In the (near) future, troops on the ground will check their kit to make sure everything is accounted for as they head into battle, and the most critical tool will be data access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is, at least, what some future-focused tech officials at the Pentagon say, pointing to the growing importance of cloud capabilities and access to data at the tactical edge. To take on the increasing appetite for data, officials are pursuing pilot programs and working diligently on tools like much-needed algorithms that make intelligence products from the volumes of data pouring in from sources like unmanned aerial systems\u2019 video feeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are easier problems to start with than creating an algorithm for full-motion video footage \u2026 but I\u2019m surprised by how good we\u2019re doing,\u201d said Dr. Travis Axtell, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence), speaking Dec. 12 at an online event held by Amazon Web Services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re showing we can augment the analyst and give them new functionality for things they\u2019re doing over several hours and now can do in a handful of minutes. And now we want to start applying this in a historical context \u2026 not just monitoring feeds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Navy is pursuing a handful of pilots aimed at better making sense of huge volumes of data, as well as making that data available and usable in tactical environments where access to the cloud \u2014 where all that data is stored \u2014 isn\u2019t a given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In one case, the service is working with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to move massive data sets, in some cases terabytes and exobytes \u2014 \u201cdata so large that if I tried to stream it over a satellite connection, it would take weeks and months,\u201d said Andy Farrar from the Digital Warfare Office in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Navy is looking how to do it smartly so we can take new algorithms \u2026 to take data to tactical edge and bring it back, including large data sets,\u201d Farrar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One major challenge is the use of legacy systems, or even systems that just aren\u2019t optimized for big-data analytics, Farrar said. He noted a growing focus on data tagging and collecting the \u201cright\u201d kind of data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJust collecting really good data is a challenge. As different systems grew up they didn\u2019t take data into account separate from the rest of systems,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re finding now that as we try to look at that data and apply analytics \u2026 your data is never as good as you think it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jim Caggy, senior manager for Department of Defense solutions at Amazon Web Services, said AWS is working on different efforts that extends cloud capabilities, data analytics and intelligence to tactical environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t forklift a data center and drop it into combat zone,\u201d Caggy said. He highlighted efforts such as AWS\u2019 Snowball platform, which offers 100 terabytes of storage and base compute functionality, and AWS GreenGrass, with which the company has done pilot programs on ground vehicles to track telemetry data. He also said AWS is working on a mobile app where data can be queried locally \u2014 such as at sea \u2014 but all the data gets synchronized back to the cloud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pentagon officials increasingly seek cloud capabilities and access to data at the tactical edge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":37789,"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":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,29,16,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2772],"class_list":["post-31851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-it-networks","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"KO2LXJZK5NHUZBSBQYYOELPJPU","arc_canonical_url":"\/it-networks\/2017\/12\/12\/most-important-tool-in-the-rucksack-data\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n