The US Army’s Management Office-Cyber (DAMO-Cy) has become the DAMO-Strategic Operations (DAMO-SO), running under its G3/5/7 operations and planning directorate. The team will focus on the digital modernization of warfighting systems – including tactical edge cloud data migration and an electromagnetic spectrum strategy – and, as part of the Army’s “Project Convergence,” linking multi-domain operations.
The directorate also aims to unify data practices and architectures across the force.
“We have found that by really getting off of data centers, putting our data into the cloud, really allows us to expose our data to different entities to do the experimentation,” which makes it more useful for the warfighter, Brig. Gen. Martin Klein, who leads the new directorate, said. “We’re finding new ways of being able to connect data, to integrate systems through these very important processes.”
DAMO-SO will also run point in linking with the Joint Staff and other military services on IT and emerging technology projects – including the new network-of-network system called Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2). Led by the US Air Force, JADC2 is seeking to develop a communication network-of-networks connecting “every sensor, every shooter” by having data flow across all the domains of warfare: sea, air, land, cyber, and space.
Working with Army Futures Command and the CIO’s office, DAMO-SO is focused on tactical edge cloud computing that can share data with warfighters in “denied and degraded” environments with limited bandwidth. It is working to bring “cloud-agnostic” software to operations to be able to transition tools to whichever cloud service provider the Army and Department of Defense decide to choose for an enterprise system.
“As we approach the change that’s occurring within the CIO and the G6, we are in a manner of speaking the precursor to that change specifically as we look at cyberspace operations,” Klein stated. “Really the G6 is focused on the networks and the capabilities within the networks, specifically at the enterprise level, and we’re looking at operationalizing that at the tactical level to actually conduct operations.