{"id":11949,"date":"2020-10-15T22:58:41","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T22:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2020\/10\/15\/us-army-wants-coders-at-the-tactical-edge\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T21:36:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:36:56","slug":"us-army-wants-coders-at-the-tactical-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/battlefield-tech\/it-networks-battlefield-tech\/2020\/10\/15\/us-army-wants-coders-at-the-tactical-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"US Army wants coders at the tactical edge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WASHINGTON \u2014 A recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/digital-show-dailies\/ausa\/2020\/10\/12\/at-project-convergence-the-us-army-experienced-success-and-failure-and-its-happy-about-both\/\" target=_blank>high-tech exercise at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona<\/a> demonstrated to U.S. Army leaders how important having coders on the battlefield will be going forward against near-peer adversaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have to have coders at the edge,\u201d Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, who led the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/smr\/defense-news-conference\/2020\/09\/10\/army-conducting-digital-louisiana-maneuvers-in-arizona-desert\/\" target=_blank>Project Convergence campaign of learning<\/a> over a six-week period from August into September, said Oct. 15. Coffman spoke as part of a C4ISRNET webcast at the Association of the U.S. Army\u2019s conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOne of the success stories of Project Convergence was whenever we identified a problem with the code, a problem with an algorithm, we had \u2014 we called them the Pep Boys \u2014 and the Pep Boys were there coding into the night to fix problems every day,\u201d Coffman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These coders at Yuma sat in 120 degree heat, with nothing more than a laptop and fan, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey were able to solve problems in hours because the engineers, scientists and soldiers were all together working on the same problem,\u201d Coffman said. \u201cWe have to have that going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tech-savvy soldiers will be critical on the future battlefield. \u201cNow you hear \u2018field-craft\u2019 for soldiers out in the field, they really understand how to operate. You hear about tradecraft, a tanker on their tank, they really understand their tank,\u201d Col. Rob Ryan, the deputy director in charge of Army network modernization, said during the same event. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to incorporate into the lexicon the tech-craft piece as we modernize this Army.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what does having coders on the battlefield look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have mechanics across the battlefield at echelon,\u201d Coffman said. \u201cDo we want a coder with the forward line of troops? Probably not. But not far back from that. We need to understand so that we don\u2019t have the burden of this long misunderstood problem that we\u2019re trying to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whether that is at the battalion, brigade or division level is \u201cyet to be determined,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cAt a minimum, division-level and below, should have coders there in uniform, not contractors, fixing the computer problems that we have, the computing problems that we have, the communication problems that we have, the aided target recognition problems that we have because the enemy will evolve, they will change and if we don\u2019t have the rapid capability to correct or to counteract what the enemy\u2019s trying to do to us, well, then they\u2019re going to be able to make decisions faster than us and that is totally unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When dealing with a \u201cliving, breathing, thinking threat, we have to provide capability that can be able to adjust on-the-fly at that pace,\u201d Brig. Gen. Rob Collins, the Army\u2019s program executive officer for command, control, communications &#8211; tactical, said at the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But having coders on the battlefield isn\u2019t simple because networks have to be configured so they are secure and such a possibility will still require a hard look at tactics, techniques and procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere are things that we can do with open systems architecture,\u201d which means the government needs to own the data, he said. \u201cOften what folks get focused in on is the intellectual property and as long as we control the interfaces, we can provide things like a \u2018Pep Boys toolkit\u2019 so that soldiers out on the edge can have a developer\u2019s kit,\u201d he suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then as the threat, information and sensors change, \u201cwhatever the process may be, they can tailor that based on their mission without having to go all the way back to the factory of the industrial original equipment manufacturer to make that change,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Having such a capability is \u201cwell within the art of the possible,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cWe have to think through the configuration management just to make sure that we continue to keep our systems cyber-hardened on the battlespace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army isn\u2019t just demonstrating the need for these types of technical experts out at Project Convergence, but have been doing so around the world, Col. Stephanie Ahern, Army Futures Command\u2019s chief of concepts, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so the Army has already been working within its new talent-management effort to get the right types of people for these jobs. Some of those processes, which AFC is leading, include standing up of the Army\u2019s new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2020\/09\/17\/army-futures-command-picks-austin-community-college-for-software-factory\/?utm_source=clavis\" target=_blank>software factory in Austin, Texas,<\/a> and its partnership working on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/artificial-intelligence\/2020\/06\/10\/the-army-ai-task-force-takes-on-two-key-projects\/\" target=_blank>artificial intelligence with Carnegie Mellon<\/a>. They are helping to develop experts that could enter the force, according to Ahern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some have argued it\u2019s hard to convince software engineers, coders or even hackers that their place is with the U.S. Army due to perceived culture clash, but for Coffman, it\u2019s a fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIf you know coders, you\u2019re not doing it for the money,\u201d he said. \u201cMost of them, they\u2019re in it because they want to solve extremely hard problems and the United States Army, that\u2019s what we deal with is extremely hard problems on the edge of the battlefield while people are shooting at us in 100-degree heat. These women and men that have this talent \u2026 we need to retain them and we retain them by giving them really tough things to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Project Convergence, the Army called them Pep Boys, but the coders out at the exercise continued to drive home their utility at the edge of battle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":35079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":36,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[59,7,106,29,36,32,25],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3286],"class_list":["post-11949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ausa","category-battlefield-tech","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-it-networks-battlefield-tech","category-newsletters","category-show-reporter"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"5MHD7UG4VNGXFIWES3XQTYVA4A","arc_canonical_url":"\/digital-show-dailies\/ausa\/2020\/10\/15\/us-army-wants-coders-at-the-tactical-edge\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>US Army wants coders at the tactical edge - C4ISRNet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At Project Convergence, the Army called them Pep Boys, but the coders out at the exercise continued to drive home their utility at the edge of battle.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"US Army wants coders at the tactical edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At Project Convergence, the Army called them Pep Boys, but the coders out at the exercise continued to drive home their utility at the edge of battle.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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