Department of Air Force - November by Business Chief USA

A vision of the future DIGITAL REPORT 2021

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DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE:

A VISION OF THE FUTURE 2

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DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

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DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

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DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

Innovating at the speed of relevance is easy to say, harder to do. The people getting it done at the US Department of the Air Force explain how

f there was a word to describe the mechanics of government work, it would be ‘complex’. And complex, in software terms, is never a good thing. No one likes to work with dirty code. Yet government’s the world over have spent decades implementing diverse solutions with scant regard for their interoperability or leanness. Now, in the age of data, the importance of having forward-thinking software strategies means a rethink is due. For that, the US Department of the Air Force enlisted Preston Dunlap, its founding chief architect officer. Dunlap’s past – a blend of fast-paced startup world and public sector experience – makes him the ideal candidate to overhaul legacy technologies and cultural behaviour without making the same mistakes all over again. “You’ve got to have the vision to try to move that system into a world where you think it ought to be able to operate more nimbly, accelerating change and being able to have new effects,” Dunlap explains. “Then be able to create those pipelines for fresh ideas and new technology and capabilities, and people who are able to make a difference.” End state Dunlap couches everything in terms of the ‘end state’, a theoretical finishing line that government and commercial leaders want to cross. But the route to the destination www.airforce.com

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Department of the AirofForce: a vision of the future Title the video

is fraught with danger. “Like anything else, it takes that drive, expertise, know-how and relationships to make true difference happen and to happen at the speed that’s relevant because you can make change, but it can feel like molasses if you don’t navigate it effectively and appropriately.” People are at the very heart of Dunlap's transformational aims. “You’re looking for the people who know where you need to go or get excited about moving quickly. They have the tenacity to be able to make a difference, the technical wherewithal and operational sense to work with customers.” But the move-fast-and-break-things ethos doesn’t always sit well in the halls of government. Dunlap describes it as like working off an idea on the back of a napkin with a twist: “the napkin sits in the bar for two and a half years before you can do anything with it.” That creates a problem for small companies who would like to partner with government agencies but can’t afford to wait 6

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that long. It means the government misses opportunities to work with the best minds and technologies. Vision of the future So how does it all come together? “You’ve got to have a compelling and creative vision of the future,” Dunlap says. “That’s everyone’s job. It’s certainly the job of our secretary of defence and our senior leaders in each of the departments. But one of the things that makes it stick is whether people are excited about it. The next level down is creating the space and the opportunities and the protection to be able to try those new things the leaders talk about. Turning speech to reality is so difficult.” That’s a mantra Dunlap saw in the startup world as well. “It doesn’t always work. You learn something from that and you try something different. You keep going. Every entrepreneur has got that same experience in their back pocket. You can’t fold and

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“ It takes drive, expertise, know-how and relationships to make true difference happen and happen at the speed that’s relevant”

PRESTON C. DUNLAP TITLE: CHIEF ARCHITECT INDUSTRY: MILATRY LOCATION: UNITED STATES Mr. Preston C. Dunlap is the Chief Architect of the Department of the Air Force. First to hold this position, Mr. Dunlap is charged with working across the Air and Space Force, and in partnership with the Department of the Navy and Army, to transform technology development and acquisition so the Air Force not only designs, develops, and buys the right mix of future capability but does so more rapidly and with the power of interoperability. Key family of systems initiatives include Multi-domain Operations, Advanced Battle Management System, and Next Generation Air Dominance.

PRESTON C. DUNLAP

CHIEF ARCHITECT, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

Critical data Vidrine is unequivocal. “The appreciation of, and value of data has grown exponentially, especially over the past year or so. Part of the culture change is not about how we operationalise data, but think about how our customers need to operationalise the data. When we look at areas like mission enablement all of thoee data sets are really critical to inform key mission areas. I like to say that the mission is the nucleus of the atom and all the spheres of that atom are the mission enablers, and we need

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wither. You need to be able to explain to the stakeholders and the board of directors that it’s actually good to fail and learn from an experiment that costs a few dollars instead of waiting seven years and finding out something’s not working billions of dollars later.” This DevOps approach is a holistic dream, and in many respects Dunlap – as chief architect officer – takes an overarching view of how both development and operations overlap. But his software is populated by data like the atoms making up the universe. Presiding over this strata of the technology is chief data officer Eileen Vidrine. Has data become more important to government work?

The power to do great things. Strengthening networks and empowering users We’re modernizing missions through integrated IT and innovative sustainment practices. Our secure, user-centric Enterprise IT solutions help transform your organization’s ideas into action. Let us provide you the power to perform at your best.

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How man exists in the modern age of digital transformation As the Vice President and Air Force Strategic Account Executive at Leidos, General Boera discusses technology and integration Major General (retired) Michael R. Boera joined Leidos after a career that spanned more than 30 years with the United States Air Force (USAF). General Boera was the Director of Air Force Programs within the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Plans and Programs for the USAF when he retired. With more than 200 combat missions to his name, Boera also led the development and integration of the Air Force Program across the Future Years Defense Plan and managed the Air Force Corporate Structure Process. His expertise in how to integrate advanced technology to enable Air Force missions make him the perfect leader for growing Leidos' working relationships with the service Today, trusted artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies developed by Leidos help drive that digital transformation, Boera said. “The combination of methodologies and technologies of the Leidos way of Trusted AI/ ML shows great promise to the warfighter. By using a rheostat running from analysis to full automation of trusted

artificial intelligence and machine learning, we have offered a process by which confidence and efficiency can be gained by the services at large. That's not to say there is no need for a human decision maker along the way. The warfighter will want to maintain a level of human intervention at the right time and place of the observer, decide, and act cycle. That is where exercising and training comes into play to understand where the warfighter does need a human in the loop versus on the loop.” “Realistically, I suspect potentially 75 percent of the processes to get the right effect on the right target at the right time and place can be automated, but that doesn’t relieve the warfighter of having a man in the loop at key decision points along the way. We don’t want a situation where the machine is making all of the decisions for the warfighter. But today, it seems we try to include a human in the loop in everything that we do. They need to turn the switch, make the comms connection, and make the final decision in most situations, but with AI and ML providing more and more efficiencies, and the threat requiring speed of action, we have to evolve as technology allows. Every aspect of warfighting is evolving under the umbrella of digital transformation, and the need for speed certainly makes this an imperative for the warfighter today.”

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all of it to really optimise decision making and drive insights. The change we’ve really been driving over the last year has a holistic enterprise focus that is driving meaningful change, which is really exciting.” Data, Vidrine says regarding the key to smart working. “Is there still, as the saying used to go, no such thing as too much data? “There are some datasets that have higher opportunities for return on investment,” she counters. “There are some datasets that we use in the majority of use cases. So getting those datasets into visible, accessible, actionable, and really high quality data is really the starting point. And one of the other big efforts we’re making is focused on visible data analytics.” Indeed, visible and accessible data forms a central platform of the Department of Defence’s combined data strategy. Other strands of that strategy include data that is understandable, linked, trustworthy, interoperable and secure. The last word is close to Vidrine’s heart. “It’s all about zero trust, but it’s also about partnerships. Secure data is something we have to get right.”

Data management Data management is changing, not least because machine learning can do so much of the heavy lifting when it comes to data mining and analysis. The Department of the Air Force has an AI accelerator based at MIT, where researchers work alongside airmen and guardians to refine and develop the AI required to process data at mission speed. “Having that data at the point of the decision making opportunity is critical,” Vidrine explains. “I don’t think that’s about one technology or the other – you have to have the right capability for the right purpose at the right time.” None of this – the overarching software architecture, the data capture and analysis – is done in isolation. A web of partnerships must be coordinated to deliver the tools that will enable the digital transformation of the Department of the Air Force. As well as ‘defence prime’ (the top tier of defence contractors, including names such as Raytheon and Lockheed), there is a vast array of smaller, equally vital, partners. For Dunlap, this forms a triangle between the primes, the wider

DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

“ In the future, we won’t be talking about data because data will be part of who we are every day” EILEEN VIDRINE

CHIEF DATA OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

AFWERX: THE STRUCTURE ADWerx is the US Department of the Air Force’s talent and technology incubator. Here’s how the innovative unit is structured

SPARK CELLS Spark Cells are a grassroots innovation network that leverages the ingenuity of Air Force intrapreneurs at the base level and non-traditional partners to create unique opportunities for the military’s operational experts to collaborate with the top problem solvers in industry, academia, and the government.

CHALLENGES AFWerx Challenge is the combination of the defence, academic, startup, private sector and small business worlds to collaborate through challenges and live events.

SPARK TANK Spark Tank is an annual event where Airmen pitch innovative ideas to top Air Force leadership and a panel of industry experts. Hosted each year at the Air Force Association’s Warfare Symposium, thousands of attendees watch the innovation pitches to senior leaders.

AFVENTURES AFVentures harnesses the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to enable the Air Force to develop and adopt commercially viable innovations as integrated program components or operationally effective commercial off-the-shelf solutions while providing a competitive edge to the U.S. entrepreneur and technology ecosystem.

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EILEEN VIDRINE TITLE: CHIEF DATA OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILATRY LOCATION: UNITED STATES Eileen M. Vidrine is the Air Force Chief Data Officer, Headquarters, U.S. Air Force, Arlington, Virginia. She develops and implements strategies for enterprise data management, analytics and digital transformation to optimise performance and drive out innovation in and across all missions and operations. Ms. Vidrine began her government career in 1986 as an enlisted member of the U.S. Army and was commissioned in 1987 through the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School Program as a U.S. Army Transportation Officer. Later in her Army career, she was selected and integrated into the U.S. Army Acquisition Corps. She began her civilian career as a senior faculty member at the Joint Military Intelligence College and led the college’s technology transformation as the first Director for the Center for Educational Technologies.

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ecosystem and the open architecture that allows it all to “snap together like Lego blocks.” Enabling partnerships “The list of commercial innovation partners is not endless, but it’s growing,” he says, alluding to AFWerx, the incubator for new partners and their work with DAF. Dunlap calls it “the front door to be able to make it easier for small businesses to integrate into the sphere.” Those smaller companies hold the keys to a more nimble future in defence procurement. “They’ve got a passion not just to serve commercial companies but to really work for the national security community,” Dunlap says. “That’s from the perspective of a public and global good. Roughly 80 per cent of the companies working in this transformative digital technology space would be companies that have never done a contract with the government before, or if they did it was very minor. Two years ago that would have been 10 per cent.” That’s an impressive motion, which begs the question: what does the future look like for the Department of the Air Force? Dunlap turns to an aeronautic phrase. “We’ve got a lot of runway left. There’s an opportunity to get mission, operational and business data in a way that has tremendous impact. We’ve got the right relationships to compress the timelines that even the commercial greats in these areas have done, because we can learn from them. There’s a wave of digital transformation that’s at our doorstep. If we walk into it, it is going to have ripple effects so that no individual capability – your tank, your bomb or your satellite – is going to be good enough in the future. If that hypothesis of the future is true then that digital structure and foundation is just so important. www.airforce.com

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“Roughly 80 per cent of the companies working in this transformative digital technology space would be companies that have never done a contract with the government before. Two years ago that would have been 10 per cent” PRESTON C. DUNLAP

CHIEF ARCHITECT, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

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“I think we’re going to see tremendous acceleration of technology and it’s on our shoulders to be able to actually ride that wave.” Beyond that foundational piece is a wealth of technology waiting to reach maturity – in AI, virtual, augmented and mixed reality – that will bolster the snowballing technological revolution. “I think those are some of the most powerful capabilities in the digital sphere and they’re going to make a big difference,” Dunlap observes. “And it’s up to us to adopt and integrate or we’ll fall behind.”

For Vidrine, the future is about making data part of the human experience. “The Department of the Air Force is driving to build data acumen for every airman and guardian,” she explains. “We are driving to make data part of every airman and guardian’s core DNA. In the future, we won’t be talking about data because data will be part of who we are every day. It will be part of our ecosystem and our DNA to optimise performance and drive decisional advantage.”