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The Air Force is looking for a ‘Billy Mitchell moment’ in a Hackathon

The Air Force hosted the BRAVO 0 hackathon earlier this year — the first secret-classification hackathon with 80 hackers working on a so-called “air-gapped” system at Nellis Air Force Base.

While on the surface the hackathon may have looked like an exercise in better data sharing to drive rapid software development for weapon systems, Stuart Wagner, the service’s chief digital transformation officer, told FedScoop he is searching for a “Billy Mitchell moment” to spark innovation and change the way the service thinks about data and software development.

Billy Mitchell, the storied father of the modern Air Force, fought to disrupt the U.S. military’s conventional thought, arguing that the future of war was going to be dominated from the air. Similarly, Wagner believes the U.S. military must have a massive transformation to account for defense and conflict in a digital, data-driven era.

We believe that we are at the dawn of a new way to fight,” Wagner said on a new episode of the Let’s Talk About IT podcast. “And that way to fight is with data.”

Wagner discusses that, the results of the hackathon and what he has planned next during a wide-ranging episode of the podcast.

If you want to hear more from the top leaders in the federal IT community, subscribe to Let’s Talk About IT on iTunesSpotifyGoogle PlaySticher and SoundCloud. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments on those platforms.

Let's Talk About IT

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Let's Talk About IT

Every month, Let’s Talk About IT explores the most pressing topics in federal IT in-depth, including modernization, cybersecurity, data management, emerging technologies and more. During these engaging conversations, top experts from across the government technology community join the FedScoop team for a look into how they are navigating the trends and challenges they face in this space every day.

Hosted by Billy Mitchell

Billy Mitchell is Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of Scoop News Group's editorial brands. He oversees operations, strategy and growth of SNG's award-winning tech publications, FedScoop, StateScoop, CyberScoop, EdScoop and DefenseScoop. After earning his journalism degree at Virginia Tech and winning the school's Excellence in Print Journalism award, Billy received his master's degree from New York University in magazine writing while interning at publications like Rolling Stone.
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