…being able to cope with exponential change and the fact that the pace of change is rapidly increasing over time as well.”

There has always been a need for “speed to market” or resiliency defined as a function of an organization’s ability to scale rapidly.  There is the role rapid prototyping and the minimum viable product play in the lean startup methodology.  There is “move fast and break things” and the continuing myths around the competitive advantage of ‘first to market” strategies.  Speed, velocity, timing, pace – they all play a role when discussing business strategy and technology disruption.

When talking about exponential technology and disruption, in many OODAcast conversations OODA CEO Matt Devost makes the point that there is an overall accelerant taking place right now. Matt frequently points out that there is a risk awareness organizations should have about the overall velocity of the change and disruption of this moment. “I’ve written about that a lot personally, just being able to cope with exponential change and the fact that the pace of change is rapidly increasing over time as well,” Matt said when discussing the pace of disruption In his August 2020 conversation with Bradley Rotter.

Exponential Change and The Federal Government

“…there is no central document about the impact of and strategy for exponential change within the U.S. Government.”

The pandemic has made exponential experiences more tangible for everyone.  A few think tanks and professional organizations (like Singularity University and ARK Invest) put exponential technologies and disruption at the center of their business strategy frameworks.  It got us thinking: how is the government thinking about this pace of change?   Do governmental agencies talk about notions of exponential disruption and change in different ways?  Is there a whole of government strategy for this exponential risk category?

We started tracking.  The U.S. Government and the Catholic Church are sometimes singled out as organizations that move at a snail’s pace – and are not really change agents – as an antidote to the impact of the pace of modernity and technology on society.  As Matt points out, this current climate feels different – and the government, in particular, cannot be siloed from the impacts.  Outside of the DoD Strategic Assessments and some recent executive orders and briefs, there is no central document about the impact of and strategy for exponential change within the U.S. Government.

The Air Force Research Laboratory, Kessel Run, Software Factories and Exponential Change

“The DoD recently announced that it wants more software factories and would be scaling the approach across the department.”

As a starting point for our research and analysis, stand-alone projects do exist which are concerned with notions of speed, experimentation, and innovation to manage this exponential risk.  We conclude our analysis with lessons and opportunities for the private sector.

The first project that caught our was the Air Force “Need for Speed”: The End of the Requirements Up Front Model, Software Factories and Digital Transformation.

We found that the OODA Loop was central to the design architecture of a new software system that replaces the legacy Theater Battle Management Core System (TBMCS), automating tasks and cutting down on the number of applications planners must use to carry out air-tasking orders, according to an Air Force news release.  Air Force innovator Dr. Will Roper best captured the design philosophy behind this project: “With OODA loops now tightening to knots beyond human involvement, streaming data management, algorithm training, and software design become all-important safeties and triggers for auto-firing our own digital magazine.”

In this case study,  the ‘need for speed’ was defined as a network of software factories and a technology architecture designed to adequately service a tightening OODA Loop within the Air Force’s decision-making systems.  At first glance, it did not look like the way this Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) project was planning for exponential disruption and change (via an adequate strategic software development infrastructure) was as a common language across all the military services or governmental departments.  The project is proving a success and is getting traction, however, as since our initial post the DoD recently announced that it wants more software factories and would be scaling the approach across the department.

“it is a living and breathing ecosystem.”

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks in a February memo wrote:  “Transforming software delivery times from years to minutes will require significant change to our processes, policies, workforce, and technology.  The DOD Software Modernization Strategy provides the approach for achieving faster delivery of software capabilities in support of Department priorities such as Joint All Domain Command and Control and artificial intelligence.”

Jason Weiss, the Pentagon’s chief software officer, extended the program to risk management, which is also really, really interesting.  According to reporter Brandi Vincent at DefenseOne, “Weiss told reporters:  ‘We are looking at other ways that we can identify and motivate programs that have software-intensive programs, which by definition…could even be just risk, it may not even be cost.” In a separate memo, the DoD outlines how the program is a part of the Risk Management Framework.

“…a robust systems architecture ecosystem (built with the growth of exponential technologies like AI in mind) is mission-critical.”

Weiss said software factories would be essential to developing future policy and collaborating across the department.  “We’re seeing lots of lessons learned start to percolate to the top, and a lot of collaboration taking place through things like our devsecops community of practice,” Weiss said. “So it is a living and breathing ecosystem. And we are going to be looking at and listening to those software factories to determine what policy changes to prioritize and when to affect them.”

Through the success of Kessel Run and the software factory system, DoD is modeling to the rest of the government that a robust systems architecture ecosystem (built with the growth of exponential technologies like AI in mind) is mission-critical.  Fast-moving projects can now crop up across the department, and a system will be in place for a cost and risk assessment –and the ability to build a variety of projects at an exponential scale–across the department.

The Space Internet:  Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI)

“Future military operations will be multi-domain and will be conducted with unprecedented speed.”

The following project would have been of standalone interest to OODA Loop members as part of our ongoing coverage of the future of space.  In this case study, the velocity of disruption and change is addressed through broad experimentation and a military/commercial partnership.  And, once again, a development ecosystem and platform-agnostic approach will be central to the provision of projects moving at an exponential pace.  Capacity planning is also the strategic lever for mitigating risk.

The AFRL (in collaboration with Air Force Strategic Development Planning & Experimentation – SDPE, an office within the Air Force Material Command) recently released a pre-solicitation for space-based internet communications systems entitled:  Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet. According to the AFRL, this call for experimentation and innovation is based on the need to build future capacity for military communications infrastructure:

“Future military operations will be multi-domain and will be conducted with unprecedented speed.  Establishing and maintaining dominance in such a scenario requires the ability to distribute information from, to, and through all domains and make decisions at a speed our adversaries cannot match. To this end, the “Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet” program seeks to establish and experiment with the capability to seamlessly move and share data among a wide variety of fixed and mobile operating locations using constantly available, high bandwidth, beyond-line-of-sight communications.

“This approach differs radically from traditional military satellite communications programs.”

We refer to this desired end state as “path agnostic communications” because users will be able to reliably communicate to any location on the globe without explicitly specifying which nodes of a communication network to use.  The vision for path agnostic communications is becoming possible due to the burgeoning commercial space internet. Multiple commercial entities have announced plans to establish space internet constellations consisting of hundreds to thousands of satellites each in order to create global internet services that will compete with and, eventually, outperform localized terrestrial internet.

This approach differs radically from traditional military satellite communications programs where the government typically dictates and pays for, every aspect of the program. Development and experimentation are necessary to effectively use this new global utility for military operations.” (1)

Technical challenges and areas of experimentation include:

• Adaptation or development of terminals for use on moving platforms, including aircraft
• Establishing interoperability with government security protocols and hardware
• Measurement of key technical performance attributes including bandwidth, latency, etc.
• Exploration and experimentation to determine novel uses of the commercial space internet to enhance the national defense.
• Establishing network flexibility, which includes the ability for the Air Force to switch between commercial space internets to avoid vendor lock-in while maintaining seamless communication capabilities.
• Scaling path agnostic communications to verify acceptable bandwidth, latency, and availability while managing large volumes of data from multiple sources.
• Quantitatively determining technical limitations that may influence the ability of the Department of Defense to use the commercial space internet in operational scenarios, including limitations in number of users in a given geographic area, data transfer rates, bit error rates as a function of experimental scenarios, etc.
• Demonstrating rapid node addition to verify the ability to rapidly connect new Air Force assets to the commercial space internet
• Quantifying robustness in contested environments
• Verifying security of government data in transit over commercial space internet networks
• Establishing compatibility between military-unique hardware and commercial spacecraft
• Evaluating the ability to use commercial space internet backbones with specially modified spacecraft
• Rapidly and responsively modifying and testing spacecraft from a high volume production line

What Next?

• Risk Awareness:  Right now, organizations should have company-wide risk awareness about the overall velocity of change and disruption going on in the marketplace, society, technology, etc.
• Safeties and Triggers are in Order.  Forward-thinking streaming data management, algorithm training, and software design now play a key role in the management of risk created by our current pace of exponential disruption and change.
• Use the OODA Loop:  Taking lessons from the AFRL, Kessel Run, and software factories, take the time now to identify OODA loops “tightened to knots beyond human involvement” within your organization.
• Culture Matters:  Once identified, use these OODA loops and systems processes as part of your culture for the management of exponential change within your organization. Bind it all loosely together through an ecosystem built on platform-agnostic development tools.
• Foresight Strategy:  Once they are commercially available (like velcro and the terrestrial internet before them) the systems and platforms which come out of the space-based internet experimentation proposed by the AFRL will have broad implications for the private sector.   What are your organization’s future-forward use cases for these “internet in space” capabilities?
• Security and Velocity of Change:  Finally, what role does security play in the sheer velocity of exponential change?  As with anything, it is central.  As Matthew Jacobsen, director of AFRL software factory Hangar 18, points out: “We have to make sure we’re not being cavalier with our data protection, but at the same time, we have to increase our velocity; we just do.”

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