Page 19 - FCW, May 30, 2016

Q&A: INTEGRATED C4ISR THROUGH ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION
UNDERWRITTEN BY BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
QHow is the vision of Integrated C4ISR through Enterprise Integration
reflected in how Booz Allen supports its DOD customers?
ASoules: We have a single profit-and-loss center across Booz Allen by design. That lets us pick up the phone and ask for help from anywhere it is needed. When you’re asked for help, you respond. I am supporting the Navy/Marine Corps and Greg was in the Army. I say, “Greg, I need your help.” And so to cultivate instant internal access and resources, we formed a cohort and said, “Okay, here’s how we’re going to be able to effectively arrive at the right outcome given this pain point.” It’s inherent in Aour culture of collaboration.
Wenzel: We also have what we refer to as “cross-cuts” [aligned groups that provide subject matter expertise in a given area serving multiple clients]. We have a C4ISR cross-cut that connects all services (Army, Navy/Marine Corps, Air Force, and so on) together with our functional capabilities. When you have mission know-how as an essential partner to
the government, and connect that with advanced engineering, agile software development, and analytics, which
are all separate teams operating as an integrated team to deliver the best of breed application to a client—it’s very powerful. I believe it helps our clients tremendously. So, it’s the culture, the process, and the forums. But it’s also the incentives by which we’re driven.
“ Integrated C4ISR through Enterprise Integration not only improves situational awareness and decision-making,
but also fosters an open culture.” —Steve Soules
QIn the next five to seven years, how will Integrated C4ISR through
Enterprise Integration help DOD meet the demands of the evolving landscape?
QWhat is on the more distant horizon for information warfare?
ASoules: Facilitating secure tactical clouds on land and at sea is what I see on the near horizon. SPAWAR and others are already starting to experiment. SPAWAR’s Strategic Plan for execution in 2016 outlines the implementation plan with milestones for all the key elements of what we have we’ve been discussing— open architecture; agile, small procure- ments of incremental steps towards integration; and secure networks.
In my opinion, we’re marching toward integration at the tactical edge through secure tactical clouds on land and at sea. These concepts are the vision of the future and where we are Aheading in information warfare.
Wenzel: The vision for informa-
tion warfare will yield the digital warrior; specifically through informa- tion-on-demand. Think of apps on devices that provide real-time informa- tion to meet specific, situational needs in our personal lives. Data transmission access helps us navigate and operate because the digital ecosystem is open.
Now think of digital warriors, with their own secure, ruggedized apps operating in a bandwidth disadvantaged environment. That will be the future and will require things like the secure tactical cloud and mesh networking. Digital sailors, soldiers, and airmen have small devices that give them the information they need to find out where the bad
guys are, or where they need to not be to protect themselves. It truly creates the networked force and a networked force is a more lethal force.
A
Soules: Integrated C4ISR through
Enterprise Integration not only improves situational awareness and decision-making, but also fosters an open culture that brings together engineering, operations, and acquisition communities. C4ISR programs will
need enhanced capabilities in all three discipline areas to build systems on a foundation of secure and open archi- tectures, agile development, modular construction, and common hardware, software, data, and infrastructure. The impact for warfighters and their missions is unmatched superiority over current Aand future threats.
Wenzel: Enterprise Integration
provides the engineering, operational, and acquisition approach to help the C4ISR enterprise actually become an enterprise. On the engineer- ing front, it provides the blueprints for how you can discover and/or connect across the entire joint enterprise. It removes technology as an excuse. On
the acquisition front, we help our clients navigate the challenging acquisition environment to buy a greater quantity of smaller things that are naturally networked together—much like the way we buy and use apps from the digital ecosystem in our personal lives. Finally, on the operations front, we are helping define the new C4ISR operator/ analyst where mission threads transcend traditional organizational and acquisition boundaries much like the Navy “kill chain.”
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