Pentagon planning huge experiment for its connect-everything concept

The Pentagon is about to launch one of the biggest tests yet of its joint, all-domain command and control, or JADC2, concept, this time seeking to bring multiple nations together to test how well the Defense Department can rapidly share very sensitive information with foreign militaries that aren’t traditional partners, DOD CIO Daniel Holtzman said Tuesday during the Defense One Cloud Workshop. 

The exercise will be part of the Defense Department’s Global Information Dominance experiments, or GIDE. 

“The next series coming up in the next couple of months is building up to a worldwide joint activity where we're going to have a carrier strike group that the Brits are going to take across three different U.S. [combatant commands] and [ports across] four different international partners on the trip out, and then three [combatant commands] and three different international partners on the trip back,” Holtzman said.

The military works across different combatant commands and foreign countries all the time, but this carrier strike group exercise, scheduled for the end of 2025, will feature unprecedented data and information sharing, using data bridges the military will have to create quickly. 

“What we are doing in the next GIDE is a series of experiments that all lead up to that activity,” Holtzman said. “We're connecting international partners—the UK, Australia and others—in ways in the cloud that we've prototyped that are pushing the bounds on certain things.” 

Holtzman called it the “ultimate example of JADC2, to how do we sail that fleet through this partner that wasn't a partner yesterday, [where] there's now a partner who needs to connect to us. And we don't have a year and a half to build the new [cross-domain solution] and get it installed and get it authorized and put a U.S. person there.”

The experiment will test new communications strategies, but also how well the Defense Department can adjust its procedures and policies for information sharing, a long-time obstacle to faster operations. 

Holtzman said the creation of his position has been critical for that information sharing, as he answers directly to the Deputy Defense Secretary and that allows him to get around rules that other offices or commands might put in the way. 

“The challenge, I think, is everybody's trying to do the right thing. Their motive is right,” he said of mid-level officials and officers who inhibit the free flow of data. “Their desire is right. But their goal is, the most important thing is to protect the data. Don't share. Protect. When our goal is the mission. And that shift in thinking is what we're trying … through GIDE to show, how does the warfighter get to vote? How do they practice and train and do inventive things if you don't give them the opportunity to do that? That's really what GIDE is about.”

Tara Murphy Dougherty, the CEO of decision-science company Govini, which works with Defense Department data, said that while there is still a lot of work to do to free up data silos in the Pentagon, there has been some notable progress. 

“We see significant progress…and it's [the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office], their [Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories] initiative, and what they're leaning into with GIDE and JADC2, and the direction that CDAO is going where it's trying to be very thoughtful about the infrastructure that DOD has to own in order to ensure interoperability of systems. But opening things up as much as possible to be able to bring lots of different commercial companies and products into play is, I think, arguably, a very good model for the department,” she said. “It mandates the movement of data, not just within DOD and across services, but also between government and the commercial companies that are coming in to support them. And that's a really important exchange.”