Agencies eye 2 data storage alternatives amid growing demand

Federal agencies are interested in developing alternatives to silicon-based data storage to keep pace with growing demand and decrease data center energy consumption, according to the Government Accountability Office.

GAO found the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity launched its Molecular Information Storage Program to make synthetic DNA a low-resource means of meeting the intelligence community‘s data storage needs, while an unnamed, large tech company develops laser-etched glass.

DVDs and hard drives meet the world’s current data storage need of 97 trillion gigabytes. But that number is projected to double by 2025, and the supply of wafer-grade silicon, found in computer chips and other storage devices, will only meet 1% of the 2.4 billion-kilogram demand expected in 2040.

“Alternative technologies — like synthetic DNA and laser-etched glass — have more capacity and durability but need further development before they can be widely used,” reads GAO’s report.

The same coding system that stores the information of life can store data in a lab-created DNA strand, which can hypothetically hold more than 11 trillion gigabytes in a cubic inch of material. Sequencing can decode the synthetic DNA to read the data, which would reduct the need for large, energy-intensive data centers predicted to consume 8% of global electricity by 2030.

Challenges remain because synthetic DNA costs $3,500 per megabyte, millions of times more than silicon-based storage, and that cost increases when factoring in cold storage to preserve it thousands of years. Engineering advances in DNA synthesis may be needed to reduce those costs, according to GAO.

Synthetic DNA also requires correction codes to reduce writing and reading errors it’s prone to currently.

Laser-etched glass involves storing data with a fast, precise laser. Etchings represent digitally coded ones and zeroes through a 5D method named for its five unique attributes.

Three of those attributes are locations equivalent to the X, Y and Z coordinates on 3D graph, while the other two are the size and orientation of the etchings used to create multiple layers of data. By shining a polarized laser light into the etching, its attributes are revealed and captured by a camera for decoding into data by a computer.

Glass can hold hundred of millions of gigabytes per cubic inch, more capacity than a DVD, and last billions of years, though that also presents a security challenge requiring it be melted or crushed when attempting to erase data.

Lasers and camera present a high upfront cost, and etching is a slow process. DVD writing is more than 100 times faster at 21 megabytes per second, compared to 200 kilobytes per second.

While neither data storage alternative is commercially available yet, both have been used to successfully store data and could see market by 2030. Synthetic DNA has had 200 megabytes of music and text stored on it and glass 5 gigabytes of text on 1 square inch, meaning a glass CD could hold 500 terabytes.

“Because of these current limitations, both technologies may be best suited for archival data storage rather than everyday applications,” reads GAO’s report.

NARA, USDA score $13.5M in TMF awards

The National Archives and Records Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture are the latest recipients of money under the Technology Modernization Fund.

NARA received $9.1 million to modernize and digitize its legacy records processing systems; USDA got $4.4 million to develop and implement a zero-trust cybersecurity architecture for its IT enterprise.

Specifically, the funds will move NARA toward “cloud-based platforms, allowing staff to fulfill electronic records requests remotely, digitally and in a secure fashion,” per a release Monday. It’s the first time NARA has taken money from the TMF.

“We are grateful to the TMF for vitally needed assistance to help with IT upgrades to transform our ability to meet mission requirements and deliver needed records to the American people,” acting Archivist of the United States Debra Steidel Wall said in a statement. “Our very mission is to drive openness, cultivate public participation, and strengthen our nation’s democracy through public access to high-value government records.” 

USDA, on the other hand, is a frequent beneficiary of the TMF, this being its third round of funding from the program. The agency has completed one TMF project for infrastructure optimization and cloud adoption, and is working on another to accelerate the modernization of its Agricultural Marketing Service.

This latest investment “will improve the USDA’s threat monitoring, detection and response capabilities,” USDA CIO Gary Washington said in a statement. That work will be done with a focus on “better securing shared services and sensitive data, and protecting websites that connect citizens to vital resources,” per the release announcing the awards.

“Each year, millions of Americans rely on the security and accessibility of records from NARA and USDA, including military families, government employees, and everyday Americans,” said Robin Carnahan, head of the General Services Administration, the agency that houses the TMF. “These investments will help modernize both record-delivery systems and network security. This is another example of the TMF’s approach to making smart technology investments that provide better service to the public and save money for taxpayers.”

Meanwhile, the TMF itself needs more money as demand for the fund has skyrocketed during the pandemic. The Biden administration requested another $300 million for the fund in fiscal 2023. And lawmakers are urging appropriators to provide at least that.

DOD not meeting same standards it plans to hold contractors to under CMMC

The Pentagon established new requirements under the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 program to hold contractors to better protecting sensitive defense data. But the Department of Defense itself hasn’t yet proven it can meet those same standards.

Under CMMC 2.0, contractors will have to meet, at minimum, 110 security practices to do business with the U.S. military on projects that call for cybersecurity beyond the most basic level. But according to the Government Accountability Office, though not legally required to, DOD components have only met 78% of those 110 requirements for systems that manage controlled unclassified information (CUI) — the type of data CMMC aims to safeguard.

“DOD’s components’ systems would not be approved to process, transmit, or store DOD CUI if CMMC version 2.0 applied to the components,” reads a new report from GAO. “This is because CMMC would require defense contractors to comply with all 110 security controls to achieve level 2, advanced cybersecurity. As of January 2022, the DOD components had not met 22 percent of the 110 security controls.”

The Navy and Marine Corps have been more successful, reaching compliance with between 80% and 90% of those controls. Other components, like the Army, Air Force and Defense Health Agency, have complied with between 70% and 80%.

The fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act asked DOD and its components to show that they can meet the same requirements the department is set to hold contractors to. For those that couldn’t meet the requirements, they had to submit details on how they would reach 100% compliance and plans for mitigating risk until they reached that point.

Some lawmakers have dug into the CMMC program after many in the defense industrial base decried the burden the program could put on their businesses. Those concerns were, in part, what led the DOD to revise the program, resulting in CMMC 2.0.

According to GAO, the DOD didn’t necessarily follow lawmakers’ directions in meeting the 110 CMMC controls.

“In response to this statutory requirement, DOD issued a report on June 30, 2021, that used the DOD Risk Management Framework — and not the CMMC framework — to identify the extent to which DOD components were meeting security requirements to protect CUI,” the report reads. “The DOD Risk Management Framework as described in DOD Instruction 8510.01 and the CMMC framework are different models — the former based on risk and the latter on compliance.”

GAO did note, in spite of the 2021 NDAA, that DOD is not legally required to comply with CMMC. But the watchdog does note that as of earlier this year, department components could not meet the very same compliance requirements the Pentagon will soon mandate its industry partners to meet.

A top defense official leading the CMMC 2.0 rollout said last week the department hopes to begin implementing program requirements in contracts in May 2023.

Army inks unique R&D agreement with consortium on advanced weapons development

An Army Futures Command component tasked with driving research and engineering of high-tech weapons formally agreed to collaborate with a growing consortium of nearly 1,000 companies and universities to advance armaments development.

The initial focus will be on making integrated circuit chips customized for tri-service munitions.

Cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) are vehicles that enable federal entities to combine resources and engage in R&D with non-government institutions to unlock breakthroughs around topics of shared interest. Such agreements aren’t new, but a CRADA signed this week between the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Armaments Center and the National Armaments Consortium (NAC) has multiple elements that make it unique.

“We sat down with [Army officials from the CCDC Armaments Center at their headquarters] in Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, with their technology transfer office. We’ve done some CRADAs in the past, but as we were brainstorming, we thought, ‘What if we could create a master CRADA?’” NAC Executive Director Charlie Zisette told FedScoop in an interview on Friday.

CRADAs offer a variety of benefits for government, industry and academic organizations involved, like access to laboratory facilities and equipment, and flexible intellectual property and licensing options to push forward innovation. But Zisette noted one challenge associated with these agreements is that “they are a legal document — even though no money is exchanged, it is a contractually binding agreement, if you will. And if you’re a nontraditional [contractor], and you’ve never done anything like this,” they can be difficult to navigate.

“What we did as a consortium is we went and hammered out all of the terms and conditions, through our contracts and our legal [resources], through the Army’s contracts and their legal, and created a base agreement that would ensure to protect all of our members as well as the government. That kind of sets the stage for doing all that hard work upfront,” he explained.

This newly signed “master” CRADA allows for all of NAC’s more than 970 member organizations — of which more than 80% are nontraditional defense contractors and academic institutions — to participate in different statements of work, or “annexes,” anticipated to be released by the CCDC Armaments Center.

The way Zisette puts it, each impending annex can be thought of as an addendum to the CRADA. Essentially, the plan is that when the Department of Defense has a fresh armaments-related problem statement down the line, the consortium can quickly send it out to about 4,500 people who are on its list of almost 1,000 members. 

Those interested can then sign the annex, “and then it’s off to the races,” Zisette said.

While CRADAs are often between one specific government laboratory and non-governmental organization, another notable aspect of this agreement, according to Zisette, is that other Pentagon-affiliated laboratories besides the CCDC can sign on. And a Navy component already has.

“Now, it’s kind of a pilot, right? Because the Army has never done this, and so we all agreed — let’s get it started,” Zisette said. “We’ll take this as our first thing, and if this works, then anybody can use this CRADA.”

Under the first annex of this master agreement, the CCDC Armaments Center is set to work with the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division and a number of NAC members to develop and refine an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that is broadly compatible with tri-service munitions.

Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, Zisette noted that he couldn’t go into great detail about the technology the participants aim to innovate. But, speaking generally, he offered some context.

“Smart weapons are critical to what we do, right, and part of being smart is not just maybe in guidance and control, or GPS and navigation — but it’s also in knowing exactly what my target is, and when and how I need to put effects on the target,” Zisette said. 

He brought up a variety of conflict scenarios, like needing to “take a group of vehicles out, versus I have a hardened and deeply buried target where I need to go all the way into the ground.”

This envisioned ASIC, according to Zisette, “becomes the computer chip or the computer set that allows us to have the intelligence onboard to address multiple and complex targets, and allows us to do it right the first time, every time.” 

He added: “And that’s really important because what we don’t want to do is create an individual munition for every single thing we’ve got to do.”

Those collaborating ultimately intend to help pave the way for versatile and smart weapons.

“Since we have this technology, in terms of computational capability and integrated circuitry, we now can have that intelligence onboard and we can allow that intelligence to make those decisions, obviously, through our programming and communications, with the weapon. And that is hugely powerful,” Zisette said.

Verified NAC members interact via a secure common platform. The consortium is accepting new members interested in cooperating for this and potential future projects. Barriers to entry are pretty low, Zisette noted, but it is restricted to only U.S. companies. 

“Much of everything we do at a minimum is controlled unclassified information. Many of the projects we do, of course, are classified,” he explained. “It isn’t that we can’t use foreign technology, and we encourage foreign technology, but they end up being like a subcontractor.”

Although it’s tough to put timelines on innovation, Zisette said the technology is fairly well understood, so he’s optimistic that outcomes from the CRADA will be seen in the next year or so.

“We all know exactly all of the inputs that the Army in this case needs to have, and the Navy, so that they can start to shape their basic architecture and the requirements, and be able then to take that as a package and come back out to industry and say, ‘Okay, we’re ready for primetime. Let’s go do some real scale-up, prototyping and discovery from there,’” Zisette said. “I wish things were like super fast, but we are dealing with weapon systems.”

OPM builds out skills-based hiring guidance for federal agencies

In a memo released Thursday, the Office of Personnel Management provided more detailed skills-based hiring guidance for federal agencies that builds on the high-level goals set by the Trump administration.

Agencies are being encouraged to evaluate job candidates based on their knowledge, rather than whether that knowledge came by a four-year degree. The guidance includes an updated General Schedule Qualifications Operating Manual; qualifications, assessment and hiring FAQs; and a new Guide to Better Occupational Questionnaires.

Federal hiring historically relied on education and candidate self-assessments to determine a potential hire’s ability to perform in a job. In June 2020, then-President Trump issued an executive order to modernize the process, an initiative that the Biden administration is advancing.

“At U.S. Digital Service, we have from the beginning used the skills-based hiring approach to identify and hire talent, as it has become the standard approach in the technology sector, based on its ability to hire skilled professionals no matter their formal background,” said Administrator Mina Hsiang in the announcement. “This hiring practice will also expand the government’s reach with diverse and historically unrepresented candidates, as well as increase the number of individuals with the right skills and experience to do the important work.”

USDS has a diverse, inclusive staff due to skills-based hiring, Hsiang said.

In fact, USDS was instrumental in introducing the Subject Matter Expert Qualification Assessment (SMEQA) job application process for data scientists now being customized by the State Department.

NASA uses competency-based talent assessments to hire everyone from interns to astronauts, and the Department of Homeland Security has a multi-hurdle assessment process to evaluate candidates for IT positions.

OPM updated the General Schedule Qualifications Operating Manual to apply minimum qualification requirements and use passing grade assessments, and the Guide to Better Occupational Questionnaires will improve their rigor by having agencies meet professional standards.

The agency plans to offer sessions and further guidance and tools as part of the Federal Assessment Strategy Initiative, as well as optional, hands-on human resources solutions implementation support for other agencies.

OPM is also working with teams to establish job positions and track progress toward agencies’ hiring goals.

“Given today’s booming labor market, the federal government must position itself to compete with other sectors for top talent,” said OPM Director Kiran Ahuja in a statement. “By focusing on what an applicant can do — and not where they learned to do it — skills-based hiring will expand talent pools by making it easier for applicants without a bachelor’s degree to demonstrate their skills and will help remove barriers to employment for historically under-represented groups.”

The IRS punished hundreds of employees for unauthorized access of taxpayer info this past decade

The IRS substantiated more than 450 instances of willful, unauthorized access of taxpayer information by employees between fiscal years 2012 and 2021, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday.

IRS employees are only supposed to access confidential tax return information like Social Security Numbers when required, but the agency found them in violation in 27% of its 1,694 investigations.

Both the IRS’s Privacy, Governmental Liaison and Disclosure and Cybersecurity operations train and remind employees about protecting sensitive information and IRS systems, and there’s a monitoring and reporting structure for identifying unauthorized access (UNAX) and disclosures.

“The U.S. tax system is based on voluntary compliance,” read GAO‘s findings. “One factor that may influence an individual’s willingness to voluntarily comply with the tax system is the confidence that IRS is protecting one’s personal and financial information.”

Employees found to have committed UNAX are generally suspended or removed or they resign, and they may be criminally or civilly prosecuted with imprisonment or fines as possible punishments. During the period GAO surveyed, 82% of UNAX violators were suspended or removed or they resigned, and all violators who also committed unauthorized disclosure, which occurred 12% of the time, were removed.

The IRS confirmed 24% of 204 unauthorized disclosure cases.

Employees who attempt to access their own information or that of a spouse or child typically receive anywhere from a 14-day suspension to removal.

GAO found the IRS notified 51 taxpayers their information was improperly accessed as a result of 11 UNAX violations in fiscal 2021.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration investigates UNAX and unauthorized disclosure cases based on reports it receives and its own analysis and may refer those it substantiates to the Department of Justice. Between 2012 and 2021, DOJ accepted 35 such cases, resulting in 24 guilty verdicts, and the IRS closed 25 cases where a criminal indictment was returned.

Cases usually took TIGTA 464 days to investigate and close with most violations committed by permanent, full-time employees.

Non-managerial employees committed most unauthorized disclosures, while managers committed less than 10% of UNAX and 15% of unauthorized disclosures. And employees with less than six or more than 21 years of service were less likely to commit violations.

More than half of UNAX cases were in the Wage & Investment Division, and about 30% were in the Small Business Self-Employed Division.

Presented with GAO’s findings, the IRS resolved to further improve incident monitoring and reporting.

“The small number of employees who do not uphold our standards face serious discipline up to and including removal from the IRS,” reads the agency’s response. “We will continue to educate our employees and refine our capabilities to detect UNAX and unauthorized disclosures as these efforts are key to ensuring that taxpayers can trust that the information provided to the IRS will be protected and only used for legitimate tax administration purposes.”

For CISA, being the newest federal cyber agency means needing modern tech to back it up

When you’re the newest federal agency on the block like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, you can’t just have run-of-the-mill technology — especially when your mission is to defend the government’s sprawling IT networks.

Bob Costello is hyper-aware that a big part of his role as CIO of CISA — the Department of Homeland Security agency established in late 2018 as the federal government’s premier cybersecurity function — is providing the most modern technology possible to help attract high-quality cybersecurity professionals who are used to working with the latest and greatest tools in the private sector.

“I need to have the best IT out there,” Costello said Thursday at the Swift Technologies GIST 2022 summit, produced by FedScoop. “Because no one wants to join CISA as a federal employee and [then after joining] I’m like, ‘Well, here’s your underpowered laptop with no analytic tools. And here’s a phone that’s a little more than a phone.’ That’s not a place where people are going to want to work.”

A big element associated with that is enabling CISA to provide the same types of tools to its remote workforce as it does for those working in-office in the Washington, D.C., region.

“As we move into the acceptance of probably not everyone will be in an office building and in the National Capital Region, how do I really ensure that as I’m recruiting from the same pool of candidates as all of you, that when they come to CISA … they have a phenomenal experience?” Costello said.

Costello was excited to share that later this fiscal year, CISA should receive procurement authority at the same level as all other DHS components.

“That’s a game-changer for CISA, you know, to be able to do much more at the agency level than we have been able to before,” Costello said.

While the agency will still work “in strong partnership” with DHS at the headquarters levels, he said, independent procurement authority provides CISA an opportunity to move more rapidly to acquire new capabilities.

Another area in which CISA is working to move quicker is issuing authorities to operate (ATOs). This is providing for a better cyber posture across the agency, he said.

“There’s nothing worse than when you’re trying to deploy your solution and you can’t get an ATO,” he explained. “And by the time we get the ATO, it only shows a point in time. That’s not how we want to be doing things.”

Costello wouldn’t admit how long an ATO took before looking to modernize the process — “some master’s degrees could be completed sooner,” he said — but claimed the agency has done a few that took about 35 days.

“And they’re not weak ATOs,” Costello said. “There’s meaning behind them, there’s continuous evaluation of the programs that are being deployed.”

Senators urge funding TMF with ‘at least $300M’ in fiscal 2023

A trio of senior senators wrote appropriators in their chamber Thursday urging them to include at least $300 million in fiscal 2023 for the Technology Modernization Fund.

While the TMF saw a sizable deposit of $1 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021, more money is needed as the demand for support from the fund far outweighed that emergency injection, says the letter signed by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Tom Tillis, R-N.C.

“While this served as a sizable investment towards these efforts, the demand for these funds was more than double their availability, and the Administration confirms that the TMF will allocate the majority of these funds by the end of this current fiscal year,” they wrote.

The Biden administration requested $300 million for the TMF in its budget proposal earlier this year, and the senators believe Congress should fund the program at that level, if not more, in 2023.

The letter continues: “By necessity, efforts to modernize and improve the security of IT systems require ongoing and sustained effort by agencies. Congress has a similar responsibility to continue to fund modernization efforts, so that legacy systems aren’t left to grow increasingly costly and insecure over time. The TMF presents agencies with a funding vehicle that is agile and allows them to amortize modernization costs, and that makes technical experts available to agencies throughout the proposal and implementation phases.”

Similarly, the TMF is advantageous for Congress in that it can serve as “a tool with additional accountability and oversight, in the form of board-review of proposals, incremental funding based on outcome-based milestones, and regular follow-up with funding recipients during funding implementation,” the letter says.

In years past, appropriators on the Senate side have been hesitant to fund the TMF at requested levels, often walking back what’s proposed by the White House.

The Biden administration has been bullish on the TMF, making it one of its central, cross-government IT modernization mechanisms.

Earlier this year, General Services Administration chief Robin Carnahan said the additional $300 million allocated to the Technology Modernization Fund would allow the TMF Board to invest in “more complex” projects transforming high-priority systems, cybersecurity, public-facing services and interagency collaboration.

As of March, the TMF had roughly $766.1 million left, and the board that doles that money out was being methodical about the projects that most needed it, said Federal CIO Clare Martorana.

“We have limited funding, so we have to invest in agencies that are committed to the framework of us building in an iterative manner,” Martorana said. “In showing us that they have the change management capabilities, that they’re willing to dig into the business process.”

Space Force will likely add a component to Cyber Command, senior official says

As the newest military branch, the Space Force is currently leveraging the Air Force’s component to U.S. Cyber Command as its conduit and connection to the organization. But that may change, according to a senior official.

“We don’t have our own cyber component yet in U.S. Cyber Command [but] I think that day will come, quite frankly. It’s too important. The service will have too many cyber responsibilities. We’re just not there yet. You’ve got to prioritize and pick your battles early on, but Cyber Command has been a terrific partner,” Space Force Deputy Chief for Operations, Cyber and Nuclear Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman told reporters on Thursday.

Speaking in Washington at a meeting hosted by the Defense Writers Group, Saltzman expressed a strong commitment to prioritizing cybersecurity in all Space Force efforts.

Cybercom is one of the nation’s 11 combatant commands for the joint force, and the Space Force has leaned on the organization to help safeguard its nuclear command, control and communications (NC3) networks.

“We simply go to Cyber Command and we say, ‘What capabilities do you have to offer? Can you come look at our networks and tell us where the issues are and what we can do internally to help shore those up?’” he explained. “They’ve been terrific partners in helping us assess how we can better perform those assured missions in networks and defense.”

Saltzman added: “But we’re going to have to organizationally figure out how to create that routine habitual relationship so that it’s an ongoing dialogue, rather than episodic” when the Space Force needs help.

The Space Force, less than three years old, is still a relatively small service. Officials are taking “baby steps” towards expansion into the combatant commands.

“We’re focused first on those combatant commands that are generally responsible for our [National Defense Strategy] threats — European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, as the pacing threat of China would indicate, and Central Command. So that’s where our efforts are initially. And then we’ll expand to Cyber Command and some of the others as we grow into that,” Saltzman said.

Internally, the Space Force is also working to shift its cybersecurity expertise away from the traditional information technology and base support focus, towards rapid cyber mission defense of its critical networks and other systems.

“I treat cyber operations as part and parcel of being completely integrated with space operations. I don’t separate them at all. In fact, we’re starting to talk about, just from career development, cyber operators doing space operations and space operators doing cyber operations. Because the understanding of the conditions which drive those kinds of operations are important on both sides. So, we are actively looking at our training and our education of those officers and enlisted personnel to make sure that they fully understand both sides of the equation, because they’re so critical,” Saltzman said.

Marine Corps outlines priorities for improving tactical data and communications capabilities

The Marine Corps is undertaking several efforts in the next two years to improve how it leverages data at the tactical edge to make it more effective in highly dynamic environments.

Self-described as America’s 9-1-1 force and thus needing to be extremely mobile and agile, the Corps needs to flow data rapidly and understand it.

“Force design, what does that mean for me as the deputy commandant for information? If I could sum it up in one sentence what this is all about for me and what I owe the commandant and our beloved Corps and our incredible Marines, it’s the fusion and correlation of data to drive outcomes,” Lt. Gen. Matthew Glavy, deputy commandant for information, said Thursday at the Marine Corps IT Day conference hosted by AFCEA’s Quantico chapter.

Glavy was referencing Commandant Gen. David Berger’s vision for modernizing the Corps known as Force Design 2030.

At a very high level, Glavy said some work the service has done in recent years is to improve the transport of data. He likened the old way to traveling down local routes on a long road trip as opposed to the new and improved way akin to taking the interstate; essentially providing a bigger pipeline or highway for data to transit.

Marine Corps Systems Command, the service’s main equipping body, also has several priorities in fiscal 2023 and 2024 aimed at improving IT and communications capabilities to make the force more expeditionary.

One is improving networking on the move.

“If you’re in a tent, if you’re in an area where you can be targeted, you’ll be targeted. We’ve got to move, we got to keep moving,” William Williford, executive director of Marine Corps Systems Command, said at the conference.

Marine expeditionary units don’t just want mounted capabilities in their vehicles, he noted. They also want the flexibility to take them out for dismounted operations.

There is also a need to integrate low-Earth orbit, medium-Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit satellite communications data.

“We’ve got different players in each one of those spaces, but the data has to be integrated so that we can move it around and get that data to the right place when it’s needed,” Williford said. “That’s going to be critical for us moving forward.”

Just as important, position, navigation and timing (PNT) capabilities have to be untethered to those assets for added redundancy if systems are jammed.

Cloud capabilities at the edge will also be critical in future conflicts and they are a top priority for Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM) in the next two years.

“We’ve got to have disconnected ops in the cloud environment to be able to do that downrange,” he said. “Cloud in the tactical environment I think about is I download my mission, I carry the cloud with me, I go forward, I operate in the cloud and when I’m at a point that I can reconnect to the mothership, I reconnect and I get an idea of what’s going on and what’s my next mission that I’ve got to get into.”

Electronic warfare will be critical as well, especially in defeating conventional systems.

The Corps can’t afford to rely on matching enemies missile for missile, Williford said. Non-kinetic measures such as electronic warfare will be a cost effective way to defeat them.

MARCORSYSCOM is working on the Marine Air-Ground Task Force electronic warfare family of systems (MEGFoS), which includes several portable systems that can be used at the halt, in vehicles or dismounted to sense, defend and attack in the electromagnetic spectrum.

“Electronic warfare is a key enabler to make sure that we can do our work out there both defensive and then electronic attack,” Williford said. “Passively understanding what’s going on out here with the adversary and then electronic attack in those areas” is a critical capability.