What the Pentagon Can Learn From the iPhone
It takes what feels like an eternity for the Pentagon to adopt new technology. Often a system is already outdated by the time it is ready for combat.
"It takes us a really long time to build anything new, usually between five to eight years for new technology to get to our warfighters," Col. Bruce Lyman says. "In IT speak, five to eight years is a lifetime. So you really have to ask yourself: How is it you're going to get to where we can be much like an Android or iPhone?"
Lyman thinks he has a solution to make military procurement more like developing apps, and to get new tech into the hands of soldiers faster. This is not just idle talk, either. Lyman says he just proved it can work.
Forty-Two Weeks
Lyman is a unique figure inside the Pentagon. As a U.S. Air Force reservist, he's responsible for identification of emerging intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. His specialty is managing the vast amount of data, such as images from drones, satellites, and intercepted signals. When he's not in uniform, Lyman is the CEO of Enterprise Information Management, Inc. an info tech company that brings automation and data mining to make companies more efficient.
"It takes us a really long time to build anything new, usually between five to eight years for new technology to get to our warfighters."
In both roles, Lyman is billed as a trouble-shooter, the guy you call in to untangle the unorganized mess of data flow. As an Air Force officer, this has taken him to places where information flow can save or cost lives. He's been a problem-solver in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Allied Force, the global war on terror, and other missions. Which means he's seen the weakness of the Pentagon's technology strategy up close.
"In the military we tend to identify, design, and build and deploy pretty much everything the same way we do an aircraft carrier. It's a process by which we go through to acquire virtually anything," Lyman says. "And it doesn't really lend itself to information-age technology." For example, the Pentagon is famed for having military-specific hardware built for the purpose. "Even hardware of the past was built to be specifically tied to the software, so you couldn't separate them," Lyman says. "But that's not how we build technology today. Industry shifted to a what's called 'agile.'"
The idea is based on building the smallest capable component, he says, such as a phone constantly updated with new software and new apps. And that brings is to the Distributed Common Ground System, Lyman's test bed for his new way of thinking.
DCGS is the primary way that the Air Force shares intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance information across the globe. Dozens of site across the world are networked together to share the reams of sensor data the Air Force collects. The system is used in 27 locations, directly accessed by about 5,400 people, and has 3,000 support staff. These people are using DCGS all around the world to do round-the-clock combat operations. "How do you take that weapons system and transform it to an agile weapons system, to where you can deploy every ninety days, instead of every eight years?" Lyman asks.
Well, rather than treating DCGS like a military airplane, Lyman spearheaded an effort to design the system like a smartphone. That means using commercially available products whenever possible, making the software easy to upgrade while keeping the same hardware in place, and rolling out new improvements when they are ready, the same way apps are downloaded to phones when they are available. It can be scaled up as big as the Air Force wants.
"The senior generals got the concept because they know they have to solve this problem. The junior people got it because they're used to ordering a pizza online."
The new, open-architecture DCGS features an automated fusion of multiple video and intelligence feeds into a single picture. This way an analyst can see the location of intercepted signals overlaid onto a live video feed from an unmanned Predator aircraft. Lyman explains: "I have a full-motion video feed, I have a set of analysts that look and analyze that feed, and give information and intelligence to the warfighter on that feed. The same thing with high-altitude pictures from space, pictures from high altitude aircraft. The same thing from signals intelligence. ... Well, if you can bring all those together at the same time, and give context … you give much more capability to a war-fighter. So we're automating those three things in this new framework."
And it happened fast. "It was accredited on a secret operational network and tested … fully ready to deploy, all in forty-two weeks," Lyman says.
Convincing the Brass
This way of doing business could disrupt the status quo of the military-industrial complex. Just a few major companies that work on DCGS, working in contracts measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Opening up smaller shops - like app developers do - could bring more small, entrepreneurial solutions into the mix.
Of course, the big companies that earn those big contracts might not be happy about a new way of thinking. But Lyman hasn't found a complete roadblock, either. "I would say about half of our current contractors embrace it, especially at the engineering level and the actual solution folks, and then the other half are unbelievably opposed, where they're fighting us at every possible turn. But there are some that have stood up and helped us. Big, huge companies."
Inside the Pentagon, reactions are also mixed. "The senior generals got the concept because they know they have to solve this problem. The junior people got it because, now they're used to ordering a pizza online," Lyman says. "Senior-level management-the colonels and the one-star equivalents in the civilian world-have been doing it the old way since they were lieutenants, for 30 years. And now you're basically telling them 'Everything you've done is wrong, don't do that anymore.'"
Fortunately for Lyman, the new and better DCGS, which are being developed this way through 2018, may be the breakthrough that proves to the Pentagon his way is possible. "The hardest part was convincing people that it was a good idea," he says. "How do you go from where we are today to a true agile environment where we can actually operate inside the enemy's decision cycle? Well, DCGS is the only major weapons system that's ever done it. So this is how to do it."
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