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>> army officials discuss modernization efforts including bridging the gap between industrialized profits and digital age problems, lockheed martin vice president for strategy and business discontinued artificial intelligence and autonomous aircraft missions, the association of the united states army held this annual meeting in washington, d.c. it's an hour and ten minutes

>> good morning. i'm sebastian springer. thank you for joining us this morning for this section on army modernization. i can tell it is a packed room so this is very much a topic of interest. this section is sponsored by lockheed martin and will be recorded and archived. during the main discussion, we will have the microphone available for audiences to ask questions. if you are watching online, click ask the question button to submit a question. my guest today is the vice president of strategy and business development for lockheed martin. welcome. you may have heard of lockheed martin. dan, thanks for joining us. >> pleasure to be here. it's great to be here to kick off this great event. appreciate the full room here this morning. looking forward to the discussion.

>> there is one topic of modernization i want to pick your brain about. what is your company working toward when it comes to modernization at the moment? >> modernization is extremely important, as you know. we are working on a lot of facets together. if i can just take a second and say how great the events are, having at this point spent 10 years in the government and all being in the industry, it's great to come together as a team and talk about how we stay ahead of threats around the world is extremely important, so i want to take -- take the time to thank all of you for taking the time out of your busy schedule. it's a great forum, a great time to enter. modernization is extremely important to us. as we serve the army, in particular, there is a couple of things i think are really important. one, i want to talk about ai and autonomy and the other is the importance of open architecture. you will see over the next couple of days, we are going to demo the autonomous blackhawk.

this is a fantastic machine. you will see that we have the ability now with modern-day systems and technology to enable the aircraft to work lately autonomously. we are going to have a tablet, you push a button and it will go through the preflight checks. it will start and take off and perform that mission. we are not talking about a remote control. we are talking about the aircraft and its performance. that becomes extremely important as you think about supplementing a pilot. you have a pilot flying, there is other mission objectives they need to be working on. they can tell the aircraft to do the mission. it will adjust to the weather, the geography, other flights out there being detected through sensors. you can also send it other signals and have it perform a different mission. that is enabled by our system's architecture, so we think it is extremely important and we are really vested in open systems

architecture. open systems architecture allows companies around the world to integrate new applications in these technologies into the aircraft. we are committed to that. we think it is extremely important. it is a great machine we are going to demo here. we are going to do it over the next few days to show the ability of autonomy. i think we all know when we think about modernization, this will be a big part of that. the ability to have autonomous aircraft that operates together will enable us to really advance . >> when you say open systems, that has been the holy grail of dod industry as long as i can remember. what is the status of making it happen and making it efficient? >> our system that we are enabling is open system, meaning we can integrate third-party apps.

we can have new providers that come in with new technology, and it's not a problem. it's not proprietary. it truly is open. it's architecture that we develop in such a way that multiply -- multiple people contribute in advance. it's a way of bringing innovation. we are committed to if we have the best capability and best product, we are going to bring that to our customers and of somebody else has it, we will bring that, so we think it is externally important to enable that openness. >> one of the sticking points has always been creative rights. >> in this case because it is not proprietary, enabling the open system allows us to have other providers come in, and you don't have to just come back to lockheed martin to integrate new systems and technologies.

that is extremely important. >> you mentioned ai and autonomy sort of in the balance of the autonomy on the one hand and full ai on the other. where is the technology currently? >> through a series of sensors and algorithms and technologies that we have -- you know today, when we fly blackhawks such as the demonstration we do today, the blackhawk will be located in stratford, connecticut. we will fly it from here. we will use space capabilities and other things to connect to the aircraft. the autonomy comes in. when the aircraft goes through algorithms, it says this is the best way to perform that mission and adjust. when you have the capabilities that are interlinked on closed platforms and domains, it's a very intelligent aircraft, so the ai comes in where it's not a remote control. it uses something we called

matrix, which is a software application that is enabling it. we are enabling autonomy on undersea vehicles, that kind of thing, but it truly is the machine going through thousands of algorithms. >> give me an example of what a mission might look like. >> let's say you have blackhawk flying in theater and you have troops on the ground. they could send a message to the blackhawk and the blackout could reroute. they have to have the right parameters to do that, but they would send it. the blackhawk would accept that mission, turn around, find the best place to land and perform it. we actually did one where we medevac some blood. we have the capability to do that. that would be an example.

where it is performing a mission but a new mission is sent to the aircraft. aircraft would analyze it, determine the best parameters to perform it and actually change course. >> launch fx is certainly part of what we will modernize. talking with the prior -- with the army, it is a priority scenario we are working extremely hard on. launch fx will be integrated into that as we modernize, but it is a different system. we have it available, and we are going to show it in the next couple of days. >> when you think of modernization, what other areas are you traveling in? >> custom and platforms is going to be the future and how we think about future funding. we are doing a lot of work in that area. software is becoming a lot of

the currency of the day to enable speed. a lot of times, we can see the hardware may stay the same, but if you think about radar, these are software-defined, which means we can push software updates to the radar it's up to make it more intelligent. make the sensing better to work out maybe false alarms that may be occurring. we have shown that even in the system on ships, this is another example of pushing software. we did that in theater, while it was in theater. what that does is we are reducing the cycle time to updated systems from months and weeks to literally hours. software is what we are putting a lot of time and effort into modernizing. many times, as we said, the hardware is there. the hardware will be unable to come up makes it smarter, makes it more intelligent across domains and platforms. >> when you say "there," there

as is? >> many times when you think about an aircraft, the aircraft itself can remain, but if you think about blackhawk, for example, part of the modernization is to allow a lot of the linkages to come out of the aircraft and then purchase the ability to control the software, right? when we take out many of the mechanical linkages, we can have crew on crew, autonomy into those systems, but you don't have to sustain the entire structure, for example. as we learn of what is happening in theater and false alarms and those sorts of things. >> ok. i have a question -- you talk about software. anything you are getting from the european theater? >> our military has been

extremely helpful enabling new partnerships with allied nations. i think that we are seeing a great awakening across europe, right? partnerships want to advance and modernize their capabilities. we think that is an extremely important step. we have seen the government move quicker and faster to want to enable the skype and -- these kinds of capabilities for these countries, so it is extremely important. i cannot thank our partners enough for helping us to do that. it is important for our military to have strong allies across europe. we are seeing europe invest. we are seeing a lot of opportunities across europe to create a robust supply chain, and we think that is really important. we all think about undercoat with the fragility of the supply chain. one of the ways to combat that is to have allied nations so

it's not just different weapons in theater but having a discussion a base within the countries, and that is what enhances a lot of these countries in europe. >> that's all the time we have. thank you. >> thanks for having me. [applause]

>> good to go. all right. good morning. thank you for joining us here at our first session on army modernization. hope everyone is all set with coffee. feel free to go over there and grab one if you haven't. i know it's early. we have a microphone available for audience questions. if you are watching online, click the ask a question button and we'll get to as many as possible. my guests today, welcome and thank you for sitting down with me. this panel on army modernization, i think it is very telling that the network

and operating in the subdomain is central, so the army will not be doing anything effectively on tomorrow's battlefield without a robust, efficient, accessible, usable network. there are just a few short years before you hit 2027, which is the timeline goal you have for establishing unified networks, so the army is making headway in streamlining networks. we talked a little bit about this about a month ago. broadly discuss what this has entailed and what you are working toward. >> where do i even start? i spend a lot of time talking about what we lovingly refer to as kit. i think a lot of focus over the last year has been on this idea of converging networks and

simplifying the network. a hyperfocus on rethinking the way we do business, right? we often talk about we are going to change policy. i think it's more than that. how do we reengineer how we do capabilities? areas to hyperfocus in the space to lay out what i would consider the policy foundation. one is rethinking cyber security. how do we think about operationalizing cybersecurity in today's world? especially when we are looking at it over a frame of new technology has come out, how do we really upgrade that quickly and get some shaping guidance to deliver cybersecurity in a much better way? i think the next big piece has been this idea of how we lay the foundation over ai, ml, and data. we have spent a lot of time

rethinking who owns data in the army, right? really -- a lot of those folks have not focused on their problems that to shake technology and where it is going, and as we look at some of the work we are doing now across the army, what does that really mean from a policy perspective? security, data protection, what does that look like? the last piece has been kind of interesting. you will hear a lot more in our warriors corner, but this idea, we have done a big push over the last year on software modernization. how do we get a policy around that that allows the program to move a lot faster? and actually operationalize that. we have not built that framework to get that done. the big focus has been laying that foundation to then be able to turn around and operationalize it for 2027. >> i would add a couple of

thoughts. when we started the notion of unified network for years ago -- it's hard to believe it has been that long -- it was to get the army moving in a common direction. i would say that we are blowing past that at a very good clip because it's now becoming a realized operational capability. we can talk more about how we are crushing the artificial barriers between theaters that allow us to rapidly deploy folks and organizations around the world, how we are crushing the false divide between our enterprise network and tactical networks because of all of us working in a united fashion -- excuse the pun -- but i will tell you the most important thing that we will do and are doing is changing institutions. i leave you with the thought that institutional change is lasting change. we have changed the way that we govern and prioritize. we have changed the way that we

align resources to those environments, all being co-led by the cio in my office. under that unified governance, now we have simplified requirements. unified delivery of those capabilities based on prioritized requirements. most importantly, we now have a single operational commander who is responsible for operating, maintaining, securing, and i would submit maneuvering the network on behalf of a completely different approach from how we have tried before. where we were very bifurcated, very siloed, the reality of it is we did not see any network

modernization based on trust principles by 2027. if we are trying to do 69 different networks. you do it against one, you have a fighting chance. i can 69, no chance at all. how are we doing with network modernization? i'm going to turn it over to the operational commander responsible for it. >> perfect. there is so much going on, and i'm going to actually say from an offensive cyber standpoint, show me a network that is in transition and i will show you one at risk, so everything we are doing in support of the network modernization is a deliberate transition, so everything from when the transforming contact elements are going out next month or is it this month? you know, we will have regimes

on the ground trying to penetrate them and testing what it is that we are laying in every step of the way as we execute this modernization and employ zero-trust principles for every aspect of that that we are laying in. we are thinking about the process in our organization, too. some of the services are not regionally provided. they are not provided by units. they are centrally provided. we transition into a global cyber center, so as issues come up or we see things in the network that need to be addressed, this is the synchronizing body behind it. this is not just about the material solutions that are

being employed. there is organizational change, process change, and throughout all echelons, getting to that operational level as well. >> as i said, to dive a little deeper on that in terms of the organizational pieces that are required to get after this, can you highlight -- you highlight a few ways that you are changing the organization to be able to achieve this type of unified network and ensure that it is functional on the battlefield. what are some of the things you have to do organizationally, specifically? >> right. i heard general morrison talk about raising complexity on the battlefield, the idea of a central delivery of services. the global cyber center to orchestrate all of that, and to see across the global span of what is happening on the network.

both from a performance standpoint and also from a security standpoint. i think some of the other things that we are doing is the ordinal convergence is a big thing. it's not just more efficient in terms of how we acquire services , but that collapsing of the networks and being able to provide centrally provided services. some of the things we are employing are just smarter, too. army unified directory services allow that global plug-and-play. no longer do you have to reimage a computer when you go somewhere else or pcs or deploy, so those mean more globally provided services, and i think this is going to be underpinned furthermore on the battlefield when we start talking about that integrated data layer. it has to extend throughout the enterprise all the way down into

the tactical space, and operating this way really does make sense if you want to elaborate on that. >> this notion of the delivery and service and raising complexity of in our formation are not exclusive. they are mutually supporting, i would submit to you. when we talk about central delivery to services, think about one location from an environment providing the vast majority of, quite frankly, even on our mission network, the vast majority of operational supports in our database collaboration. as we reveal capability sets, we were doing it for the right reasons. we were supporting a rigorous appointment schedule. we were not deploying at divisions or brigades. they have to be self-contained formations, but when we did that, we inadvertently pushed

all the complexity to include the organizational structure. that caused a lot of problems, especially as we started to go back and think about large combat operations. i cannot imagine maneuvering one of our formations today with the network we have because it was so cumbersome. as we have embarked, it is all about the link that complexity up and giving it to the folks at the appropriate echelon who have the time to deal with problem. think about this -- we had our highest end cybersecurity operators first in ect, but dct maneuvers. they had no time to conduct that very critical task, but if you push that capability, that organizational structure or even inside some of the regional

centers for downward reinforcing , now you are able to take that complexity out and still provide that critical capability we will need against a thinking adversary. making it as simple as we possibly can and putting the right people at the right locations to deal with a more complex task is an absolutely essential part of our journey. >> i think the next couple of years will be interesting to watch. we are watching in real time kind of organizational transformation, so some services are getting centralized, and some have no matured to a place where just kind of makes sense to kind of put the lego block in the right lego set. probably the worst idea on the planet, let's run operations out of the headquarters. other things like thinking through the process of we have

removed complexity. now we have also kind of done two things which are really interesting, kind of democratized the ability to build capability at the edge, right? some data platforms that we said go to town if they are available to you, and then we empowered folks on the data side and said your data, you need to operationalize it, and those are what i will call micro organizations out there within command, and that echelon, which are not driving that bigger change, right? i think that's what we will see over the next couple of years, this transformation happening a little more heavy data and figuring that out. more heavy on the cybersecurity side but maybe not so much the networks or software. then it is also creating an opportunity to build smaller teams which may or may not be episodic. i feel like we did this cloud thing in the army episodically.

doing the same thing on software, right? probably looks a little different in five years, a little more streamlined. it means we don't need that anymore, so i think you will see a lot like that where we got some stuff to triage and then shape it into how we operate on a date to date basis. >> i really don't think when it comes to organizational design and the training of our leaders and people -- i don't think it is ever a done deal. i think it will continue to evolve over the course of time, and when you think about what transforming content is, and a lot of folks get hung up on capabilities being revealed. transforming contacts is about transforming the way we fight and the way we are organized to fight, not waiting for some modernization cycle. i think it's going to be continuous, and it's not just

about the bright, shiny kit. it's about being able to think our way through adoption, organizations, and the skill sets we will need over time. >> you talked a little bit about how policy needs to change in order to accommodate what we need to do. what policy gaps fit for us that remain? i'm sure there are plenty you have yet to discover, but what policy can be amended generally in order to enable the army's goals? >> i will tell you, i have been sitting in this seat for about a year and i have looked at stuff that was written and the armor to rule them all. was b have on

we have been working hard to segment that and focus on policies and capabilities, so a couple areas that are critical right now. on the data piece, it has been a space that historically has been all or nothing. dkind of refocus that space rit there. almost everything we are doing in the army all dependent on a data piece. so we focused a lot on empowering functionalists to own their data and shape not just the problems they were trying to solve but have accountability for making that available to other folks. when we talk about challenges, it's how we try to get into the system and the system owner says i cannot share my data, but the folks with a problem of the ones making the decisions.

i think we made a lot of headway on that. we are kind of fighting a new fight. it has been an area where we have been in the gap and i think there is still a lot of work to do. i think the next piece has been around balancing this space between acquisition and non-acquisition, right? what i mean by that is there's capabilities out there. soldiers, civilians, and some of our veterans are operating in those platforms. is that an acquisition? i don't know. there's other areas where folks are making really quick, dynamic, perishable software. spending a lot of time right now putting some boundaries and definitions around that so we cannot get stuck in the bureaucracy of old. when i think about big challenges, that is probably one of the biggest ones we have, right?

same thing for requirements, right? a lot of work going there. we did an initial cut with the data platform memo signed between myself and the acquisition executive. we are going to expand that now moving forward, right? we did it for the platform, so why don't we do it for all our platforms? a lot more work to do. we are kind of putting out micro guidance to get folks moving in the right direction, but we have a pretty bold cyber security policy. today's army from a policy perspective is all about compliance. 100%. general morris and i have been talking for months about operationalizing cybersecurity and moving folks from this compliance-based environment to that. that's the muscle movement i think we will see over the next

few months is the reimagining of that type of process and imagining around that. it's going to take some time and a lot of cultural risk to get there. to me, those are the three areas where we got some holes in our swing or industrial process to digital problems. >> since we are talking about policy, that is a big push for the army right now, to help enable modernization across the enterprise, much has depended on software upgrades, capability, if that's combat vehicles or the network, so from your vantage point, what does the software policy enable -- how does it

enable your work and why is it important and what does it do and what does it not do? >> i love being buzzword compliant. everybody has it on their little pamphlets and this is what my program is doing. but when you look, nobody is really doing that. we are kind of playing at it still. number one, the big thing it does is it sets the foundation to actually be able to do those things, right? build software at scale in a secure fashion, right? we can talk about doing it all day long, but if none of the policy enables that, it is hard to get it done. the first real, true, "oh, my god" moment will be here soon. here are the tools. does not matter where you get them, who you leverage from as long as it is within this framework. here is what that means for you

if you want to be in a continuous ato in a secure fashion. the other pieces, the idea of where we help where folks need help, and what i mean by that is built smaller teams that can go out and help command or program better in the software space, come up to speed really quick, right? get the program in, get the tools they need to deliver software, and the most important piece -- because this is the gap of gaps -- make sure that your cybersecurity people are in the room and adjusting the stats. that is a big piece that we have been focusing on. still a lot of work to do on the contracting side. the center of excellence is going to be a big help to get folks to help they need when they need it. a lot of the work looking at requirements especially. i think the other piece is

rethinking evaluation, right? the idea of we can build software fast. might have got folks to realize there is a security component to it. now can we build software fast with a security component and test it in a way that makes sense? that is the next piece where you will see a hyper push in what testing looks like and how we reimagine that for the army moving forward. >> it's a foundation for us. i would ask from other industry partners for tactical patients because much like we were talking before about our organizations are going to continuously morph as technology capabilities mature, the network is going to continue. we think about it as a software space, that is really going to start taking off for us, but at least we have a foundation from which we can pivot, and that is really important because sometimes you just need to get started and then learn by doing

and then make the smart puts and takes you need. again, i don't think this is one where we will hit a homerun since we are in baseball player season, but i think we are on base and i think we will continue to move people around that base. >> well played. >> thank you. >> i do want to ask, how are you working through -- his evaluation set up right now to allow for cybersecurity testing, other cyber testing, or does evaluation need to be revamped in some ways that will allow you to better evaluate capabilities? >> mr. garcia and i work very closely, our organizations work closely on the policy in order to develop a process that makes

sense, that actually can end up with product at the end. in a secure manner. this gets us to the end of making smart changes in the way that we do business in order to achieve the security. i think as we think about we are embedded in each one of the projects or experiments, looking at -- i think providing to the test and evaluation and the acquisition community, here is what we are seeing from a threat standpoint, here is how the threat is changing, this is what they are taking advantage of, to be able to hear those insights beyond the borders of army cyber is super important so that they can be integrated into the work that is being done, especially on the software side.

everything is going to be driven by software, and as i look at some of the trends in the threat environment, the particular areas that they are focused on, that has absolutely and, and that keeps me awake at night, so being able to receive products that not only are secure but have their with all to respond rapidly to a particular threat to a patch, that is critical. when we look at who we want to do business with from the standpoint of defending the networks, this is what we are asking, how effective -- what is

your process for moving quickly to change something in your operating system, should you find out that there is a critical flaw? i think that has to be part of the conversation. i think the other piece is we move to more as a service-type models. there is a lot of benefit to taking advantage of industry delivery capabilities. any cloud-type service that is out there, having the conversation, you now are an operational partner. something happens within your environment, if you are a nation state actor or natural causes. we have to have this operational linkage where you are calling me or i'm calling him and saying, how do we move forward on this? i think that is a big change

that will evolve over the next couple of years. >> three years ago, we did the first program of record that was really in the cloud, and i haven't to be part of that effort and saw we had no idea what we were doing, right? when we thought cyber -- when we talk cyber survivability, we were like, well, we think it's like this. i think where we are today is totally different. we are talking for big programs. the idea that the red team and the purple team, everyone is talking together. and we are thinking about the skill set we need to make sure we are testing for the right things. it is a moving target. things will continue to mature.

that's going to be the big piece, how we manage to support that. >> it is a two-part question that you really asked. there's the institutional component of how we build our dor's and is that foundation set the way we want it? it is trending in the right direction but we still have more work to do. quite frankly, as they fit changes, testing will have to change, but i take you back to the actions we have been doing. our cyber bed teams attacking the architecture we have deployed, now out in the pacific with the 25th doing the same thing and it's not just an assessment of the network from a cyber perspective. it is also how we do the athletic spectrum as well because quite frankly, on today's battlefield, that is probably a greater threat than what we are facing on the cyber side.

we are seeing that play out in conflicts around the world. so having that actively trying to do something to the network is making sure we are fielding a capability that we can operate, maintain, secure, defend, and maneuver in support of combat operation. >> could you elaborate more on what the army is learning from what you are doing at experiments and exercises? real-world examples on approaches to hardening the network against very capable enemies? >> three really big thoughts about what we are starting to see. first off, we can raise complexity. we don't need to push it all the way down and we can make things very simple for our operators, who really need to figure out how they are maneuvering and fighting.

when we went down to the training center from the observer and controller, the quote was we are not fighting the network anymore. the unit is fighting the enemy. that is a completely different shift in any conversation we would have had about the army tactical network any time in the past. that's one. when we are able to do it. two, we do not have the echelon of who is responsible for doing what from a cyber perspective nailed down yet. we are getting inside tactical formation, but the main idea is they are going to be hooked back to the broader cyber enterprise, i will call it, where you have that layer so the original and then globally and then all the way back to headquarters itself, it's a common view across that entire continuum. we do not want at the tactical level folks trying to do counter

activity on the cyber actress. we want that someplace else where folks have time to see what is happening and take the appropriate measures, so we have a little bit more work to do on that component of it. i will also tell you that this notion of putting simple, intuitive kit in the hands of our soul -- our soldiers is also working. our tasks, which is to take most of the day or even longer to install and get to operational capability, we now have units doing it in less than 30 minutes. 45 minutes at night with night vision goggles on. a sea change in how we have been operating, and it is because the network is simple and able to be delivered to formations as opposed to them trying to establish their own network by themselves. >> i will just amplify the contested nature of the battlefield. i think commanders are more

cognizant of the fact that they will be operating in a contested electromagnetic spectrum, so what does that mean? it is the mobility piece, the appreciation for the fact that they can move, too, with little or no disruption. the idea that they have to keep moving, the idea that they have to be aware of what their signature looks like and also be able to see the adversaries or the signature as well as the magnetic spectrum. we have given them the tools to review that and then make decisions about how they arrayed themselves to reduce their signature. i think some of the feedback was that that was probably the best signature reduction of a command post while. so we are seeing that reflected

in the command on the ground and how they are thinking about how to employ their forces and i think that is a really good news story but it is also because they are watching what is happening in southwest asia and what is happening in ukraine, transparency of the battlefield cannot be overstated. so i think that is one of the other big things i would underscore. >> going smaller and more agile versus the huge command post we have seen in the past, what are some of the trade-offs to consider when reducing that footprint? great benefits, but what are some of the downsides you are discovering as you go through some experimentation, evaluation in the last year or so? >> i will take a stab and then refer to general morrison. whatever application or service

it is, it has to work at the edge first and then bring it back into the enterprise. if you are trying to reinjure -- re-engineer enterprise capability, our noble -- normal approach has been a does not work so if you can get it at the edge and i think the other thing is really having a robust conversation with commanders about how you want to operate and maneuver and make decisions and that informs really where the data needs to be, where does the processing, the computing need to be at echelon the battlefield, does not really need to be all the way down to the platoon, and what classification are we operating at, i think that conversation is really helpful to come up with integrated data layer that will be vital for not only operating

the network but also the mission command systems commanders are employing. >> i know we talk about this at length. the big thing has been we have watched the almost hyper dependency. i think this idea is also redefining what this means because depending on the capability on the data the definitions might be different so a lot of the work we have seen and the drawbacks have been if we have gotten enough rest to understand where we have some challenges and will have to adjust fires. that will be a big piece in the next couple of exercises will demonstrate that too much greater affect so hopefully that will start shaping some of the acquisition work around that space but this idea of where data needs to be and where do

you need to store and compute as we experiment we are refining that. fundamentally we are changing the way we are funded -- fighting in real time so they will be some back and forth. >> i think you both hit it but i will add some thoughts. c2 fits next gen z two is not about capability, it's about changing the way the army operates and redefining what the echelons will be doing and getting the complexity to division encore or even higher so that brigades can go back to doing what they are supposed to be doing, maneuvering against an adversary and destroying them. right now it's overly burdened with its own task. take you back to the notion of fighting the network instead of the network is fine and that you are fighting the adversary and that is what we really need to

get to and then the notion of distributed data will be critical. we knew -- we know we don't have it right yet and we have very positive signs coming out of what we are doing with next gen z to but we also need to realize we have an adversary out there and will operate integrated environment times. one of the downsides we are seeing goes back to the notion that data is too much information. this is a great problem to have, one commander said i have so much information i finally shut down the some of my system so i could just concentrate on fighting and i would talk to people when i needed to talk to them because information and data available to me would overwhelm me and i just have to go back to the basics of natural maneuver so too much information , unfiltered, is one of the

things we will definitely have to work around because for lack of a better turn, we have open pandora's box come up the problem, now we just have to figure out what is the right data and what echelon we need to have it at. >> i want to ask, you have's -- you have some of the options, star link, how do you work on options for the network and build relationships with industry that have chair marshall capabilities, what is changing the game and what challenges remain when it comes to that? >> i will let general morrison deal with that comment. but i will say i think the environment, we kind of touched on it a couple of times, but this really [indiscernible] we look at provided capabilities out right now fundamentally different delivery models, one thing we have been focused on is making sure we tighten our

partnerships with some of the providers not from cybersecurity but also for business, how will be operationalized some of the capabilities it is kind of changing the bottle for how capabilities get delivered. there has been kind of a lot of work between our team and esop focusing on how to start shaping that so it makes sense so there is viable delivery and acquisition model out there and i think in that space it has been interesting to watch the last couple of years. one interesting thing is not just cybersecurity change but driving acquisition change, a lot of things we have seen is having to rethink the guidance we have given acquisition folks on the contract side and reshaping that so hopefully in industry they are seeing the business for -- the benefits which is the army doing a push to update some of the work in that space but i do think it

will be again right like everything the model is changing really fast and we are changing this entire institution at the same time so the big thing is gonna be we are gonna probably get to 80% right i think, at most times sometimes it really wrong but it is going to be some work on making sure as a service capability really changing the way we leverage, right? my number one question in all these is when something goes bad and i pick up the phone, who was on the other end, right? who do i call, right? because that is what we all do as humans when something's breaks, right? we continue to flesh out the who do i call problem. >> 20 years ago where when i came in the army a long time before that, the army would deploy its own network, pick up, go to the field, that was it.

those days are gone, right? we will never deploy a solely military network again. it will always be infused with commercial capabilities. i do not like to use specific gender names because i think it will be a really big tent as we work our way through this but why wouldn't way do that? if we try and field a military network only, no joke, a few years ago we were planning on fielding network capabilities out to the 20 40's. what business would think of the network or i.t. in that fashion? your army should not think of it that way either so if we really want to get into how things are going we have to have a base architecture to land on, to put things to, software defined, so that as a new capability comes on from one of our industry

partners we can rapidly spend it in or if we have a change in the debt environment we can rapidly spend it out but the biggest change and it is gonna take all of us is the conversations have to be completely different. there can be no more this is my secret and that is yours and when we put them together it looks great. when you have a capability landing in a foreign country house by interest partners we have to understand what that security is an we have to understand the security you will be layer again so we can work together and quite frankly you should be demanding until from us so we can tell you what is happening in an operational environment because if that fails, your army could be put at risk. and if the army is put at risk come about things are happening so we are going to force a different dynamic and different conversation amongst all of us and we need to head into the brave new world with our eyes

open and >> full of energy >>. >> once upon a time commanders look>>ed to hug their servers, right? and we have change that paradigm. and the reason why they hugged it was because they wanted to be assured that it was protected and going to perform and i did not need to depend on anybody else and i think now that we are going to take, we will always be using industry services. that risk profile we have to be able to articulate it to a joint force commander, chief, secretary in a way we all understand clearly. i would just use that to amplify jennifer morrison's point --

general morrison's point because that ability to articulate risk or have the risk conversation with an industry partner is vital. >> nexgen seed to you've had further iterations including work [indiscernible]

so if you could talk a little bit about the evolution of this, how it has been growing and what you are taking from it and how you are going to potentially build a program off of this effort. >> i will offer a couple thoughts. i would caution against thinking a seat fix and nexgen c2 are different identities. they have separate and distinct focuses. c2 fix, we know the network we have inside the division today is not the network we want to take to combat so it is about fixing network architecture so we can fight tonight. very near term focus. not really doing new programs are run at but making sure we are infusing the appropriate commercial capability into it

that makes us more enabled. we are bringing in higher capacity satellite capabilities and legend -- leveraging 5g and reducing computing requirements required inside the brigade headquarters and echelon doing it appropriately so the division can maneuver and brigades can fight so that is what c2 fix is about and it stays very focus on two assets, fixing the network components of it and getting the seat to echelon straight between the division and the brigades to include the enabling brigades, which is also a significant departure from how we were fielding capabilities in the past where the brigade combat teams had everything but combat aviation brigade or divisional territory brigade -- artillery brigade did not have capabilities so even in that

division we were not operable to the point we needed to be. i feel the network components of c2 fix are going in the right direction. red teams go against it, we are watching the signature at the brigade be dramatically be reduced and brigades getting back to what they are supposed to be doing, maneuvering as opposed to [indiscernible] it's all trending in the right direction. next gen z to is taking that apparatus to think about the war fighting function systems so intel, maneuver, sustainment, integrating it at the data layer and layering that apparatus over the network that will emerge from c2 fix. so instead of the stovepipe mission command systems out today that simply do not

integrate the way they need to and are overly complex, now it will be integrated at that data layer and application will ride on top of that infrastructure. all cloud enabled, cloud-based, and will have to be distributed because we will be operating against a foe and we will be in a congested environment, especially when it comes to the electromagnetic spectrum. so c2 fix, three divisions in 25 we will go to the 101st 25th infantry division and then the 82nd airborne division at fort hood and kicked them out and then identify fourth division at a point to be determined and we are still working through specifics of that. net mod x was a great foundation

leveraging many if not all network components coming out of c2 fix and it will move towards product convergence side in march and then we will make some informed decisions when we come out. i hope that laid it out. >> so mod x is the only place i have been where i walked out and i had a huge list like here are different things we have not told the army how to do so one of the things we are fighting are removing complexity, give us more flexibility at echelon and kind of showing interesting gaps in that space so we have a lot more work to do there. ok. >> one last question because i know we have one minute. how are you thinking about

incorporating ai and autonomy into networking sections? incorporating it into everything. where are you seeing potential for that making the most sense and where with the capabilities be useful for you? what are you looking at? >> to apply it over a vast network like this is really tough. you have to start in a very focused manner and get it going. we have an effort we are doing that is a prototype we did in conjunction with cyber command that looks at how to reduce the complexity and what is our analysts have to do in terms of identifying threats to the network so we will move that into a pilot hopefully this year but i think the other piece of

this, i will go back to the industry, a lot of the capabilities of the services that our industry is providing has an mai component to it and those type of tools in the service they are providing we are taking advantage of and really operationalizing those so there will be two ways of implementing ai or ml, things we generate for a specific mission purposes and then there will be more general capabilities we need to look at and make sure we are operationalizing, especially take this part of the zero trust journey as well, most of what we are doing we can leverage those things very effectively to achieve greater outcomes and again reduce those, organizations are not going to grow so we need to unburden some

of our defenders from chopping wood and apply them to look at some of the more sophisticated things we need them to be doing. >> the cio perspective, couple things, right? the biggest part kind of last couple of months has been you know we put some guidance out to the army on lom and jen ai and it was really we got great feedback on it and they told commanders to goad do, right? we said let's run, but not with scissors, and started opening the environment in cloud especially to let folks with good use cases come in and start [indiscernible] and with a purpose, right? like let's figure out the business model here because i think that is the biggest piece we are finding as we do not have

the business model quite figured out so how do we get an environment open with good commander use cases where we have a small company that comes in and kind of hold your hand and we have a large and a greater who was working on an enterprise or video are doing something more complex, we have native cloud services and soldiers on it and phd's on it and really start experimenting against the use cases to figure out a couple of things, right? how we want to deal with data because we found out quickly it cannot have 10 people poll every army piece of doctrine and build their own against it, not a good idea so what does that look like so a lot of work into kind of shaping the guidance around that because we have to when we can't afford not to and then the other piece is to kind of go back to industry and say the cost model does not work, right? we got folks charging by token

and out of service and i am like the army cannot fly that way so how are we working really with industry to say hey we need a more standardized approach but really right now at the foundational level, right, it's about building the digital foundation we can secure around, that we can get kind of pockets of data in a good place and then a viable sustainable business model and i think we have a lot of work to do on that so it is in the infancy stage of how we will operationalize this technology. >> unfortunately that is all the time we have. please join me in thankingor

form.