USSOCOM Seeks Flexible Solutions to Meet Various Mission Needs

Lisa Costa, chief information officer of the U.S. Special Operations Command, asked industry to rethink their business models and focus on providing more flexible tools and platforms that can be tailored to meet various mission needs.

Speaking at the NDIA’s Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, Costa requested that industry prioritize as-a-service offerings that can be mixed and matched for upcoming missions over full stack solutions.

USSOCOM is particularly interested in advanced tools that can enable secure data access and resilient communications and network logins, as well as cloud-agnostic solutions that can be deployed across the SOF enterprise and the battlefield, C4ISRNET reported.

The goal, according to Costa, is for SOF units to be able to utilize existing hardware, including phones, tablets, ground sensors and routers, to fit mission requirements as needed.

“We can enable hardware to be computationally different from what it was originally deployed to be, and then return it back to its original place,” Costa said.

The USSOCOM’s shift in tech priorities coincides with the new approach to tech procurement across the military, which emphasizes the need for flexible solutions in preparation for future wars.

During her appearance at SOFIC 2021, Costa also talked about the importance of removing data silos and making information discoverable to everyone with the necessary security clearance.

The combatant command is already working on a common data fabric to address issues related to data access.

Robert Byrd, USSOCOM’s chief enterprise engineer, told SOFIC attendees that the data fabric effort is still in its infancy, with officers still in the process of defining the various types of data available to users.