ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (Feb. 3, 2017) -- As a group of Soldiers makes its way through a foreign jungle, the company commander opens his terrain map and attempts to upload some intel gathered about enemy positions. Back at battalion headquarters, the commander anxiously awaits the information. But the company in the field is having difficulty exchanging the data to headquarters, because a needed software update did not reach the company, and old and new versions are not compatible.
While this may just be a fictional situation, it underlines the importance of the real and fundamental questions which persist about how software will be managed across the Army. These questions drove Army Materiel Command's (AMC) Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) to convene a second Software Solarium, Feb. 2 and 3 at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Software Solarium seminars and working groups focused unity of effort in the governance, development and sustainment of software to enable current and future Army Warfighting functions in the execution of unified land operations.
The Software Solarium construct addresses the direction of a developing strategy to manage software, which has become an essential element of nearly every battle and business system in the Army. It is a paradigm shift to recognize software systems as critical 'equipment' needed to dominate the Multi-Domain Battle.
The reliance of software to enable warfighting systems across the Army, has elevated its management to a key Army readiness focus. "The number one focus of the Chief (of Staff of the Army) is on those Soldiers that will be in the fight, to make sure he or she have all of the training, all of the resources, available to them to execute their missions," LTG Robert Ferrell the Army's Chief Information Officer/G6 said. "We're looking at what's currently aligned, and what's missing, and what we're doing here today is looking at the gaps and seams that we need to fill as we move forward."
Software Solarium I, held in September 2016, developed lines of effort to foster a coherent approach to software growth in an attempt to prioritize challenges associated with cradle to grave software acquisition, development, fielding, sustainment, and even divestiture. Solarium 2 furthered that construct by creating a "unity of effort" to affect near and long term change in how the Army approaches software management, specifically by working along these Lines of Effort: Enabling a "More Defensible Network;" Driving Army-wide efficiencies in the software lifecycle; Optimizing Army software development and sustainment policy and oversight; and Developing the optimal government and contractor workforce mix. The underlying goal: maintain technology overmatch in the evolving and increasingly complex software environment.
More than 400 people took part in Solarium II, more than doubling attendance from the first event. Unique to this Solarium was the inclusion of industry partners from both traditional defense suppliers but also non-traditional businesses, such as CITI Group, who are also grappling with software management and cyber protection issues. Industry, academic and defense leaders and experts were able to candidly exchange lessons learned and thoughts on future efforts, assisting in the formulation of specific objectives to support the Lines of Effort. Government leadership included Lt. Gen. Robert Ferrell, Army CIO/G6, Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, Army G3/5/7, Maj. Gen. Bruce Crawford, Commander CECOM, Ronald Pontius, Deputy to the Commanding General of Army Cyber Command, and many representatives from organizations such as the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S Navy, U.S. Air Force, National Security Agency, Special Operations Command and the U.S. Military Academy.
The Solarium approached software as an enabling capability of all Army systems and sought to provide policy and governance recommendations concerning not only software acquisition practices but also how to unify effort to deliver software enhancements and protection patches to field units faster. This will help prevent units from operating on different software baselines, which could impact the ability to communicate or share information.
"From the commander's perspective, do you have the tools and the information that you need to make decisions in the right time and space or not? Now that's the bottom line," said Anderson. "Sometimes that's pretty hard to measure if there's something you don't even know you should be getting."
Anderson took the audience to task, offering one detailed example of why the software challenge can be pretty overwhelming. Some systems which enable critical data to the warfighter have up to 129 applications or "apps." He asked the audience if they were proficient on all the apps they had on their cell phones, and asked how anyone could be expected to master 129 applications efficiently, which drew quite a bit of laughter.
"The number one problem there, for the average field commander, is not knowing what (new and upgraded equipment) means to you, and we tell them in every (leader training) class, if you don't know what this stuff does for you, that's problem number one," Anderson said. "Our biggest challenge related to readiness is training. If commanders won't designate the time to focus on that, there's no way you will be able to operate. It's that simple."
Breakout sessions were conducted for each Line of Effort, and each session provided near- and far-term follow on actions for the Army.
"The next steps are going to be to 'crystalize' the outputs from the Solarium. Each of our teams provided an out brief on the four Lines of Effort. We're going to take what we learned into a couple of different decision-making forums in the Army," said Crawford. "While we continue to socialize our efforts throughout the enterprise, we know we have about four or five things that we would like the Army to tell us to do now. There are some near term actions that can be taken and we're going to brief those formally to the leadership of the Army."
Among those proposed near term goals are development of Army execution orders directing: the adoption of electronic patch management for tactical systems across Army formations; the adaptation of a software cost estimating model; and directing all future software license agreements be acquired in the name of the "Army" thereby allowing transferability of licenses across programs and activities.
"What we'd like to do is get into the process of institutionalizing what we've learned," said Crawford.
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