Digital modernization is a vital part of how the U.S. Army maintains its force. This article from Breaking Defense looks into how the Army's Communications Electronics Command is working behind the scenes to improve its use of technology to connect and protect soldiers.
From faster software delivery to new artificial intelligence tools, the Army has taken strides to enhance the technological resilience of its warfighters and the service at large over the past few years.
Far from the heroics and high drama of combat, it’s this kind of behind-the-scenes heavy lifting that could decide a future conflict, and much of that lifting is being done in a little-discussed Army organization called the Communications Electronics Command, or CECOM — part of Army Material Command.
Within CECOM lies the software engineering center (SEC) which has been focusing on three main areas to help the service level up its digital modernization, SEC’s director told Breaking Defense in a recent interview: speeding up software delivery, creating a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform and developing a new AI tool.
Garrett Shoemaker said that historically SEC has been a sustainment organization that ensures the Army’s command, control, communications, computers, cyber and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C5ISR) capabilities remain operational and secure. As the service developed a sharper focus on digital modernization, the SEC has inherited a more developmental role in such capabilities.
“We’re adapting and modernizing with the Army. What excites me is that it really opens the aperture of who we are as an organization. We now can provide cradle-to-grave software services for Army organizations,” he said.
However, “it’s not enough to just develop software,” he added. “We need to get it into the hands of soldiers at the time of need.”
Shoemaker said after several months of trying, his office is now able to update software in the field within 72 hours. Such software includes that on radar systems belonging to airborne platforms like the Chinook and Apache helicopters or ground based platforms like the Duke system, which counters remote controlled improvised explosive devices.
“The result is, as we’re able to detect, identify and defeat those threats, we’re saving soldiers’ lives every day,” Shoemaker said. “We’re able to adapt very quickly and update our software to those new threats, whether it be in a specific AOR [area of responsibility], whether it be a specific threat, a ground pace threat or an air based threat, we’re able to adapt our software extremely quickly and provide that to the soldiers so they’re protected from them” he said.
“If it has a signal and it can threaten our platforms, we can detect it and defeat it,” he added.
Another behind-the-scenes effort by SEC is the creation of its own CI/CD platform. In simple terms, CI is the practice in which small pieces of new code are automatically added to an organization’s software repository and then go through an automated testing phase with the rest of the code within the repository to make sure the new code will work seamlessly with the already existing code. This happens after each integration and ensures that bugs are spotted at an early stage in the development process.
CD is the process that occurs after these automated tests are completed and passed, in which the new code is then automatically released to the repository and can further be deployed for production.
Shoemaker said now that SEC’s CI/CD platform is operational within his organization, his office is working with the Army’s Chief Information Office to get the platform certified so it can be used by other organizations within the Army so they don’t have to build their own CI/CD platform.
“It’s really become something we see as a core capability within the center,” Shoemaker said.
“That, first of all, is an efficiency, because we can save a lot of money by being able to do that in one environment, rather than building multiple duplicative environments. Then also, we’re able to modernize it as new tools become available, we’re able to integrate them into the platform to provide greater capability to our teams.”
In today’s day digital age, it would be an anomaly if artificial intelligence wasn’t at the forefront of a software center’s list of ambitions. Shoemaker told Breaking Defense that one of SEC’s proudest accomplishments is building A.I. Flow, an experimental program that uses Microsoft Azure Government open AI structure to assist in various tasks such as contract writing and sorting through request for proposal and request for information responses. (SEC started developing A.I Flow nearly 18 months ago.)
SEC partnered with Army Contracting Command (ACC) to set standards for the program by uploading example documents to create a framework for a justification and approval document — a piece of DoD contracting that is required for solicitations.
The Army reported that A.I. Flow was able to generate a justification and approval document that was 80 percent complete. This usually takes up to days or weeks, but was completed in minutes, the Army said. A.I. Flow also enables users to track metrics to show how much time, money and resources were saved by using the tool.
“One thing I encourage within our organization is to experiment and see where we can provide better value to the army. What grew out of that was A.I flow, and we’ve had great reception from anybody. We’ve shown that we’re seeing a lot of different use cases that we didn’t even consider when we first started building,” Shoemaker said.
This article was written by Carley Welch from Breaking Defense and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.