Breaking Down the 2024 Air Defense Summit

It’s rare that government contractors have the opportunity to get face time with the government leaders who are driving policy and change. Potomac Officers Club events provide a congenial and classy yet rigorous environment for public-private collaboration, and the organization’s service branch-focused series — covering the Army, Air Force, Space Force and Navy — is a dream for defense contractors.

On July 23, the heart of the industrial base convened with the Air Force’s foremost leaders for the 2024 Air Defense Summit at the Hilton McLean in Virginia. Deals were made, new ideas and plans were introduced and professional relationships blossomed. Below you’ll find highlights worth remembering from the event’s keynotes and panel sessions.

Browse our full schedule of events tailor-made for the GovCon community. Be sure to check out our pair of juggernaut fall events: the Sept. 19 Intel Summit and the Oct. 10 GovCon International Summit.

Opening keynote: Melissa Dalton, Under Secretary of the Department of the Air Force

Primary takeaways:

• “Cost-effective mass” = most effective deterrence strategy
  • China using “superior mass” to “crowd out” competitors in air & space
• 2 main strategies for achieving cost-effective mass
  • Collaborative Combat Aircraft (Anduril & General Atomics)
    • Transparency
    • Open architecture
  • Securing space domain
    • Collaborative transparency
    • Operational and technical integration
    • Risk management
    • Securing the future
• AF has decades of experience operating unmanned systems
• Space Force portal for industry engagement: Space Systems Command Front Door
  • NASA, NATO HQ going to mount similar things

Morning keynote: Venice Goodwine, Chief Information Officer of DAF

Primary takeaways:

• Wants to look at enterprise IT differently bc it’s at the edge
• Working on talent management strategy
• AI = catalyst + productivity enabler
• NIPRGPT — Air Force’s genAI chatbot
  • Launched in June
  • Getting to warfighters soon
• Space Force guardians trained on AI tools
• USAF will eventually release RFP for AI use cases
• Air Force released new API strategy

Panel: “Accelerating With IT”

Participants: Col. Frank Biancardi (Air Force Advanced Battle Management System Cross-Functional Team), James Crocker (Air Force BESPIN) and moderator Bob Ritchie (SAIC)

Primary takeaways:

• Biancardi: Environment challenges w/ quantum encryption holding up digital infrastructure
• Biancardi: New zero trust strategy provides current + future protection
• Biancardi: New transformational model = providing right information to customers at right time + to right person
  • Key focuses of model = enforcing planning, battle management, command and also intel throughout DAF
• Crocker: DAF customers need to know how capability works upon delivery
• Crocker: Cloud adoption = advantage to operational facilities in DAF

Panel: “Drive USAF Decision Advantage: Practical Use Cases for AI/ML”

Participants: LTC Timothy Heaton (Air Mobility Command), Leslie Shing (MIT Lincoln Laboratory), Col. Matt Strohmeyer (Global Information Dominance Experiments, DOD), Amar Tappouni (Booz Allen Hamilton) and moderator Ian Tien (Mattermost)

Primary takeaways:

• Strohmeyer: AI needs to be in hands of warfighter + developer for max insight
• Strohmeyer: Rapid experimentation = necessary
• Strohmeyer: CJADC2 1.0 coming this fall. 2 strategic objectives:
  • Global integration — digital collaboration
• Joint kill chains
• Heaton: Team working on digitizing workflows with AI
• Heaton: Trending topic identification + summaries = early AI rollout use cases
• Shing: Trust = big barrier for AI adoption
  • Solved by education & training; evaluation; gradual integration
• Tappouni: AI shouldn’t make decisions, should help people make decisions
• Tappouni: Open architectures = critical

Panel: “Harnessing Technology, Science, and Innovation for Force Readiness in Multi-domain Operations”

Participants: Gordon Kordyak (PEO for Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management), Bob Schwartz (Capgemini), Christopher Thomas (Defense Technical Information Center) and moderator Scott Ariotti (Capgemini Government Solutions)

Primary takeaways:

• Schwartz: Quantum = too far down the road to bet on 
• Schwartz: Need to table pure quantum compute
  • Think instead about quantum tech, sensors, comms
• Schwartz: Need crypto agility (post-quantum cryptography)
• Kordyak: Digital engineering + digital twins = key
• Kordyak: Tech/human pairing — facilitates warfighter work
• Thomas: Need better ways of moving between clouds

Panel: “Maximizing Impact: Strategies to Replicate Successful Air Force Case Management Solutions”

Participants: Edwin Herchert (Pentagon Force Protection Agency), Maj. Justin Soderlund (USAF ORION), Laura Parsons (Maximus Federal Services) and moderator Matt Beran (Appian)

Primary takeaways:

• Soderlund: Goodwine helped reimagine IT processes, realign cybersecurity
• Soderlund: ORION moving to classified IL6 environment by end of 2024
• Herchert: PFPA built threat module via 4 two-week sprints over 2 months
• Soderlund: “What if we had the technology the world thinks we have?”
• Parsons: Case management systems are important but expensive
• Soderlund: ORION designed so AF doesn’t wait for “big enterprise IT to come forward”
  • “Build and fail quickly”

Closing keynote fireside chat: Dr. Timothy Grayson, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, moderated by Michael Berger (Capgemini)

Primary takeaways:

• 3 priorities:
  • Securing funding
  • Determining what to do next
  • Preparing for optimization in Great Power Competition
• Recent imbalance between capability approval requirements & acquiring product
• Over last 5 years, USAF “OI-inspired funding” amounted to ~$40B
• Not focused on “list of emerging technologies,” but on what will help execute OIs
• Focus on culture & “behaviors” critical to overall defense success