03-20-2025
Key Takeaways:
- As warfare becomes increasingly complex as technology advances, the Army needs seamless communications and data interoperability across and within all echelons of the force.
- Creating a common data layer is the best solution for the Army to enable data interoperability and accelerate decision making from the Corps to the edge.
- Enriching the common data layer with AI and external data can significantly expand situational awareness across echelons of the force and enrich the value of information shared in coordinated operations.
LISTEN TO THIS FEATURE:
The pace of change across civilian and military technologies is like nothing we have witnessed since before World War II. As General James E. Rainey explains, although new technologies don’t typically play out as expected, they are still disruptive and can give us an asymmetric advantage. The true impact of technology is its ability to quickly widen the gap between skilled and unskilled armies. As warfare becomes increasingly complex as technology advances, the disparity between the skilled and unskilled commanders and formations will grow. As a result, there are likely to be severe consequences If the Army fails to adapt to change. Transformation in contact across operational units is essential.
Coordinated action demands seamless data sharing
Modern warfare challenges traditional combat and military strategy. The Army never fights alone. The multi-domain nature of modern warfare demands coordinated actions across the armed services and with allies across air, land, sea, cyber, and space operations. Joint and combined operations are the norm, and it is critical for the Army to have seamless communications and data interoperability across and within all echelons of the force.
However, current Army communication networks and mission command systems were not designed to enable seamless data sharing across different Army platforms or to support an efficient common operating picture (COP) for joint or combined operations. This creates information sharing challenges, which exist across all the services and at the joint level. This paper focuses the technical discussion on the Army, but these principles carry across the services and across C5ISR (command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance).
While interconnected warfighting requires a shift from service-specific mindsets and operational norms, it also requires a shift from a network-centric to a data-centric paradigm. The right investments in modern technologies can enable this shift. What results is an adaptive ecosystem where partners can share data in real time to support coordinated battle decisions.
Create a common data layer: Connect disparate data with access controls
Creating an enterprise data layer is the best solution for the Army to enable this data-centric paradigm and accelerate decision making from the Corps to the edge. In simple terms, a common data layer allows the right data to get to the right decision maker at the right time—whether they are conducting operations from Brigade and Division Fires, unit maneuvers, or requiring air-to-ground integration between an AH-64E Apache and an MIA2 Abrams tank.
A common data layer is a breakthrough in the Army’s ability to continuously transform data into actionable intelligence for proactive and timely decisions in the operating environment.
There are “zero-trust for data” platforms that create a common data layer and are well suited for the DoD environment. With fine-grain attribute-based access control, these platforms support the integration and analysis of data from federated data sources of varying classification levels. Combined with best-in-class data management services for rapid data transport, ingestion, and indexing, these platforms support end-to-end, multi-level security. Data tagging capability safeguards clearance levels, unlocking data that was previously fully restricted due to classification for sharing among authorized personnel. And very importantly, zero-trust solutions enable a leap ahead in cyber security over current/legacy network centric architectures.
With the right zero-trust for data platform, the Army can quickly integrate millions of records per second from structured, unstructured, and real-time streaming data sources to prepare data for low latency ingestion into decision-support applications and analytics. These platforms manage the synchronization and prioritization of data to target information sharing with surgical precision. They enable the resilient data and networking operations required for ubiquitous access to targetable data, even in DDIL environments. This approach allows information sharing at machine speed across systems to integrate enabling robust command and control at echelon and at the edge.
Sustained effectiveness of a common data layer requires ongoing monitoring and optimization, security enhancements, and continuous development to optimize it for reliability, responsiveness, and scalability. Given the speed of technology enhancement, there will always be opportunities to integrate new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
Joint Fires Network:
Common Data Layer in Action
SAIC is a key integrator for the Joint Fires Network (JFN) common data layer. The JFN is a large-scale prototyping and integration effort that addresses immediate warfighter needs in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). It also serves as a pathfinder for the DoD’s broader Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) effort to speed dynamic decision-making by digitally connecting its armed services, combatant commands, and partners.
JFN common data layer integrates feeds of Blue and Red Force information from disparate data platforms, weapon systems, and applications in real time to display actionable threat and fires information to joint and combined forces. It combines a suite of command and control, battle management, and sensemaking applications organized within an application layer.
These applications securely access tagged, labeled, and structured data via APIs from the JFN common data layer, which manages data ingestion from authoritative data repositories; data transformation; and analytic tasks like correlation, deduplication, and fusion. This cloud agnostic architecture enables rapid integration of new technologies within a multi-vendor ecosystem through plug-and-play API integration. It supports modern applications and rapid system integration for more complex or legacy systems.
Readiness Reporting Framework Supports Data Connectivity
SAIC is modernizing the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS) and will create a predictive and proactive readiness management tool for DoD. We are focused on advancing the integration of conflict deterrence and combat preparedness by ensuring that the U.S. military and intelligence community are equipped with a robust, real-time readiness reporting framework. This framework is paramount for maintaining data connectivity capabilities across all domains, thereby fortifying the strategic decision-making process and operational effectiveness that are essential for multidimensional conflict preparedness and response.
Empower the edge with actionable intelligence: Integrate AI into C5ISR
AI-orchestration tools enable various components of the C5ISR to work in concert, reducing the cognitive load on Army operators and increasing the speed of command.
The integration of AI into Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) is rapidly transforming the battlefield. In fact, AI makes the common data layer an even more powerful enabler of data interoperability. Moreover, for many command and control and intelligence challenges, AI cannot be fully effective when the data is trapped in legacy system stovepipes. This is because a single AI application only has access to part of the data needed. The common data layer breaks the legacy stovepipes and makes all the relevant data accessible to the AI application—enabling the joint force to get the best decision support from AI. Commands can increase or connect multiple data layers, deepen analytics capabilities, and scale data analysis and interoperability quickly. Always with speed and precision.
AI orchestration tools can be added onto the common data layer to support such capability. Using cutting-edge algorithms and a scalable architecture, these tools sift through vast amounts of data, prioritize information, and present actionable intelligence. This is key in Army C5ISR environments where the velocity, volume, and variety of data exceed human cognitive limits. By effectively managing sensor inputs, intelligence feeds, and various communication streams, AI orchestrators direct targeted and timely information to commanders, operators, and warfighters.
The best of these orchestration tools are highly adaptable and have robust integration capabilities. In the complex landscape of C5ISR, where systems and platforms are often a mix of legacy and modern technologies, AI orchestrators can be a unifying force. They seamlessly integrate with various data sources and platforms, using AI to harmonize the information collected. This data harmonization improves interoperability and provides the common operating picture that is so essential for coordinated action in fifth- and sixth- generation operational landscapes.
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By leveraging these tools’ machine learning and predictive analytics capabilities, operators can forecast potential threats and suggest courses of action to mitigate countermeasures. AI algorithms analyze historical and real-time data to identify patterns, anomalies, and correlations that might signify emerging threats or opportunities. With this predictive threat analysis, C5ISR operators can share anticipatory intelligence grounded in pre-emptive actions with joint and coalition forces. This anticipatory intelligence is essential for maintaining a tactical edge in complex and dynamic operational theaters.
The most useful orchestration tools for the Army support both “high-code, high-customization” and “low-code, no-code” capabilities that allow non-technical users to do meaningful work in secure environments. This ability to meet users where they are in terms of capability is very valuable in operational environments where resources and specialized expertise may be limited.
Multiply impact with network integration: Connect the common data layer with external data
Enriching the common data layer with external data can significantly expand situational awareness across echelons of the force and enrich the value of information shared in coordinated operations. Strategically valuable external data sources include national intelligence data, DoD sensor data, coalition partner data, and open-source data.
To facilitate this integration, the underlying architecture must allow for the seamless integration of multiple and adapting battlespace networks to “feed” the common data layer. Once integrated, the networks must be resilient and have the speed, functionality, and interoperability to continually push data to the common data layer. When data is government owned, and the government has all of the data rights, the Army can access and utilize any data via the common data layer. Further, this data can be distributed to any authorized user and vendor through customizable applications that are enabled via APIs.
With this foundation, the Army can use AI to develop applications that address specific role and task queries while protecting classified information. The AI homes in on relevant data, finding the proverbial needle in the haystack amid vast data inputs to support commanders’, operators’, and warfighters’ situational needs.
Broadening the Operating Picture
Mission Integrated CUAS Technology
SAIC’s open architecture, technology agnostic integrated counter unmanned aerial systems (CUAS) solutions help protect our most critical resources and people through our easy-to-use Victus command and control gateway. This technology helps keep military bases, airports, flights, and our borders safe with drone detection, identification, and mitigation provided via a single pane of glass through Victus. Coupled with best-in-class kinetic and non-kinetic effectors and sensors from our own and partner suite of products, our Victus-empowered CUAS solutions are scalable, configurable, modular, networked, and deployable for fixed- or mobile-site defense, or for supporting maneuver units and tactical operations.
Our CUAS digital backbone enables technology integration in a matter of hours, not weeks or months. The speed of integration is enabled by the modularity and openness of the backbone. This allows SAIC to bring an integrated and tailored ecosystem of technologies to service a requirement as well as adapt to any existing technology that may reside within a given customer set. This agility was most recently seen during a Customs and Border Protection demonstration where SAIC successfully demonstrated our proposed solution and previously unknown technologies within the same day.
Specific, secure and shared: Data interoperability for modern warfare
Stovepiped communication networks and mission command systems are liabilities in the modern era. By developing a common data layer, integrating AI into C5ISR, and connecting the common data layer with external data, the Navy and Marine Corps can create support data interoperability in new ways, enabling the modern, extensible, and agile dynamic targeting capability that is essential for making battlefield decisions with confidence.
Learn more
SAIC has extensive experience helping the DoD achieve data interoperability to accelerate battlespace effectiveness and support operations in global and digitally integrated warfighting environments. To learn more about how to facilitate secure and efficient data-sharing among combatant partners, please contact Gregory Fortier, SAIC’s Senior Vice President and Army Business Group Chief of Staff or Neal Lovell , SAIC’s Chief Technology Officer for the Army Business Group.
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