Center accelerates its information technology efforts

REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (May 8, 2025) – An outdated information technology ecosystem is a critical liability for the U.S. Army.

Which is why the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center is aggressively pursuing a multifaceted IT modernization strategy to combat rapidly evolving technological threats while meeting the diverse technological needs of its workforce. This strategy encompasses a wide range of initiatives, from overhauling network infrastructure to digitally transforming including leveraging artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Their success is already showing up in their continuous monitoring initiative, where IT teams constantly monitor, identify, and eliminate vulnerabilities before the user ever experiences an issue or loss of function.

“Over a two-year period, 2.5 million vulnerabilities have been remediated. Quarantining machines at one point impacted almost a thousand users per day. The team has been focused on improving people, processes, and tools so that users no longer feel that impact,” said Brad Welch, Chief Information Officer for the Center’s information technology division (G6).

The Army, recognizing the Center’s success in protecting its network, has approved the continuation of the initiative.

“We are one of the only groups with a large footprint to be given an authority to operate at the continuous monitoring level, which reflects positively on AvMC Director Dr. James Kirsch and his support of the IT Division and Army cybersecurity goals,” said Kenny Duff, Acting Deputy Chief Information Officer.

With the recent completion of a major network hardware migration of the Center’s legacy equipment and architecture modernization – an ambitious, multi-year project that centralized efforts from AvMC’s numerous buildings to an Army data center – the team has turned to a three-prong approach to its modernization goals.

First is a new tenant zoning strategy, which would establish zones through network architecture and configuration of network assets that allows the projects to inherit protections from the network.

“We have a significant number of labs and special, or custom-built, equipment that doesn’t meet the requirements that you would normally have with your regular laptop,” said Welch. “You've got tactical equipment for all kinds of different scenarios -- whether it's parts of a Black Hawk or parts of a HIMARS launcher.”

“The simplest explanation of tenant zones is, if you were to do nothing -- from a cyber perspective -- you don't meet any of the cybersecurity requirements and we wouldn't have a network here,” Duff added. “On the other end of the spectrum there is doing everything, and it costs roughly a million dollars per project to do those things. Tenant zoning covers down on meeting mission and meeting all the cyber security requirements, while also not costing a million dollars per project.”

The second initiative is the team’s collaboration with the Center’s Software, Simulation, Systems Engineering and Integration Directorate on the creation and implementation of a new employee portal, which also segues into their third major priority: data governance and managing data more effectively.

“There's a large Dept. of Defense level data strategy, an Army data strategy and an Army digital transformation strategy that are all linked together. One of our first objectives in digital transformation, is data governance and making our data VAULTIS -- Visible, Accessible, Understandable, Linked, Trustworthy, Integrated and Secure.” Welch said.

The return to the office has provided the opportunity to better humanize IT support. G6 members are now routinely meeting face to face with the workforce and by addressing many of the 5,000 monthly help desk tickets in person rather than remotely, they're building relationships throughout the workforce.

“Return to onsite work provided the CIO/G6 with an opportunity to meet AvMC users where they work. We’ve had helpdesk technicians walking the halls as well as G6 leadership walking the halls to foster a warmer approach to delivering IT services. AvMC is starting to see a culture change within G6 that is critical to building trust,” Duff said.

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The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, is Army Futures Command’s leader and integrator within a global ecosystem of scientific exploration and technological innovation. DEVCOM expertise spans eight major competency areas to provide integrated research, development, analysis and engineering support to the Army and DOD. From rockets to robots, drones to dozers, and aviation to artillery – DEVCOM innovation is at the core of the combat capabilities American Warfighters need to win on the battlefield of the future. For more information, visit devcom.army.mil/.