maneuvered forces and cargo for multiple exercises in the Pacific region and provided sustainment for Department of State missions to multiple countries. Transcom also recently started another critical mission that involves moving service members and their families via a new program called the Global Household Goods Contract.

Reed emphasized that the command’s personnel and their deep partnerships with commercial suppliers underpin the organization’s ability to execute so much.

“They all know what they’re doing, and they’re incredibly good at what they do — and none of us are as smart as all of us, none of us are as strong as all of us. And when we come together, magic happens, and in the end, it does make a difference,” he said.

At the same time, his leadership team is also eager to explore more applications of emerging technologies — like autonomous uncrewed aerial vehicles and maritime drones — to innovate how Transcom moves and delivers cargo.

“We know that someone now can potentially take a drone, and you could place an order for groceries and they can deliver your lettuce,” he noted. “But that range right now is not very far for some of what the rest of the [U.S. military’s] joint force is looking for.”

Reed pointed to the Indo-Pacific region, where commanders need drones that have the capacity and endurance to go from one island chain to another and operate in contested areas where communications could be limited.

“You look at all of these things to see where it’s at. But what I will tell you is eventually we’re going to get there, and eventually we’ll have things that can go hundreds and thousands of miles and can carry hundreds and thousands of pounds worth of [payloads]. And when that technology gets there, Transcom will be waiting to catch it,” Reed said.

Under an existing cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with National Aerospace Research and Technology Park and the Atlantic County Economic Alliance, the command is currently testing the feasibility of using drones for light, short logistics operations.

“We’re into delivering. Period. So when that technology gets there, we’ll embrace it,” Reed said.

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Transcom commander Air Force Gen. Randall Reed — who took charge about six months ago — shared new details this week about that work and related efforts to expand communications with the command’s military and industry partners as they collectively confront navigation-related risks.

“The Houthis behaving the way they are changes a little bit of [our] behavior from the standpoint that a threat actually exists — and they’re projecting a threat continuously. So, understanding that that’s the case now, you do have to pay attention to that and then see what you can do to actually get around that,” Reed told DefenseScoop on the sidelines of the Sea-Air-Space summit. 

The Yemen-based group has launched hundreds of one-way attack drones and missile assaults against U.S. and other nations’ military and commercial vessels since October 2023. Houthi leaders have indicated that the operations largely mark their protest to America’s support for Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

U.S. Central Command has responded with deadly strikes against the Houthis.

Recent maritime data indicates that companies have rerouted their ships to longer sea lanes that require much more transit time, as a result of this conflict. 

Prior to taking the helm as Transcom’s commander last year, Reed — a command pilot with more than 3,500 flight hours — led a numbered air force, wing, expeditionary operations groups, and a flying training squadron. He’s also held a variety of joint, headquarters, and base-level roles. 

“I mention frequently to folks that logistics, inherently, is a world of disruption, and so something is going to happen somewhere to take you off plan,” Reed said. “There’s always another path. We’re always fighting for multiple ways to get things done.”

What’s unique about the contemporary challenges in and around the Red Sea, he noted, is that Transcom’s close commercial partners that enable some of its most vital mobility missions could be affected, and therefore need to remain informed.

“We have an established structure where we get together twice a year, at least — but when the need arises, we get together to address an issue. In this case, it’s the Red Sea. And so we will gather as much as required. And for a while there, it was about every two weeks where there was information-sharing,” Reed told DefenseScoop. 

“We would let them know what we knew. We would let them know the nature of the conflict as we saw it. We would get their concerns, and we would work together to make adjustments so that they could still [operate],” he explained.

A range of military officials connect and exchange information and data with industry leaders and representatives through this hub, which is referred to as Transcom’s “executive working group.”

“As things start out, there’s a level of sharing of understanding — and so folks just share what they know. We get an idea of what the environment is, we talk about the nature of the requirements or the needs, and then if there’s something to overcome, or some adjustment that needs to be made, we discuss that. Then, from there, it’s just professionals having a professional discussion about doing the profession,” Reed said.

During his keynote presentation at Sea-Air-Space, the general noted how, for the American military, logistics and sustainment have presented long-standing challenges for centuries. Now, however, those operations are happening in environments that are becoming more contested.

“In the Red Sea today, we have sailors — both active duty and civilian — who are sailing in harm’s way … and there’s some things that we need to change. So, from a Transcom perspective, this is one reason why you hear us being very vocal about returning to the oceans. This is one reason, when [President Donald Trump] mentioned that we were going to stand up [a U.S. ship-building support] office to figure out this problem, that all of us in this room got a little bit more excited. We all know that there’s several aspects to this. And you will find in me no greater champion and supporter to build for America, to establish supply chains that we depend on, to encourage the generations behind us to take the seas to sail and to help my shipmates get everything that they need to have,” Reed told the audience.

In the interview with DefenseScoop, he confirmed that his speech marked the first time that a keynote address had been delivered by a Transcom commander at the annual Sea-Air-Space summit.

“This is our first time. And before we do any keynotes, we spend a lot of time figuring out — who are we spending time with and why are they taking a chance on having us? And so, part of what we were able to determine and harvest, as was discussed earlier this week here, is that there is now a different national conversation in progress on maritime power,” Reed said.

“Obviously, that is a huge bulk of the capability that Transcom provides, although it’s not just organically, but with the commercial industry as well. And so everything that is currently swelling, we are right in the middle of it. We’ve been there, we’ve discussed it all along. And so, we have a lot to contribute,” he told DefenseScoop.

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The move follows an executive order issued last week by President Donald Trump, which aims for “a transformation in Federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans to ensure Government spending is transparent and Government employees are accountable to the American public,” according to the EO.

The effort is part of the new administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiatives, which are being spearheaded by billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk.

“Each Agency Head, in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead, shall conduct a comprehensive review of each agency’s contracting policies, procedures, and personnel. Each Agency Head shall complete this process within 30 days of the date of this order and shall not issue or approve new contracting officer warrants during the review period, unless the Agency Head determines such approval is necessary,” per the EO, which was issued Feb. 26. The order also called for agencies to build centralized systems to track every payment they issue for contracts, grants and other expenditures.

DOD’s review, which has major implications for contractors who do business with the department, is now underway.

“My staff and I are presently conducting this review to determine where we might achieve efficiencies to save American taxpayers’ money while executing contracting operations in support of our nation’s defense,” John Tenaglia, the Pentagon’s principal director of defense pricing, contracting and acquisition policy, wrote in a new memo signed Wednesday.

The memo was directed to acquisition and procurement leaders at the Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Transportation Command, and Defense agency and DOD field activity directors.

“Per the EO, Components are directed to forgo issuing new contracting officer warrant appointments to DoD civilian staff members until March 28, 2025, the duration of the review period. On an exception basis, the Secretaries of the Military Departments may approve warrant appointments as necessary for civilian staff members during this period. Given the fact the EO is inapplicable to uniformed service members, there is no restriction on contracting officer warrant appointments to uniformed members of the military,” Tenaglia noted.

He added that he welcomed memo recipients’ input about “specific policy, procedure, and workforce matters we should address to further strengthen our contracting operations toward more affordable defense capabilities for the Warfighter.”

The new memo comes as the DOD is carrying out other cost-cutting initiatives.

On Monday, Darin Selnick, who is performing the duties of undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, issued a memo stating that the planned firing of probationary employees would commence March 3.

“The Department will continue taking steps to implement President Trump’s direction to restore accountability to the American public, reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition, and faithfully and responsibly manage taxpayer dollars,” he wrote.

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“When I came in, I said that understanding the requirements as they’re being generated, and matching them to capacity, is the single most powerful capability we can have,” Van Ovost told DefenseScoop in a recent interview ahead of her retirement.

On Friday, her last day leading the command, the pioneering Air Force pilot’s boss confirmed that she was leaving Transcom and the joint force with a clearer and more comprehensive grasp of America’s arsenal and options for high-stakes logistics and in-demand equipment. 

“Certainly [Van Ovost] was focused on this from the very beginning. But not just that. She’s been focused on also expanding our capability — what’s available to us. And she’s done a lot of things to increase capacity and commercial maritime assets and work on agreements between us and industry,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told DefenseScoop in a media roundtable immediately following the ceremony at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, where Van Ovost passed command of Transcom to Gen. Randall Reed. “And I think that’s given us a lot of possibilities going forward.”

As its name suggests, the command is the DOD’s primary manager for transportation. It’s responsible for integrated global mobility operations via land, air and sea — both in times of peace and war.

In an exclusive interview with DefenseScoop, Van Ovost noted that “coming from someone who started in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, where you just opened up a container and you’re like, ‘Wow, what’s in here?'” she understood on day one at Transcom that “the more you see about where the item is, the better decisions you can make about when and how to move it the most efficiently and effectively way possible for the warfighter.”

Early on, she established four guiding priorities to pursue during her tenure. Two of those — cyber mission assurance and driving decision advantage — placed a comprehensive focus on Transcom’s technology challenges at the time.

Van Ovost directed her team to work closely with the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO). Together, they facilitated many activities and projects to make sense of the heaps of military and commercial data sources the command should be applying to inform operations, and provide bird’s-eye views into DOD’s weapons and personnel placements all over the world via custom analytics dashboards and other tools.

“Anytime we have a crisis, we stand up an operational planning team and then our people that work on data are in the team right away — and they’re saying, ‘Okay, well, how do I help? What kind of data do you need to see to make decisions?’” she told DefenseScoop.

Among a wide range of missions under Van Ovost’s leadership, Transcom delivered more than $21 billion in weapons and ammunition to Ukraine for defense against Russia, and helped surge assets to U.S. Central Command as conflicts emerged and unfolded in the Middle East.

With each new mission, she noted, logistics experts and others involved are making decisions faster and with more precision. 

“But when I think about the journey we have been on, I do think that decision advantage and cyber mission assurance have been some of the most consequential work that I was involved in. Certainly all of the great heroes around Transportation Command and our components that were involved from, from Afghanistan to Ukraine to Niger — all heroes and all good work. But it’s about the future, right? And so have I set Transcom up for that future?” she said.

Military operational environments are becoming increasingly contested in all domains, and the pace and complexities of mobility missions have only intensified for Transcom over the last three years. 

“And should we go into conflict, we have to expand multiple times,” Van Ovost noted. “That’s why we need the data together, and that’s why we need to start with bots, with generative AI … and then move to predictive AI so that I can understand how to best lay in demand and capacity. But it’s a must. It is a must that we have this augmentation.”

When asked about Van Ovost’s legacy, Austin told DefenseScoop: “She’s a forward-thinking officer. And the impact that she’s had on the organization, and therefore all of DOD, I think will be remembered for a long time.”

At the Transcom change-of-command ceremony shortly before that press roundtable, Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown spotlighted her perseverance and influence as a “trailblazer” in the U.S. defense apparatus.

Among a variety of personal stories and anecdotes, the secretary mentioned how the Air Force Academy didn’t originally admit her the first time she applied.

“You wanted to fly Mach 2. But back then, women weren’t allowed to fly fighters. So once again, you made the path wider. And you became a test pilot — and you flew more than 30 aircraft, including F-15s and F-16s,” Austin said.

“You’ve often said that it’s hard to be what you cannot see. Well, America looks at Gen. Jackie Van Ovost and sees a leader,” he told her.

As for her next steps, the retired commander is now looking to divert that same passion and energy to empowering minority students all around the country, with aims to ultimately help expand and empower the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) talent pipeline.

“I think we’ve made some real inroads, and I just wish the best for everyone,” Van Ovost said.

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“I’ll do community work, and likely, some sort of national component,” Van Ovost, the first female officer to ever lead Transcom, told DefenseScoop on Tuesday.

During an exclusive interview on the sidelines of AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference, the head of the combatant command shared new details about both her and Transcom’s plans for what’s to come.

The discussion happened on the same day that Congress hosted a confirmation hearing for the official nominated to be her successor, Air Force Gen. Randall Reed. 

“There’s a process for the committee to vote out and then the full Senate to vote out. So, the earliest they could do that is next week, and then they go off on recess. If they do it next week, we’ll have a change of command the following week on Oct. 4. If they don’t do it, then they’ll do it after the first voting session, which is probably the third week of November, because they’re out in October. So, it’ll be about 45 or 50 days later,” Van Ovost explained.

In her view, Reed is a “mobility giant” with the right international and industry experience — and temperament — for Transcom’s high-stakes missions.

“He’s going to be fantastic for the U.S. Transportation Command. And I know he’s just as passionate as I am about the contested environment and how we’re going to have to operate. So I’m looking forward to cheering him on in the stands,” Van Ovost said.

As for her own immediate plans after she leaves Transcom and retires from the military, the Air Force command pilot hopes to take a little time to rest, recharge and connect with her family.

“As I think about the next portions of my life, I could tell you something that has been a passion of mine for 40 years — [encompasses] STEM and minorities,” she said.

“Our nation needs more STEM graduates. It is how we advance, and it’s how we will win. This is a whole-of-nation fight, and China’s already in that whole-nation fight. They already produce more STEM graduates than we produce high school graduates. How are we going to win? And so in particular, I’m focused on minorities, because I really do think that that’s the diversity of America and I think they’re underrepresented in and a very capable population that we can actually mobilize against the problem,” the commander told DefenseScoop.

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Wednesday evening the Pentagon announced that Palantir landed a deal for its Maven Smart System led by the Army. On Thursday, company executives said the effort will significantly grow the user base and help the department’s Chief Digital and AI Office proliferate the technology to warfighters and pursue its vision for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which aims to better connect the platforms, sensors and data streams of the U.S. military and key international partners to improve decision-making, operational effectiveness and efficiency.

The IDIQ contract will help the combatant commands and the Joint Staff do CJADC2-related work, Shannon Clark, head of defense growth at Palantir, told reporters.

The tech is expected to facilitate battlespace awareness, global integration, contested logistics, joint fires and targeting workflows.

“This is taking what has been built in prototype and experimentation and bringing this [Maven system] to production,” Clark said. “The prototype began in 2021, we fielded that to a small set of users at each of these combatant commands. Now this is offering an enterprise capability with essentially no user limit at these combatant commands. So any individual that is focused on some of the workflows that [the technology is designed to aid] … will have access to the platform. That’s one of the things we’re so excited about, frankly, is because this means that an intel analyst or a user that’s doing work in the field has access to this platform, as do the combatant commanders themselves.”

Work under the new contract will initially cover five U.S. combatant commands: Central Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Northern Command/NORAD, and Transportation Command. The tech will also continue to be deployed as part of the Defense Department’s Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE), according to Clark.

“Users are going to span everyone from intel analysts and operators in, you know, some of the remote island chains across the world to leadership at the Pentagon. It’s going to reach thousands of users across the globe,” Clark said.

The company will be working with other vendors and U.S. government partners to integrate their technologies with Maven.

“We will be partnering with them to help integrate other AI capabilities, not just what Palantir brings to the table. So they will be able to build on all the data integrations that Palantir is doing, build on the pipelines and the applications within the platform or other platforms through open APIs and our ontology software development kits,” Clark said. “We want to be able to integrate with any data system, any new AI capability that the government procures and wants to be part of this ecosystem. So, you know, should tomorrow a new sensor come online, should … a new AI capability come online, we want to be able to integrate with that.”

The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office also awarded Palantir a $33 million prototype other transaction agreement “to rapidly and securely” onboard third-party vendor and government capabilities into a government-owned, Palantir-operated data environment, according to a CDAO release that went out Thursday afternoon.

The Maven system and the data environment will support the Defense Department’s plans for the Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories (Open DAGIR) initiative that was announced Thursday.

The first task order under the $480 million Maven contract is worth $153 million. The funding will go toward licenses to deploy the company’s software, according to Clark.

“This task order kicks off on June 1 … Those licenses will be made available immediately to all those users,” she told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters. “That’s the beauty of commercial software. The beauty of the product that we built is that we can get it up and running in days and weeks, not months and years.”

The Maven tech can integrate data from a variety of reporting systems — such as satellite imagery, signals intelligence, electronic intelligence, human intelligence, or other sources — across multiple domains to provide users with better situational awareness of friendly and adversary forces. That info can be displayed for commanders and other personnel via easy-to-use maps and dashboards, Andrew Locke, DOD enterprise lead at Palantir, told reporters.

The system can also “layer in” AI capabilities, such as computer vision models that scan imagery and look for objects of interest.

“For the user, they can go immediately from kind of that tip and cue that something of interest is there and actually nominate, you know, targets from the platform. So, you know, when we think about the integration of AI into these workflows, it is very much like humans involved in the process … They’re providing their unique subject matter expertise to verify that, you know, what AI maybe suggested is there is actually there. And then go from that into what you know the next stage of a process might be,” Locke said.

That could include what he called a “targeting nomination workflow.”

“In this case, you can either nominate a single target or multiple targets. We help to augment the user where we take all the metadata associated with those detections and kind of package that in the … format that they’re familiar with as part of the target nomination. As they do that, that would then transition to a separate capability that we’re providing across target management where nominated targets would then pop up right into a board … And for a staff, they can really optimize a process, take like their standard operating procedures that are unique to that organization and then code that in software,” he explained.

Data from social media could also be integrated into workflows if the U.S. government asked for that, he suggested.

“On our side, [we’re] really agnostic, you know, to the data sources. And really no technical limitation,” he told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters.

Palantir will defer to the Pentagon in terms of providing specifics on the actual social media sites or programs that they might want to pull from, he noted.

“But basically … if the government were to be using a sort of AI to initially run off of social media, whether that’s computer vision against images or videos that are in posts, or some type of like geolocation or, you know, natural language processing, you know, over keywords … then we would provide, like, the integration of whatever those social media sources potentially look like. And then … move that into classified networks, and then provide that sort of information in conjunction with the other data sources that we’ve integrated on the government’s behalf,” Locke said.

Updated on May 30, 2024, at 5:20 PM. This story has been updated to include information about an other transaction agreement awarded to Palantir and the Pentagon’s Open DIGAR initiative.

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The command is increasingly tasked with executing global operations in and around contested environments, like in the Red Sea, where Iranian-backed Houthis are launching missiles and drones in attempts to close the sea line of communication as a response to Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza. 

“When we’re looking at any types of disruptions throughout the Red Sea, we’re able to identify what type of critical missions we’re supporting. We can identify what types of ships they were on, and then — from a Transcom perspective — be able to identify what type of cargo was on those ships, and potentially how it could impact our missions,” Marine Corps Maj. David Costanzo, deputy chief of Transcom’s Operations Integration division, said in a recent interview with DefenseScoop.

Strategic moves Transcom started making almost 7 years ago to better understand and organize all of its sprawling internal and external data sources and apply analytics capabilities to inform decision-making are now having direct impacts on those current operations.

Maj. Costanzo and Transcom Chief Data Officer Markus Rogers briefed DefenseScoop on the command’s evolving ability to rapidly tap into data and deliver digital tools that support and enhance worldwide military transit and operations — including custom dashboards that monitor and visualize U.S. security posture, among other workflows. While the Transcom officials couldn’t share specific details about the dashboards, like their names, they were able to “talk about kind of what they’re really providing,” Costanzo explained. 

The pivot 

After serving as a longtime networks and integration leader primarily for the Air Force, Rogers joined Transcom in 2019 as its first-ever chief data officer. 

Alongside Costanzo in the interview, he told DefenseScoop that his top aim in this capacity continues to be ensuring that command officials “have the right data, at the right time — and that they can understand and trust — in order to make decisions.” 

“Transcom has been, I’ll say, on this ‘data journey’ for a very, very long time. We are, by our very nature, that information broker type of organization in the way that we support all the combatant commands. So, the data journey is not new to us,” Rogers explained.

Around 2018, the command started to fully grasp the emerging power of what he referred to as “big data analytics” that could impact high-level decision-making. 

“I’ll be very honest upfront here. For the first about two years, that journey was not really that good. And I say that because it shapes the way forward and kind of how we made this pivot going forward,” Rogers said.

Leadership was buying in and the command began to see appropriate investments and resourcing at the time, but the CDO said his team just couldn’t get on the right track to deliver. 

“[In terms of] things that you really need as you go do this, first you’ve got to have sort of the infrastructure tools and capabilities needed that you can leverage so that you can actually manage data and leverage data for analytics. We were trying to do that. We were building a platform of our own and ran into a lot of problems in delivering that — all the way from standard acquisition challenges, security challenges, priority challenges — things like that are really hard. So, during that time, we were really not making any advances,” Rogers told DefenseScoop.

Then, he said, “we made a pivot. And so, three things kind of happened in that about two-and-a-half, three years ago timeframe.”

First, Rogers and his team restructured all the data resources within Transcom, which were spread across multiple branches, and organized them under the CDO purview.

From there, the command pivoted to procuring its own one-stop environment through the Defense Department’s big data platform for advanced analytics — Advana. The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) manages that centralized hub for all civilian and military components, and it was just becoming fully operational around that time. 

“The CDAO provides Advana as a platform-as-a-service. But what we do is we pay for our own community space — Pegasus. If you’re familiar with Jupiter, for the Navy, it’s the exact same thing that this is for Transcom. There’s eight or nine of them now that are out there,” Rogers said.

This offered the command an established capability that was already in place from the Defense Department and easy to access. Plus, it was designed to interconnect with all of the DOD’s heaps of datasets, not just those from Transcom.  

Then, marking the third enabling piece, CDAO liaisons embedded with the command and started providing direct access to the office’s assistance and resources, via the AI and Data Acceleration, or ADA, initiative.

“When we pulled those three things together, that’s what allowed us to make sort of this advancement going forward where we now had capabilities and toolsets that we can leverage and the expertise to actually leverage. And that all tied into the partnership with [the J3 directorate] and Maj. Costanzo’s team, with them being some of the first customers that we actually brought in to leverage [this],” Rogers said. 

‘Intrinsic visibility’

Costanzo has served in the Marines for almost 15 years, and at Transcom for the last three. 

“I work in the J3 [logistics and planning directorate] for part of our Operations Integration Division. We’re charged with identifying the IT requirements from our Global Operations Center and really try to be the advocate from our team to be able to operationalize our logistics data and be able to integrate it to be able to support our operational requirements. So, we’re working with [Rogers] as kind of the advocate for the planners on the floor themselves,” Costanzo told DefenseScoop in the interview.

Transcom’s Global Operations Center, or GOC, is both a physical space and a dynamic digital environment that provides a holistic and multimodal view for strategic and operational planning and monitors the end-to-end movement of forces.

Broadly, the J3 team’s mission process is pretty standard.

“We get a valid requirement from a customer — a combatant command — that says ‘We need X moved from A to Z.’ And so regardless of what the venue is, whether it’s an exercise, a normal deployment distribution operation, or emerging requirement for something that’s come up unexpected in the world, whether it’s in competition or crisis, then we’re usually applying the same kind of model,” Costanzo said.

Following that model, his team generally tries to identify how to best gain those requirements with their IT and data systems, and then how to communicate that information both laterally across to the other commands, down to components, and up to leadership so that everyone’s abreast of how Transcom’s delivery capabilities might be impacted.

“One example is our [Presidential Drawdown Authority] for Ukraine shipments,” Costanzo explained.

Since Russia’s invasion in early 2022, the U.S. has committed to sending billions in weapons and military support to Ukraine. Early on in that conflict, his team was tasked with identifying what Transcom’s requirements were, which the major said were coming from multiple different PDA numbers in rapid succession. They also weren’t always sourced at the same time.  

Costanzo’s team therefore had to accurately depict what those requirements were going to be and then sequence those with available capabilities on coordinated timelines to make sure that everything was where it was meant to be when it was supposed to be there so that the command could ultimately deliver those capabilities in European Command’s area of responsibility to meet Ukraine’s wartime needs.

“From the combatant command perspective, they really wanted to know — just like any other customer, if you order off of Amazon — ‘When’s my stuff going to be here so that I can execute my mission?’” Costanzo said. 

The J3 officials were able to leverage a lot of Transcom’s execution data coming from authoritative sources associated with both sealift and airlift assets to then provide, in near real-time, when an execution schedule was available for European Command to see.

“We’d be able to project out, over a certain amount of time, exactly what and when things were going to arrive and where they were going to arrive. So then, the combatant command could go ahead and prepare to have resources in place to be able to move those on from the place where we dropped them off to their final destination or where they were needed on the battlefield throughout the [area of responsibility],” Costanzo said.  

“Normally, this was all done through spreadsheets, email, and those types of things. So with this one, we were able to provide dashboards — and it wasn’t just us. When we were producing this, we were helping and talking through the process, and working with the Joint Staff and their team, the ADA team and the CDAO to really provide the dashboards,” he added.

Though he couldn’t explicitly name them or get into much deeper detail about the other types of dashboards and advanced visualization mechanisms Transcom has been generating, Costanzo said they’re all broadly providing force movement, deployment and distribution planning enhancements.

“That’s kind of a long-winded way of saying [they’re] really looking at kind of intrinsic visibility of ‘Where’s our stuff and when is it going to be here for me to use it?’” he said.

With the dashboards in front of military leadership, Costanzo said he and other J3 planners can then say and show: “These are the missions that are expected today, over the next 96 hours, the next week, these are the high priority missions, and then these are the ones that we can expect either on time or delays due to X,Y, Z factors.”

From Rogers’ perspective as chief data officer, the command is now “postured to rapidly adapt as things change around the world” in a way it was never able to before. 

“And we’re also postured in a way to support the other combatant commands with data that we’ve never been able to before,” he noted.

U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility (AOR) is another region where this maturing capacity has recently become more apparent. 

There, Iranian-backed Houthis have been deploying drone and missile strikes against Naval and international merchant vessels in the Red Sea as part of what they say is a retaliation campaign against Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.

“When operating inside of Centcom’s AOR, there’s disruption. A lot of things we’re looking at that we can influence is potential disruption to our transportation and transportation network. That’s really where Transcom [Commander] Gen. Jackie Van Ovost and her staff can really influence how we operate. And so, they’re really looking at how we take warnings and indications and any type of alerts that could potentially impact and disrupt our transportation network — and if we can identify those early, how can we go ahead and mitigate those risks to ensure that we can protect our force, but also still execute the mission?” Costanzo told DefenseScoop.

Eyeing self-sufficiency

As part of the ADA Initiative, officials from the Pentagon’s CDAO have been conducting digital readiness assessments on each of the 11 combatant commands. 

When asked by DefenseScoop in a recent interview which command, so far, has demonstrated that they were the most “digitally ready” in DOD, Deputy CDAO Margie Palmieri immediately pointed to Transcom, explicitly naming Rogers and his CDO team.

“They have been tested through fire. The [Afghan non-combatant evacuation operation, or NEO] — how do you get people in and out of Afghanistan? The Ukraine support in terms of how are you going to move equipment all over the place? And [the COVID-19 pandemic] actually was a big Transcom challenge,” Palmieri said. 

In response to questions from DefenseScoop regarding some of the elements Transcom brought to the table that really contributed to its progress so far, Rogers pointed to his original vision to fully integrate ADA officials within the command as soon as they first embedded — so that when they eventually departed, his team would lose capacity but not capability. 

“My focus has been on making the command self-sufficient. Leveraging CDAO support and skill sets of capabilities, all of that, but how do we make ourselves self-sufficient as we drive this forward, in that, if we can’t take care of ourselves, then we’ve not truly transformed — we’re relying on whoever’s going to do something for us. And I think that’s had a huge, tremendous value,” Rogers explained.

That impact is demonstrated by Maj. Costanzo’s team on the J3, he added, noting how “they now have an analytic shop in place where they’re doing this work for themselves and relying less on [his] team, and they’re having huge successes going forward.”

In Costanzo’s view, part of Transcom’s success in this space to date was a result of, very early on, “putting in a lot of effort and focus” on adopting and enabling data integration capabilities to tap into all that’s available across DOD.

“Everything that we did for Afghanistan — some [things were] similar, some different from Ukraine. Everything that was done for Israel — some different, some the same for the current operations now. So, that was really helpful,” Costanzo said.

For the J3 directorate, “the next step forward is really trying to deliver predictive analytic capabilities,” he said, noting that doing so will be necessary “in the future to really create those decision spaces for leadership” in more high-paced, critical conflict environments. 

Building on that, Rogers said that a primary near-term effort in his office is to improve its overarching ability to deliver data as a product to J3 and other commands and components. 

“When I today build a dashboard that says ‘This is where all of the DOD cargo is on a commercial or military ship — here’s where they are, here’s where they’re going,’ that’s still my product or my application, built the way Transcom is consuming that information and not the way Centcom may want to consume that information inside the Maven Smart System and their C2 processes. So, I now want to build that data as a product set, where using modern API technologies, we deliver the answer to that question as pure data, and that you understand where it came from. We’ve done the data integration, all you have to do now is plug into your picture,” Rogers said.

“I’ll also say that we’ve made tremendous progress over the last few years — but we have a long way to go to get what we need to get at. So, there’s still a lot of room on this journey for us to continue with,” the chief data officer told DefenseScoop.

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Transcom chief Gen. Jackie Van Ovost shed light on how her team is prioritizing information-sharing with international partners and turning to open-source capabilities — with caution — to help hold U.S. rivals like China and Russia accountable and ultimately deter aggression.

“You see that the information is key, and how we scrape and get that information all together —  for us, bringing it up and combining it with information from other security levels is critical,” she told DefenseScoop on Monday during a media roundtable at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

Broadly, Transcom is a functional combatant command that’s charged with leading the Defense Department’s integrated global mobility operations via land, air and sea in times of peace and war. 

“One reality we’re certain of is that contested logistics will be the norm in any future fight,” Van Ovost explained. 

“China has invested heavily in securing their own logistics. From the largest maritime container fleet in the world to software and infrastructure — they are working hard to reshape the world and they understand that logistics is the soft power with hard consequences across the [diplomatic, information, military and economic spheres],” she also noted.

Van Ovost spotlighted some of the recent military and economic pressure China has been putting on its neighbors in the Indo-Pacific region — while also “clearly threatening Taiwan” — which, in her view, already demonstrates certain complex and emerging challenges associated with military logistics and associated operations of the present and future.

For instance, she noted a new national map that the Chinese government rolled out last month, claiming certain disputed territories and waters as its own. 

“I don’t think that expansion is going to stop and, frankly, our allies and partners in the Pacific are really very aware of this now, and the number one thing we can do is to build them together to try to have a common understanding of what is happening — and to name and shame when things occur,” she said.  

That “naming and shaming” has been a necessary tactic particularly lately, she suggested, as China’s Coast Guard and maritime militia have attempted to harass members of the Philippines military conducting resupply missions to their outpost at Second Thomas Shoal.

“They were shouldered by the China Coast Guard and they were water-cannoned by the China Coast Guard — which can hurt the boat and people onboard, right? And now there’s overhead imagery that shows the aggressive maneuvers by China, which became unclassified and sent out for people to see. So, name and shame — just like we did with Russia as they started building up on the border with Ukraine prior to their full scale invasion,” Van Ovost said.

But as her command increasingly leans on information-sharing and open-source capabilities to keep their own personnel and international partners informed, they’re also being deliberate about ensuring that data and insights are not tampered with or influenced by adversaries. 

“We do see how Russia is trying to take it and make it misinformation, and they take a piece of it that’s factual and they build a whole story around it. That is happening in other areas — we fully expect to be attacked in that way,” she said.

“So, our discernment is key,” Van Ovost told DefenseScoop.

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