Copyright Breaking Defense
WASHINGTON — After a burst of rapid experimentation with artificial intelligence, the Army is rationalizing its use of AI, big data and networks to better support operational units and theater commands, the service’s chief data and analytics officer told Breaking Defense. In particular, the Army is looking to use these technologies to support Northern Command secure the border, a high priority for the Trump administration. “We’ve really evolved with operations on the border,” Army CDAO David Markowitz said in an interview. Northern Command is an all-service (“joint”) headquarters with different technology, different data, and different legal authorities than the Army, Markowitz emphasized, but they’ve found ways to improve their coordination. That’s in no small part because they both manage masses of data using AI software from the same contractor, Palantir. The service has Army Vantage, also known as the Army Data Platform, while joint commands like NORTHCOM have Maven Smart System, a widely used offshoot of the seminal military intelligence AI, Project Maven. “Maven Smart is being used at the joint level by US NORTHCOM, and it integrates things the Army could never legally have access to, like law enforcement data, Homeland Security information, things we can’t touch, but by their joint command [authorities], with their relationships, they can,” Markowitz said. Meanwhile, he explained, Vantage holds the most comprehensive, up-to-date information available on Army readiness: all the data on personnel, training, equipment, supplies, and so on that indicate if a given Army unit is ready to execute a given mission, whether it’s combat overseas or border security at home. “We’ve made it so that data flows from [Vantage] into that Maven Smart instance,” Markowitz said. “You’ve now got a more seamless integration,” he explained, where as a user moves from one system to the other, they still have “the same tools, the same identity, the same access to data.” “Identity” is critical here, because it’s how the network verifies a given user is really who they say they are and only sees the data they’re supposed to. The highly technical process of “identity management” has become increasingly important as both the military and civilian worlds connect previously separate networks into massive data-sharing systems and move from traditional perimeter security — where you enter one password one time to access everything — to the layered defense known as zero trust. That means the Army network can not only focus on “transport,” i.e. moving data around, but is also increasingly handles identity management and other network-wide services, Markowitz said. To do all that effectively, he went on, the service’s deputy chief of staff for communications (G-6), Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey, is working with Army Cyber Command and its subordinate Network Command to stand up a centralized “data operations center.” At the same time, he said, the Army is pushing more technical support soldiers down to tactical units like corps and divisions — starting with the 4th Infantry Division, which is the testbed for the service’s Next Generation Command & Control network. “NETCOM has already put soldiers with 4th ID … so they understand the tools that 4th ID is starting to [use] and will be the back end to run them,” Markowitz said. NETCOM will act as a centralized “call center,” he explained, “someone in the back making sure everything’s up, data is flowing,” so the divisions and corps can focus on the fight. This division of labor is what the service is calling “echeloned support.” Part of this reform will require pruning the bottom-up innovations that have sprouted across the Army like “a thousand flowers,” Markowitz said, and consolidating them down to a more manageable number of vetted systems. “A lot of locally command driven initiatives have created a little bit of sprawl,” he said. Duplicative data analytics have helped drive up Vantage usage by 40 percent in the last 12 months — with a similar increase in costs — even as the proliferation of multiple tools confused users about which one was the authoritative source of information. “We’re at our next stage of maturation,” Markowitz said.
