13 Burst results for "Air Operations Center"
AP News Radio
US forces monitor Mideast skies at Qatar base amid World Cup
"At an air base in Qatar, U.S. troops are carrying out their usual mission of watching Middle Eastern airspace and keeping an eye on the World Cup, too. It's an exciting time to be here in Qatar with the World Cup right down the road. At all you need air base outside Doha, air force lieutenant colonel Aaron barilla says the games are on just about every TV in the air operations center. Not the ones monitoring the air picture, but the others. Some airmen like captain K shell trudell have gone to the games. She'll be at the U.S. Netherlands match tomorrow. Really looking forward to cheer on Team USA again with the red white and blue. Others watch at the base's main watering hole. Soccer's governing body is letting the American forces network air the matches. It's all a rare dose of the outside world for troops at a base once considered so sensitive. The Pentagon referred to it only as being somewhere in Southwest Asia. Sagar Meghani, Washington.
WNYC 93.9 FM
"air operations center" Discussed on WNYC 93.9 FM
"And finally today, among the agreements announced that the NATO summit this week, the U.S. said it would enhance its military presence in a number of NATO member nations. But we wondered what that actually means and frankly what that looks like our producer Miguel macias, who's here with us in Madrid, went to find out and he is with us now to tell me what he saw. Hi, Miguel. I'm a showing great to be with you in Madrid. Well, likewise. So tell us a little bit about where you went this week and why it matters. Well, while you all were at the summit, I took a cab and for about 20 minutes, the herb base at just outside of Madrid. This is major Spanish Air Force Base that has been in use since the late 50s and continues to be a major asset for a number of purposes, but the reason why we're talking about it today is because it is also home to a NATO unit. The so called combined air operations center. What did you see while you were there? What stood out to you? So first of all, let me point out that part of the security measures involved no recording at all until the moment I sit from my interview. And as a ready producer, this is painful, as you know, Michelle. I was dying to record more I will speak that at the entrance to the base by my contact, lieutenant colonel, Manuel Dominguez, lieutenant Dominguez, is he from Spain? Actually, no, mano is French. Long story, but he's super charming. He's telling me all these things and I asked him again if I could record, of course, the answer was no. Anyway, NATO has two buildings inside the base. One of them is a newer building with all the flags of the native members outside. And that's pretty much the only newer construction I see. Everything else looks kind of old actually. And not particularly well kept, at least from the looks of it. Well, what else did you see? Fun fact, all the planes from the official delegations at the NATO summit were parked there. So for example, I saw Air Force One for the first time in my life, along with four other planes from the American delegation. So you saw a little hardware, that's interesting. What were you able to talk to anybody on the record while you were there? Yes, I was. But first, I had to leave all my things in a locker at the entrance of the second building NATO has inside the base. This is all classified area. I had to leave my cell phone, USB drives, laptop, and I can only take the cleaning I had reported to them days before. They also gave me a batch that I had to use every time we changed rooms. But I digress. You want to know who I was able to record an interview with. Yes. Okay. I spoke to lieutenant general Fernando de la Cruz, commander of the NATO combined air operations center into the Hun. Alahan introduced himself. Well, I'm literate general growth from the Spanish air force, and we are in the combined operations center and which is a dedicated unit that take care of insecure their space in southern Europe, from madea and canary island. Until turkey and all the Black Sea, Romania, and of course, right now we have dedicated flights in those countries close to the Ukrainian border. The lacrosse knows a thing or two about air operations and planes. My background, I was a fighter pilot in the Spanish air force. So I joined the military long ago. In fact, I started my career when Spain joined NATO in 1982. So I was, let's say, in NATO environment from the beginning. So how many NATO units are there in Spain? And what do they do? Well, this is interesting, Michelle, because growing up in Spain, when I was young, I always thought that the U.S. Army bases and there are two of them in Spain where NATO bases, but they're not. They're quite literally U.S. Military bases on a Spanish soil. They're both in the south of Spain and the Lucia, where I'm from, the Air Force Base of malong and the naval base or the unit inside the recon is the only native unit in Spain. This unit in Spain is we work together 18 nations, people from 18 NATO nations. Our responsibility is to protect the 14 nations in southern Europe. So we were all together for the same mission, and of course we have Americans, but we have, for many other nations, Canada, the UK, Germany, Italy, France, of course, all the 14 nations in the south of as well. So the good thing is we were all together for the single mission that is protecting our nations. Protecting our nations, what does that mean exactly? The basically means in simple terms that they police disguise of Europe, and they work 24/7. That might seem obvious, but it's not, it's not the same for the naval or the land units. In the air domain, NATO has two dedicated units for working 24/7, which is not the same for the army. They normally, they have some units like in here in Spain, they are the Spanish unit, prepare to be moved whenever they NATO request them to do to move. But we have to be in the air domain because everything happens so fast, we do not have to wait and through to move the people. We have to be there always. Michelle, there are two units like this in Europe. The one in Spain, which watches over the south of Europe and the unit in Germany, which watches over the skies in the north. So Miguel, what problems do these two units address? Could you just tell us a little bit more about what we're talking about here? Did de la Cruz tell you? Yes, he did. We're talking about anything from a commercial flight that has lost communications. So an actual fighter jet could pull up next to the commercial flight and call him on an emergency channel and say, hey, what do I know about you? Or it can be a military plane that is where it's not supposed to be. We're going to be illegal flights like smugglers. From what he told me, they're kind of the police of the skies in Europe, and with the war in Ukraine, there were also watching every move. The lacrosse is definitely proud of the work they do. When you see people from different nations, different experiences, different cultures sometimes doing the wrong business and at the end, all of them work for the same purpose. And it's amazing that this is NATO. Because this is interesting because this sounds a bit like the United Nations
Longform Podcast
"air operations center" Discussed on Longform Podcast
"And so in addition to claiming that this was, you know, these documents would show us important federal government activity that the public has a right to know, I also said that, look, if you, you know, this is a person who fears for his life. He is afraid that he will be retaliated against because he was incorrectly dubbed ISIS. And there are vigilante militias that have been going after people believe to be ISIS. He has written himself before I'd ever even met him. He put together this dossier of why he wanted this case to be addressed in one of the things he said was that he was afraid of rogue militias. Essentially targeting him and others in his family as a result of this erroneous strike. Erroneous as I casual term to use to describe this, but it's what lawyers might have they might kind of craft this kind of an argument. And so I made that argument and I was granted expedited processing and for that document, I received it in about four months instead of 7 years or longer even. And so I knew I had a means to try to get more of these records. And that's what I went about doing for the next several years. One of the things that I found the most visceral in reading your reporting on this was the chat logs of the operators behind these drones and the chain of command above them. How did you think about telling their story and what kinds of insights into what was really happening there? Were you able to get? Prior to this, before getting these records and seeing those chat logs, I had fought very hard to get an embed with the combined air operations center in Qatar, which is the nerve center of this air campaign, not just in Iraq and Syria, but in Afghanistan as well. And you can go there and you can report it out and you can have all of these officially sanctioned interviews, but it is just not that kind of raw candid nature that you would get from seeing how these are actually conducted and done. And so when I started to get these records, we sued the Department of Defense and U.S. central command with assistance from the reporters committee for freedom of the press. And as these batches of documents are coming in, yes, there are redactions, but you are also seeing these conversations in which people would they would be talking about this, they would be like this area is poppin. And you would just see them go after men on the street. Go from house to house bombing. And then, you know, it would dawn on them later that, oh, actually there's also children. We can see them now. And so it was quite stunning to see that kind of candid conversation that isn't made public. I think that we have on occasions seen leaks, you know, whether that's from an organization like WikiLeaks, you know, there have been major contributions made in the past that have shown us glimpses of this. And you know, it's very hard, I think, to get that kind of systematic understanding of what's really happening and what's going wrong in these chat logs are a real window into it. And unfortunately, you know, we're still fighting over some of them. They've been held back from many of these cases. We're trying to get more when it comes to videos. They usually strip them of audio. And so you can't necessarily hear those conversations. But I think it's a very stunning portrait that's different than what we're told. And you know, I think it's important to also to just say that over years I've built so many sources who work on the other end of this kind of air war who are pushing buttons who are analyzing full motion video as they call it or geospatial analysts who are calling out coordinates and identifying making positive identification of targets. And they've helped me understand these records. They've helped me put this in context and one of the things that really just has stayed with me is that one senior official involved in this, he said that this vast bureaucracy, this process to minimize civilian harm. All of this exists, not just to project accountability to the rest of the world. And to maintain this moral credibility and legitimacy that the United States wants, but that it's also for people on the inside. You know, his exact words were that it gives them psychological comfort to be able to say we went through this process. We did this in a particular manner, because so many people would, I think, lose faith in that. And he himself even said, I think once you come back, you can never go back into the field and do this again. He said that it was just it's emotionally damaging. And so I think it's important to look at that, but I think it's also important not to lose sight of who is on the receiving end of these bombs. And that's sort of what I made central to my to my reporting, which is these people on the ground. And what it means to have essentially shifted the costs of war. Almost entirely to foreign populations. In your story, you know, primarily in the sort of two part series that you did about this. You've got three major players. You've got the people on the ground who are getting bombed. You've got people who are operating drones and making calls about whether to call in those strikes. And then you've got the military hierarchy and its demands of secrecy. So as you started to put this together as a story. How did you think about turning all of these disparate pretty hard fought strands of reporting into a final product? Yes, so I'm very lucky to have the editors that I had and also the ability to publish in two very different kinds of forms, right? So part one was in the newspaper. And part two was in the magazine. So in the newspaper, we strategized and this is where my editor Paul fish letter and Matthew purdy on the investigations team at the times were really thoughtful about we are going to go hard on these records. You know, I obtained more than 1300 of these assessments. In which it's more than 5400 pages. And it was looking at trends within these. And so you kind of have the ability to, in that story, in a newspaper story, to step out and say, you know, here's what we're seeing. Here's how the majority of these are happening and actually here's what the document says and here's what it actually I found on the ground. And to kind of do that very numbers heavy, very data driven, I built this database. I had even hired some of my own former students who are incredible reporters from Columbia journalism school. Who were also in taking these records and we studied them to identify these patterns. And so we have that newspaper story that really focused on that and also gave you the accounts of some of these survivors on the ground. And then we used the magazine story to really hone in on some of the human toll to get deeper with people and individuals. You can find the numbers. And that newspaper story, but let's kind of hear some of the accounts of these people. Let's grapple with these laws of war, the intricacies of this, how this process actually plays out for those some of them making the decision, but really for those on the ground. And what happens when you take a document that basically says, yeah, we saw children on the roof of this house and we chose to strike it. We decided it was proportional. And what happens when you take that document, and you sit down with a woman on the ground who lost 11 members of her family and you tell her, they saw your grandchildren on the roof of the house. And here's what happened, you know, what might you say to that?.
Eating For Free
"air operations center" Discussed on Eating For Free
"Something. I was expecting something entertainment like no. This is like a whole other type of website. So the whole point and what you see when you load starting point dot com which. I don't really recommend going to because they don't deserve the seo. You basically get a bunch of summaries of like hot topics the united states so you can look at the economy education environment government health immigration civic rights. What have you and you can go into it. And basically get these side by side takes by republicans by democrats and get like basically a consensus of our leaders. Stand when it comes to these like hot topic issues so you have a quote unquote standing point. That's the play on words with the website and they also have the counter points and other leaders now they reach across the aisle against giving very much like. Can't we just get along like centrist shit. Here like that's what this is hockey in the whole time. And they're basically their slogan or what about on the website all over is this like connecting elected leaders with their communities. That's a direct quote connecting elected leaders with their communities reaching out getting awareness of jewish. Basically so. I don't know what chris evans is like goal with. This is but i think we'll get into that just a bit later here. Can we also joan talk about the other tweet that basically got us into this entire sponsor please so this is actually why we started to talk about this internally as a team and then We were like just looking at the news one day. And i saw the chris evans thing blow up on twitter now like well. There's the sign from god or the cia. If you believe. They're manipulating our strings. Right now so. I use her on twitter Queer mode tweeted last week or a few weeks ago. It blew up on twitter and it definitely caught a lot of like you know left. Twitter by surprise surprise surprised but it certainly like rocked. The boat for dave discourse. I'd say so. They tweeted quote. The cia follows thirty five accounts on instagram. Twenty four of which are other. Us government organizations other. Eleven accounts are rather interesting. So those people are jennifer garner. Melissa mccarthy claire danes ryan reynolds john kaczynski jessica chastain. Ben affleck tom. Hanks and pierce for us then so likely set originally longtime ago. We did a series here that was basically concerning like we said the links between the pentagon and hollywood and specifically in agency within the pentagon that was basically the hollywood liaison office. If you will. It was hollywood directors. Go to for all things. Getting military clearances. Getting loans from the military to provide ships vehicles planes troops. That were civilian duty as extras in movies. Getting you know if you know what. The protocol was for military for like a more realistic scripts so to say they would collaborate and frequently this created for certain filmmakers in studio specifically those like marvel or franchises like transformers a really close working relationship that often saw the government having a direct hand in the way that scripts were written and the way that things were felled. Because if you're getting a bunch of planes and freighters from the military the military is probably going to say while we want you say this you know it was a whole thing you can go back and listen to that but at the time we did that episode it was right around the launch of captain marvel. Which if you guys remember had a bunch of trailers feature ads that were described military news blog task purpose as effectively. Recruitment ads for the air force. So they featured captain marvel's transformation into marine in how joining the military allowed marvel to transform into the pinnacle of martial arts and athletic prowess or how the superheroes dedication to become a national superhero through fascistic lenses. Hard work in personal responsibility so it research on the subject. We learned that between nineteen eleven and two thousand seventeen eight hundred movies and eleven hundred shows were made with the support or intent on with the department of defense including ironman zero dark thirty top gun and like we said transformers in fact we quoted lots of stuff from the very good long running blocks by culture that said marvel movies have a history of backing from the us. Military in particular including sponsorships troops. Guns sets military vehicles aircrafts. The dod's liaison office also supplied ironman with script research wardrobe assistance and dialogue assistance filming locations at edwards air force base. It secured airman battle forum. battled uniform fabrics. It also allowed filming access to f twenty. Two's c. seventeen and h h sixty helicopters and it also provided onset technical advice for everything that loaned out combined with air operations centers owned technical advisor and airmen extras from los angeles and edwards air force base in california. So these first two movies were made with the credit to the dod phil strub and former chief of the air force. Yellow francisco jeep Ham along with other pentagon project offers end installations. So i think what you kind of guys are getting from this as like when the military steps onto sat there not just like sending you a nice letter and a couple dozen uniforms. They're getting involved right like they are up your ass of michigan. Say what's so funny about this too. Is iron men as a lot of people who have seen online. Get kinda mad when people say. Oh it's propaganda that this film is being made this way blah blah and you'll see people on reddit or something say criticizes the military and is like has his kind of take. That's obviously not like full support of the military that you should join it blah blah blah. So i think it's ridiculous people say that they're doing this because i don't know it's cheaper to produce it. It's easier at least it's more accurate that way but i mean that's not the point here. The point is that the us government and imperial force that we clearly know is making supposedly intelligent decisions to advance. Its agenda would only do this if they wanted to get good representation in the media and feel trustworthy or make people feel as if the military is a bobby that they can trust and you know basically compliment or cs credible and do definitely see this with like transformers. I mean my god. That movie's just like along go. Us military ray. Yeah and you know nemo post the link of military approved films and tv shows and our notes under the episode so go to that but something. We came to in this episode. We have way back then. And i think is very very important to understanding the context of chris evans and a lot of the celebrities. That have collaborated with not just the military but like we're going to talk about the cia. Is that the military in the department of defense actually backed out of working in tandem with marble on the avengers because as wired reported back in two thousand twelve. The dod didn't think it needed to get involved in a movie about superheroes gods and aliens and it didn't think. The movie was sufficiently realistic enough to warrant a collaboration with the department. Now this is a key thing. I think to everything. We're about to talk about because the actors that we're going to get into and the films and tv shows were about to transcribe to all of you are things that try and push an extremely realistic. Let's say a vision of the cia in particular also the way our government works on the global stage are not just the way the military works in terms of what your role is in who your commanding officers and stuff like that. But like the moral position that we have to i would say invade and destroy the world but as the government would have you believe protected serve. The country protect are going to say so as self defense when they showed the military. And it's like there the hall when things are at it's worst like independence day. Who else will alan's but the us military exactly so it's just really key thing to like understand like that. It was so that they backed out of the avengers. Because it really kind. Of explains what things they actually do collaborate on and what their priorities are in doing that. So before we get into all of this i'm just gonna take a quick break because the next it gets pretty dark. And i think everyone needs a quick potty break but before i do any deaths theory one more question. Hey siri are you the cia..
Airline Pilot Guy - Aviation Podcast
"air operations center" Discussed on Airline Pilot Guy - Aviation Podcast
"The swedish eh defense system was well aware of the baltic express missions. The seventy one would fly since at the peak. They were occurring almost weekly all day. The united states enforce aircraft remained out of swedish base. The bigham pilots would actually practice into steps on them and it was great practice for the integrated a defense system that existed in sweden. It was little chance of getting in behind the black birds but they could be engaged head on however it took very careful. Planning the air operation center would give the pilot warning to accelerate to exactly the right height and speed and when to initiate a pull up to a cry right on come time the pilot had only one chance and then with a closing speed of around mac five it would be too late on some occasions. The bigan radar would be countered by the blackbirds. Eelectronics defense systems but the swedes. Learn to avoid triggering those defense. It was an extremely impressive spectacle to watch on radar from the ground. The independent window was incredibly tight. On all the sa seventy-one pilot really needed to do was maneuvre just slightly and the solution would change and the practice attack fail. One of the main problems facing the bigham pilots was that one of the roles in the orders for safe flights stipulated the flights about fifty two thousand feet where prohibited without the use of full precious. Use those weren't available so they've pilots needed to be careful while they would be grounded by their divisional kamanda's so it wasn't a complete surprise on the twenty ninth of june nineteen eighty-seven when vegan find a pilot's roger milla and krista who everybody would directed away from the training mission to innocent intrude on either as pace one of the pilot said that his fighter controller off timothy was able to make an interception and identification of a certain interest immediately. Thought it must be an sa seventy-one otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned it. The blank boat had been flying a baltic express mission gathering imagery of key soviet bases around the baltic sea at a heightened speed. That only this remarkable spy-plane could reach when the crew lieutenant colonels duane null untold. Veltri suffered a massive failure of one of their pratt and whitney j..
Up First
"air operations center" Discussed on Up First
"We're not gonna do it that way anymore. So what happened on that tour. How did they win them over. Well in reggae. Ot has a theory actually prepared carefully for this moment many months before when instead of hiring coders from silicon valley to make this tanker tool he called up his friends in the air. Force people. I at hey do you know any airman. They know how to write code at. I was able to find these six. And why did you want airman in particular. Who i know our airmen in. They're women but why did you want them as opposed to getting coders from right there in the valley it was to make a statement if we had grabbed coders from silicon valley. Come in and do this. They probably would have done it faster. I'm sure if i would have been better quality we'd pick the right coders but then the air force and senior leadership would have looked and said. Oh well this is just the same. As outsourcing contracting. There's nothing new here. Where you making this statement consciously when you did that yes. It was very conscious and riquet. Said he'd realize something. In all his efforts at diplomacy he needed coders that military people could trust. Good quality offer actually requires trust acquires. The leaders and the users to trust at that software development team is going to build what they need and i felt the best way to demonstrate that was with military members. Steve program office boss says yeah. That was nice to see coders from the air force. But it wasn't what changed his mind. What really shocked steve. We're just seeing how this office worked up close and that's what d-. Iu was intended to do right. Expose the department of defense to new ideas d. i. u. x. which is now just called. They've dropped the x for experimental was created by the secretary of defense with this idea that the military needed more proximity to silicon valley. That was the part that was really shocking. To me is that the department of defense had to learn this from completely outside the department which very quickly leads to the next thought which is what else do we not know about so actually on that same trip to san francisco. The program office people and and regain his team. Go into a room and decide what they're going to name this unit because in a very silicon valley way it's important to have a cool name and the cool name that they come up with it by popular vote is kessel run. Which of course everyone knows he's reference to hans solo speed record. You've never heard of the millennium faulk should i. It's the shit that made the kessel ronin lessons will carson. I'm not running star ships. One of the models they have now is that we make products that airmen love to us which is such a silicon valley. Thought right okay. People are going to love to use this product. I don't think anyone ever in the entire history of the. Us military thought about loving that many pieces of military hard or software kessel run isn't just doing the tanker tool anymore. The air force tasked them with the whole upgrade of the air operation. Center and kessel run is inspired spinoffs in other parts of the air force and other branches of the military. Steve were now runs. Kessel run and when people from the pentagon come to visit. He's the one who gives them the tour we have nearly every week. Distinguished visitors visiting kessel run. Everybody wants to see. It's open collaborative. Space there's food snacks ping pong and foosball table. Aveer tap of course and then invariably those tech tourists leave and they don't necessarily support. The budget kessel runs been nearly zeroed out a couple of times. That's the frustrating thing is realizing how much visibility it's getting and how supportive senior leaders are versus the sort of budget process that disconnect this frustrating the old way of acquiring software is still the norm.
Up First
"air operations center" Discussed on Up First
"Was surprisingly big news. Journalists at the time noted it was the first visit silicon valley by a sitting secretary of defense in two decades history shows that we've succeeded in finding solutions to these kinds of tough questions when our commercial civil and government sectors work together as partners and the secretary to say. Hey you know the military and the tech world close. We used to be tight during world. War two when the manhattan project. The mit radiation laboratory and other laura remember the internet been surf. Fathered the internet will a researcher at darpa but those days of collaboration and shared commitment seem to be of the past. We need to drill holes in the wall that i think exists and has been built up over the years between the department of defense and the commercial and scientific sector and to drill these holes. We must renew the bonds of trust. So i am creating something we call the defense innovation unit experimental first of a kind for us you ex defense innovation unit. Experimental love that extra. That's just makes ungrammatical and fairly top secrity. i thought it was great. Raj shah remembers. That speech here was someone that understands the valley to say. We We need your innovation. You could think of x as as kind of like a pentagon outpost in silicon valley. It's a few miles from google. Is their embassy to tech landa. The reason that silicon valley is so successful is that it has the right people in it but there's proximity is well there's an ecosystem out here. Everyone's in the same general area not only helps forge relationships but also help spread new ideas. The poor guys had no credit cards said no budgets had no money over six months retired. Colonel peter newell is a decorated combat. Commander who had a bunch of tech problems he wanted to solve so he's excited to see x. until he actually goes and sets foot india in x. and he can't believe what the employees are telling you. I have no credit card even of toilet paper for the bathrooms and the bill. I have to sit on got a phone number a website. I have no internet. They're using their personal cell phones. As wi fi hotspots they were opening the windows in the building putting the hot spot on the window show so that it could get connection that you surprised that you're looking at it dumbfounded as possible. Yes it is. It was very embarrassing. It's like every time you bring someone in we had to kind of apologize upfront. That we had no furniture and we didn't even have a conference room and rica. Ot was one of the earliest employees at this new pentagon embassy. It was fine for the first month or two and people thought it was kind of funny. And it's like guys like real starts get but once you get sick seven eight months into it. It's no longer joke. It now becomes a joke on us but things started to change the fact a lot would change when i got a new boss. Raj shah the f. Sixteen pilot turned tech entrepreneur who hates tech tourists and said he was never gonna take meetings with the pentagon ever again. I mean is this like asking han solo to suddenly take or actually maybe more accurately princess laya. Who's the leader of the rebel alliance. Officially i among equals. Yeah you x. may have been set up as an embassy to silicon valley but raja believed that the real active diplomacy that they needed to pull off was within their own ranks and to convince the military to take them seriously. He felt that they needed to build a piece of technology that the military would actually use. I wanted to be able to show tangible result technology or innovation that is now directly helping some man or woman in uniform do their job better and that's what would would change the use reputation. Exactly this is a place that will get things. done that. Matter for our servicemen women which brings us back to that whiteboard with the pox that little windowless room in the air operation center and cutter that raj shah visited in two thousand sixteen and learned that in every fuelling was being calculated by hand. He finds out that each of these airmen around the whiteboard has a job title by the way the air force uses airmen as a gender neutral term. The planners moved the magnetic pucks around the board. There's a thumper who's in charge of creating the master air attack planning tool kit and there's a conquer who enters the data into a spreadsheet called the later take to finish this later now any fan of the nine hundred sixty sitcom hogan's heroes might remember galkin. Later is slang for useless gadget. Conquer is almost like calling yourself doo. Hickey operator major. We're forcing airmen to step back in time to fight a war and ricky says one of the problems with the whiteboard besides it being a whiteboard you fall you rub against as part of the plan is that you can't adjust the plan if something comes up and there's a war going on stuff comes up. An airplane breaks his weather. Or there's something going on. A storm might role in a plane has a maintenance failure and so that means any changes. The plan also manually done manually planning the offline of hundreds of thousands of pounds of fuel if it takes you twelve hours to plan the days missions and a few more hours to type it all in their starting over from scratch. So what do you do when that master plan no longer applies you need to send a whole extra plane they call it scrambling tanker each scramble cost about two hundred fifty thousand dollars in fuel and maintenance and to fly these birds and these scrambles happened all the time that's when rosh called me from the desert and said okay you guys are gonna build a tanker tool the way that enrica and his team talk about this tanker tool. It's so much more than just about making fuel delivery more efficient or cheaper for them. It was their chance to show the military a totally different way of building tech. They think of themselves as rebels. We were those rubbish trying to move more quickly trying to get beyond the status quo to what was a very important mission and their rebellion is aimed against something called the program office in the military. We have an entire section of the military responsible for acquiring technology and delivering them to the warfighters to sixteen. You have a program off the bills. F16's for the navy you got a submarine new classes suffering. You'll have a program office established to build a new class submarine and so same thing for the air operation center. That office had been working. I'm not joking for ten years to update the air operation center projected. Seven hundred fifty million dollars overhaul of the whole center and in those ten years they had delivered nothing to the field and this is not unusual. This is traditional systems engineering. Approach you want to make sure. Everything's perfect the first time it rules out to the field. So you have to lodge security checks. A lot of quality control. Checks could take eight ten fifteen years and that is traditionally how the dod is operated deal you x. Their whole mission is to do things differently. We did not alternates positions processes for us as a badge of honor. Their first active rebellion was not to sit around.
Up First
"air operations center" Discussed on Up First
"July weekend. We are bringing you an episode from home front. This is a special series from. Npr's rough translation podcast and quil lawrence. Npr's veterans correspondent the series explores the cultural gap between civilians and the one percent of americans who have served in the war since nine eleven. Today's episode is about the military tech divide ago. Military investment helped create silicon valley military tech collaborations brought us innovations like gps the internet even duct tape over the years. Though there was this distrust that grew and those collaborations stalled then a group of silicon valley rebels and air force leaders reached across this divide to try and solve the military's urgent tech problems. Here's the show. This is rough translation from npr. I'm gonna guess that not many of you have gotten to see up. Close a fighter jet refueling in mid air miles above the ground. It's actually kind of an amazing process. It'd be flying along and suddenly. This tanker plane comes and matches your speed. And then it's like two birds mating in mid-flight this thing called a drogue sticks out and attach to the other plane that is flying at high speed high altitude like the little biblical cord that's flapping in the wind. A drogue chute trump shoot. Yeah like a little shoot. Raj shah has seen this firsthand. He's an f sixteen pilots. Certain types of please can only reveal certain types. Tankers some brief. You'll faster and slower than others. So there's a lot of complexity planes actually fuel at different speeds at different altitudes they use different amounts of fuel. Math raj did not think much about that math at the time. He didn't have to worry about who was scheduling all these pitstops in sky. All you need to know that fuel up and fly off back to the war in iraq but years later in two thousand sixteen he ended up seeing the actual place where these refueling flights were planned at the air operation center based in allah date air force base in cutter. Which when you first walk in. It looks very impressive. Think nasa mission control be call. Lots of computer screens but sort of off of that hall is a windowless room. It's a small room. Maybe they were as you know. Eight or nine cubicles in it air force recruitment posters on the walls. It feels like something designed the nineteen eighties. I let me guess fluorescent tube lights absolutely in this stripped down room he sees about a dozen people gathered around a whiteboard. The whiteboard is a ten foot by five foot rectangle with lots of little lines and squares and probably a hundred little one inch magnetic pucks written on the pox or the name of fighter. Jets and refueling tankers. And they just moved. Them around is where they plan. How and when to refuel hundreds of jets each day you see two guys standing at the board dry race markers in their hands two guys sitting in front of laptops and in order to get data from one system into the other there are manually reading it on one screen typing it on the other screen. So they're copying a string of very important numbers that mean someone getting fuel or not getting fuel in the airplane still flying and their copying those by hand correct from one screen to another screen. And then you don't wanna have a mistake so then you another person watching it to make sure he got right away. This is rough translations. homefront our season about the civilian-military divide with quil lawrence today. A story of how raj shah set out to banish the white boarding to write some simple code. Do all this faster and better and save some taxpayer money but to solve. This problem is anything but simple. He'll need to win. Over a senator a banker and the secretary of defense to cross the tech mill divide. Did you have a moment where you're just thinking. I was one of those planes waiting for that fuel. And how exactly when homefront continues this message comes from. Npr sponsor hub spot most. Crm's are cobbled together from acquisitions hub spots. Crm platform is elegantly crafted and a joy to us making it easy for your marketing sales and service teams to align around the customer experience. More at hub. Spot dot com. We're back with rough translations homefront. I'm quayle lawrence long. Before raj shot ever got a look at the whiteboard in the bowels of the air force command center he'd been a witness to how military technology could lag behind even the gps in your car a case in point when he was flying. F16's in iraq. The pilots were actually worried. That they're built in mapping software was so bad that they might accidentally crossed an international border without even knowing it that same. Sort of era though you could rent a cessna and fly with basically the predecessor of a ipad. And get all that data. Some f sixteen pilots started strapping tablet computers to their knees in the cockpit so they could use google maps and because this wasn't approved military hardware. They had to sneak them in. Fortunately raj is the kind of guy who enjoys breaking the rules. Everybody wants to be hot. Solo raj is a star wars fan in addition to being an air force reservist and inbetween deployments. He's also aytac entrepreneur. He didn't want to just complain about the military's bad tech. He wanted to fix it. But raj had a trust issue as someone working in silicon valley. He'd seen so many military buyers come and go. We used to call it tech tourism. So what's tech tourist protect tourism of comes in and visits. The valley wants to see all the greatest technology. Be all by it. But then not actually take any action. He gives me this example. One of his startups make software that could detect if a hacker from russia or china or wherever broken into a network was moving around inside it and the pentagon was interested. They're very excited here. Immensely positive feedback for the general or the senior leader. They love it. They said this is great. I wanted to get my action officer on it. Okay action officer. That sounds promising. Sounds like somebody who's actually going to do something. And then nine months later we had a subsequent meeting with that same general in team and the conversation was the exact same so it just look. There has been no progress in nine months. We could have built. Deployed had this thing skilled across your enterprise in a month. This is just not going anywhere and quite frankly after the tenth meeting. We just stopped taking meetings. The pentagon was just too hard of a customer. This rift between silicon valley in the military was already pretty wide when someone widened it. Even more edward snowden who you probably remember was a civilian tech consultant to the cia who leaked documents proving that the us government was spying on its citizens. Silicon valley was rattled at the revelation that their users were being spied on and the military lost confidence in civilian tech people like snowden coming into their ranks and spilling their secrets. Things got so bad that the head of the pentagon ended up making a rare visit to the valley. please join me and warmly welcoming. Us secretary of defense ashton. Carter thank you this. Two thousand fifteen speech at stanford university.
Rough Translation
"air operations center" Discussed on Rough Translation
"Of course everyone knows he's reference to hans solo speed record. You've never heard of the money should i. It's a ship that made the kessel run in less than twelve. Parsons running perennial starch. One the models they have now is that we make products that airmen love to us which is such a silicon valley. Thought people are gonna love to use this product. I don't think anyone ever in the entire history of the. Us military thought about loving that many pieces of military hardware or software. Kessel run isn't just doing the tanker tool anymore. The air force tasked them with the whole upgrade of the air operation center and kessel run is inspired spin offs in other parts of the air force and other branches of the military. Steve were now runs. Kessel run and when people from the pentagon come to visit. He's the one who gives them the tour we have nearly every week. Distinguished visitors visiting kessel run. He wants to see it. It's open collaborative space. There's food snacks ping pong enthused ball. Table aveer tab of course and then invariably those tech tourists leave and they don't necessarily support. The budget kessel runs been nearly zeroed out a couple of times. That's the frustrating thing is realizing how much visibility it's getting and how supportive senior leaders versus the sort of budget process that disconnect this frustrating the old way of acquiring software is still the norm.
Rough Translation
"air operations center" Discussed on Rough Translation
"Warmly welcoming. Us secretary of defense ashton. Carter this two thousand fifteen speech at stanford university was surprisingly big news journalists at the time it was the first visit to silicon valley by a sitting secretary of defense in two decades. History shows that we've succeeded in finding solutions to these kinds of tough questions when our commercial civil government work together as partners and the secretary to say hey the military and the tech world closely used to be tight during we're when the manhattan project the radiation laboratory and other or remember. The internet been surf fathered the internet. A researcher darpa but those days of collaboration and shared commitment seem to be of the past. We need to drill holes in the wall that i think exists and has been built up over the years between the department of defense and the commercial and scientific sector and to drill the holes. We must renew the bonds of trust so i am creating something we call defense innovation unit experimental first of a kind for us steady ex defense innovation unit. Experimental love that extra. That's what makes ungrammatical and fairly top secrity. Great raj shah remembers. that speech. Here was someone that understands the valley to say. We need your help. We need your innovation. You can think of x as as kind of like a pentagon outpost in silicon valley. It's a few miles from google. Is their embassy to tech lancia. The reason that silicon valley is so successful is that it has the right people in it but there's proximity as well there's an ecosystem out here. Everyone's in the same general area not only helps forge relationships but also helps spread new ideas. The poor guys had no credit cards that no budgets had no money over six months retired. Colonel peter newell a decorated combat commander. Who had a bunch of tech problems he wanted to solve so he's excited to see x. Until he actually goes and sets foot in deacs x and he can't believe what the employees are telling him. I have no credit card. Even pull a paper for the bathrooms in the building. I have to sit on got phone over looking website. I have no internet. They're using their personal cell phones. As wi fi hotspots they were opening the windows in the building. The haas bought on the window sill so that it could get connection. That surprised that you're looking at it dumbfounded as possible. Yes it is. It was very embarrassing. Like every time you bring someone in. We had to kind of apologize upfront. No furniture and we didn't even have a conference room and rica. ot was one of the earliest employees at this new pentagon embassy. It was fine for the first month or two and people thought funny in a psych guys like real startups. But once you get sick seven eight months into it. It's no longer. It now becomes a joke on us but started to change the fact a lot would change when dia you got a new boss. Raj shah the f. Sixteen pilot turned tech entrepreneur. Who tech tourists and said he was never gonna take meetings with the pentagon ever again. I mean it's like asking han solo to suddenly take or actually maybe more accurately princess leia. Who's the leader of the rebel alliance. Officially first among equals. Yeah you may have been set up as an embassy to silicon valley but raja believed that the real active diplomacy that they needed to pull off was within their own ranks and to convince the military to take them seriously. He felt that they needed to build a piece of technology that the military would actually use. I wanted to be able to show tangible result technology or innovation that is now directly helping some matter. Women in uniform do their job better. And that's what would would change use reputation. Exactly this is a place that will get things done that. Matter for our servicemen and women in uniform which brings us back to that whiteboard with the pucks that little windowless room in the air operation center and cutter that raj shah visited in two thousand sixteen and learned that in every fuelling was being calculated by hand. He finds out that each of these airmen around the whiteboard has a job title by the way the air force uses as a gender neutral term. The planners move the magnetic pucks around the board. There's a thumper who's in charge of creating the master air planning tool kit and there's a conquer who enters the data into a spreadsheet called the no excuses how much longer it's gonna take to finish this now any fan of the nine hundred sixty sitcom hogan's heroes might remember. Gunky later is slang for useless. Gadget goncourt is almost like calling yourself. Do hickey operator agog major. We're forcing our airmen to step back in time to fight a war and ricky says one of the problems with the whiteboard besides it being a whiteboard you fall you rub against your as part of the plan is that you can't adjust the plan if something comes up and there's a war going on stuff comes up. An airplane breaks is weather. Or there's something going on. A storm might role in a plane has a maintenance failure and so that means any changes. The plan also manually done manually planning the off hundreds of thousands of pounds of fuel if it takes you twelve hours to plan. The days missions a few more hours to type it all in their starting over from scratch. So what do you do when that master plan no longer applies you need to send a whole extra plane they call it scrambling a tanker each scramble cost about two hundred fifty thousand dollars in fuel and maintenance and supply. These birds and these scrambles happened all the time. That's when raj called me from the desert said okay you guys are going gonna build a tanker till the way that in reggae and his team talk about this tinker tool. It's so much more than just about making fuel delivery more efficient or cheaper for them it their chance to show the military a totally different way of tech. They think of themselves as rebels. We were those robbers trying to move more quickly trying to get beyond the status quo to achieve what was a very important mission and their rebellion east aimed against something called the program office in the military. We have an entire section of the military responsible for acquiring technologies and delivering them to the warfighters so. F16's you have a program off the bills that sixteens for the navy. You got a submarine. New classes suffering. You'll have a program established to build a new class submarine.
Rough Translation
"air operations center" Discussed on Rough Translation
"The time for getting back together is now. This is rough translation from npr. I'm gonna guess that not many of you have gotten to see up. Close a fighter jet refueling in mid air miles above the ground. It's actually kind of an amazing process. It'd be flying along and suddenly. This tanker plane comes and matches your speed. And then it's like two birds meeting in mid this thing called a drogue sticks out and attaches to the other plane that is flying high speed high altitude like a little biblical cord. That's flopping around the win a drogue chute drogue chute yup tenure with a little shoot. Raj shah has seen this firsthand. He's an f sixteen pilots. Certain types of please can only reveal from certain types tankers. Some brief you'll faster and slower than others so there's a lot of complexity planes actually fuel at different speeds at different altitudes they use different amounts of fuel. Raj did not think much about that math at the time he didn't have to worry about who was scheduling all these pitstops in sky. All you need to know that fuel up and fly off back to the war in iraq but years later in two thousand sixteen he ended up seeing the actual place where these refueling flights were planned at the air operations center based in allied air force base in cutter. Which when you first walk in. It looks very impressive. Thing nasa mission control be call. Lots of computer screens but off of that hall is a windowless room. It's a small room. Maybe there were you know. Eight or nine cubicles in it air force recruitment posters on the walls. It feels like something designed to other nineteen eighty s. I let me guess fluorescent tube lights absolutely and in this strip down room he sees about a dozen people gathered around a whiteboard. The whiteboard is a ten foot by five foot rectangle with lots of little lines and squares and probably a hundred little one inch magnetic pucks written on the pox. Jets and refueling tankers. And they just moved them around. This is where they plan. How and when to refuel hundreds of jets each day you see two guys standing at the board with dry erase markers in their hands two guys sitting in front of laptops in order to get data from one system into the other manually reading it on one screen and typing it on the other screen so like they're copying a string of very important numbers that mean someone getting fuel or not getting fuel in the airplanes still flying and their copying those by hand correct from one screen to another screen. And then you don't wanna have stakes another person watching it to make sure he got right away. This is rough translation. Homefront are season about the civilian-military divide with quil lawrence today. A story of how raj shah set out to banish the whiteboard to write some simple code. Do all this faster and better and save some taxpayer money but to solve. This problem is anything but simple. He'll need to win. Over a senator a banker and the secretary of defense to cross the tech mill divide. Did you have a moment where you're just thinking. I was one of those planes waiting for that fuel and how exactly when homefront continuous the following message comes from npr sponsor. We work with we work all access. You can finally leave behind all the inconveniences and distractions of working from home. At the swipe of a card. You can unlock hundreds of nationwide workspaces actually designed for work and with a month to month membership. You can get workspace when you need it no matter where business takes you. That smart flexibility sign up today to get a free trial for new members at we work dot com slash. Npr terms apply the first podcast series to ever win a pulitzer prize. Npr's no compromise. We dive into the political movement. That's driving extreme gun rights activism in more. I'm chris hassell. And i'm lisa hagen was in wherever you get your podcasts rough translation. I'm calling about home front. Hey this gregory just to say thank you for all your e mails and voicemails and phone calls about how this homefront season resonating with you. Please keep those conversations going. We love hearing from you. We are listening. I was an alien visiting another planet now back to the show. We're back with rough translations homefront. i'm lawrence long. Before raj shah ever got look at the whiteboard. In the bowels of the air force command center he'd been a witness to how military technology could lag behind even like the gps in your car a case in point when he was flying. F16's in iraq. The pilots were actually worried that they're built in software was so bad that they might accidentally crossed an international border without even knowing it that same sorta era though you could rent a cessna and fly with basically the predecessor of a ipad and get all that data some f. Sixteen pilots started strapping tablet computers to their knees in the cockpit so they could use google maps and because this wasn't approved military hardware. They had to sneak them in. Fortunately raj is the kind of guy who enjoys breaking the rules. Everybody wants to be hud. Solo raj is a star wars fan in addition to being an air force reservist and inbetween deployments. He's also a tech entrepreneur. He didn't wanna complain about the military's bad tack wanted to fix it but raj had a trust issue of someone working in silicon valley. He'd seen so many military buyers. Come and go. We used to call it tech tours of so what's tech tourist tech tourists. Some of the comes in and visits the valley wants to see all the greatest technology. Be all by it but then not actually take any action. He gives me this example. One of his startup make software that could detect if a hacker from russia or china or wherever had broken into a network was moving around inside it and the pentagon was interested. They were very excited. Nude here immensely positive feedback for the general or the senior leader. That love it. They said it's great. I wanted to get my action officer on it. Okay action officer. That sounds promising. Sounds like somebody's actually going to do something. And then nine months later we had a subsequent with that same general and team and the conversation was the exact same so it just don look. There has been no progress in nine months. We could have built deployed in had this skill across your enterprise in a month. This is just not going anywhere and quite frankly after the tenth meeting. We just stopped taking meetings. The pentagon was just too hard of a customer. This rift between silicon valley in the military was already pretty wide when someone widened it. Even more edward snowden who you probably remember it was a civilian tech consultant to the cia who leaked documents. Proving that the us government was spying on its citizens. Silicon valley was rattled at the revelation that their users were being spied on and the military lost confidence in civilian tech people like snowden coming into their ranks and spilling their secrets. Things got so bad that the head of the pentagon ended up making a rare visit to the valley. please join me in.
Monocle 24: The Briefing
"air operations center" Discussed on Monocle 24: The Briefing
"To protect everybody as best we can and then we start embracing a mindset of. We have to manage this slight flu and how we manage the flu. We know who the susceptible people are. We know who the most vulnerable are. We know what the virus is doing. Because there's a surveillance network around the world that keep an eye on it and test what the vaccine is doing versus what the virus is doing an update one. According to the other and then we prioritize. Certain groups are getting that vaccine in the autumn. This is no different. And i foresee that we. We need to be aiming for a situation where we will control this in the same way where people make their own judgment about whether they want to catch the flu on so how whatever is going to take same with covid but we take steps to protect those that we judge to be at highest risk. Where they to run into the infection. But i think until we get to a stage where we have best protected everybody with what we have at our disposal. Now that's the point at which we say. We've done everything we possibly can. Now we have to Encourage people to make a rish judgment. A respected analyst is really for themselves as to where they where they don't want to take risks and the future. Yeah chris thanks as always impeccable insights from nichols health and science correspondent. Dr chris smith Now let's hear from color rabelo. She's here with the day's other news headlines thanks tom. China has accused nato of slandering it's peaceful development after alliance leaders warned about systemic challenges coming from beijing nato added a china's actions threaten the international order. It is the first time the alliance hospice china at the center of its agenda. The international criminal court house called for a full investigation into suspected crimes against humanity during a crackdown in the philippines. The icc opened a preliminary probe into the country's drugs war back in two thousand eighteen which led philippines president rodrigo duterte to withdraw from the court case. Prime minister boris johnson has agreed trade deal with his australian counterpart scott morrison. The new pact means dog british products such as scotch. Whisky and welsh lamb would be cheaper to sell to australia. But farmers are concerned about the deal and after making cameras in japan for more than seventy years nikon corpus calling time on domestic production of its famed. Single length reflects cameras which have been beloved by journalists. Ever since the vietnam war. You can find out more by heading over to monaco dot com for slash minutes. Those are the headlines back to you tom. Thank you very much colada. Now it's been revealed that nato security officials have approached cata in a bid to secure a base that can be used to train afghan special forces. It comes as the thirty six countries involved in nato's resolute support mission in afghanistan a sent to withdraw from the country. Let's get latest now with michael clark former head of the royal united services institute. Good afternoon to you. Michael tell us what exactly is being proposed. Here are sort of mega training facility in cattle. Does this come as a surprise. You think this is the sort of thing we might have been expecting What we knew that nato have been looking around for places where they can offer as were more remote support to the afghan government after the pullout. This summer it's not really a surprise that they should turn towards cancer i. It's nice surprising way. It's come out because it's come out from two or three officials who wanted to speak anonymously in the secretary. General of of nato stoltenberg has confirmed that they are interested in canada but it looks. The taliban did know anything about this which is interesting. But it's the did the announcement itself or the way it's come out in the on. The wires has certainly surprised me this morning but in but i'm not surprised at the development might have expected to come out a little bit more formerly. That's all props in due course we'll tell us a little bit then about how much or how little one should read into the location of this Mooted facility than as you mentioned. It's been a topic of discussion in the scouting around has happened. How does it shape I don't know the effectiveness of the sort of the end game of the training. Is it more important. Frankly as you've alluded to already the other stakeholders are across it. Our and engage engage with what. What difference does it make way. These things happen. Well it makes a big difference as to where it might happen in that respect cancer is very good choice if the carries are prepared to go with it which i suspect they will be and because i mean cats are opened an office for the taliban remembering you know. They stood out and said it. We've got to contribute me catchers. It's very rich stake. It's a tiny tiny state and they said we've got to try to contribute to peacemaking enough ghanistan. So they gave the taliban office in two thousand thirteen. That's been the so. That's been the basis for the negotiations from twenty seventeen twenty eighteen between the taliban the americans which is the basis of this present pullout and remember also catta hosts the allahu deed airbase owning finish more than airbase called kale which is a combined air operations center. You can have the gift of gab for this subjects of kale and kale could allah deed which is about thirty miles. West of doha is huge. I mean there are ten thousand american service personnel at ala d. That's more than the the armed forces of catterick sells whose only eight thousand members of the category army ten thousand americans in the territory and squad. Few brits so that that airbase which served a very big role in the In the wars in the middle east in iraq and afghanistan is still there. And there's a big tradition of using it. So there's lots of reasons why you might turn to kanter. Also i think called the ball cooperation initiative which nato's had on the go floor over ten years now and katter is a member of that so is bahrain and kuwait and the united arab members but the categories are the only ones really those whole who've really tried to use it so they try to be useful. Categories is a small country. Just the right thing tries to be useful and it gets a lot of criticism for it. It's got into big rows with some of its neighbors. He was blockaded by the saudis and the united arab emirates for from twenty seventeen until earlier this year. that's only just recently been lifted but they stick their necks out. They sometimes do the wrong thing. I have to say but they usually do the right thing and they look like at the moment. The western nato's most reliable ally in the gulf. So it makes a certain amount of sense. It doesn't date. And i suppose it would be remiss of me not to ask you. Microsoft gays into the crystal ball somewhat. We spoken on this program and others. Before about the potential kind of unraveling of the security situation still further in afghanistan post withdrawal of some of the big stakeholders. Do you see or hear anything with these announcements and others. That may be ameliorate some concerns. About how serious that unraveling kirby. Yes i mean what what the west is trying to do. What nato united states are trying to do is to put in place mechanisms where they can help the afghan government after the pullout. Now you know how much you can help if you not physically. There is open to question but what they're saying is that you know we'll we'll take an afghan special forces and give them an intensive intensive four to six week training program at this foreign base turns out to be cancer and the americans the british the turks turkish troops of said. Apparently that the prepared to do this. Which would be a good thing. And maybe other countries might might collaborate so helping to train afghan special forces. One thing the other thing that the the the allies are trying to do is to provide airbases so that they might be able to provide air support. Now that's more controversial. And there's a lot of countries who are much more wary of providing bases for eb eb operations over afghanistan because that's more sensitive but providing a base for the training of special forces is less of a problem and probably more relaxing. I think the categories will be more relaxed about that than they would be about having a lot of stuff fly off analogy to go and bomb taliban positions in Around kandahar or something like that. Yeah indeed michael really interesting stuff. Thanks for being with us today on the program. That's the former head of the royal. United services institute michael clark joining us hailed the briefing or more co two thousand four time to get the latest business news. Next joined as usual but a good friend at bloomberg..
Eye On A.I.
"air operations center" Discussed on Eye On A.I.
"There are really bright spots of progress across the enterprise with some of the concepts. Were discussing here. Especially this idea of pushing technical expertise forward in getting pairing between warfighter in the technologist or special operations command army futures demanding both use a model notice tactical data teams in a push artificial intelligence machine learning expertise forward to the field in three to six person teams in so they're executing this fairly successfully in really delivering workable applications and getting to mission impact very quickly by having these folks in the right place in side by side with operators in solving real time off problems so so this recommendation to have ai. Delivery teams at each combatant command with these global components is really a way of standing on the shoulders of that good work. It's already being done at special operations. Command army she command and really taking that to scale across the enterprise. 'em when dave said we need to start now is the defense department in a position to start up. Presumably start would mean war gaming been some. Ai enabled war games. But how do you start to your point cray. A lot of this is ongoing. In one of the unique parts about the commission itself is the decision that the commissioners made early on with respect to the speed of which technology was developing instead of one final report in releasing it was releasing these recommendations in tranches as a research and analysis was kind of coming up with conclusions that led to specific recommendations with that being said there lots of pockets of innovation in efforts that are ongoing across the department whether it be in war games or concept development or tech development etc is so in terms of acting. Now what i would say is really beginning. This process of synchronizing the efforts. Meaning that the department has a whole builds upon efforts that are ongoing number. One across the services also efforts that are going on in the commercial sector in industry and leveraging some of the great work. That's already been done and not feeling like you have to recreate that work. And so the challenges across that department to courtney's point is we really need to be able to scale and so in terms of the acting. Now it's really that ability to not just appreciate in cells on the back that the department of defense has established these tactical data teams but actually to scale that across the force scale it through resourcing and prioritization and training party message. I think to convey to the department but also for your listeners is getting started doesn't mean one big bang deployment of all of the recommendations that we've made here what it really means is embracing this kind of agile mindset start small pick one combat and command that you're gonna stand these up at in measure measure learn erie quickly on what works in when you found something that works scale that across the enterprise. But it's about getting more reps more cycles on some of these things and really getting to that systems. Learning that kumo is talk about too often. We wait for for the one hundred percent solution. our adversaries aren't waiting for the one hundred percent solution. So we've gotta shorten cycle times and get get capability out faster but we needed to embrace that mindset from a policy perspective as well. We need to be rolling out policy seeing what works in an as they work. Codifying them but we need to spearmint. Faster across the board are their systems now deployed on the battlefield of that integrate. Ai that you can talk about. I mean there are active duty soldiers in afghanistan. Still can you talk about what's out there. And how these recommendations would change the activities of the soldiers hunting ground. Probably the best example within the department offense obviously as project maven in terms of large scale effort of really bringing a. m. l. against some good data sets for for the warfighter. There's a mother programs like jigsaw. At the combined air operations center that are good. Operational use cases of a for the warfighter when we say the ubiquitous nature of ai. And this is a point that the commissioners hit on really really hard. It's just going to be an every process every system every every fighting platform that we have out there and again to build on courtney's point the issue is just scaling that capability so again several examples but unfortunately we don't have enough of them and i think many in the audience will understand some of the challenges with the department. Data is a huge huge problem. Not only the technical piece of data which is actually probably the easier piece to solve but really some of the policy that surrounds data in terms of classification. Who owns that data at cetera. So we really have to be aggressive. On that point another recommendation that came from our commissioners particularly from industry. They said don't wait. That the secretary of defense and the department of defense really needed to set some performance objectives. Now so you'll see in the board by the end of twenty twenty one. The commission recommends setting key performance objectives or a and digital readiness. We give some potential examples particularly in logistics sustainment in workforce development. But it's really up to the department to define what those objectives are but to set them by twenty twenty one and continued to measure them. Continue to drive outcomes. As a result of these performance objectives you'll also see that in terms of defining the architecture for joint warfighting network that links back to this concept of join all domain command control which is a focus area of the department right now again. These performance objectives to.