Enabling warfighters and intelligence mission success

In a world where data is produced and handled at unprecedented speeds and quantities, the need for effective methods to securely store, analyze, and interpret this data is more important now than ever. As agencies within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community turn to cloud adoption, they are able to bring new capabilities closer to the tactical edge and accelerate their digital transformation. Agencies can effectively leverage these new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data analytics to free up time and resources for warfighters and analysts to focus on mission critical tasks.

At Amazon Web Service (AWS), we have the experience and commitment to advance the DoD and national security missions. As a company, we have sought out and developed transformational technologies, such as AI, quantum, and deep learning. Our passion for invention not only means that we relentlessly pursue technological innovations, but that we also look for innovative ways to apply and operationalize those technologies in the real world for our customers.

Our goal is to make sure that our warfighters have access to the most mature cloud platform available. And we have mobilized commercial innovation to meet the needs of the national security community at the fastest pace with built-in requirements in our infrastructure to meet the community’s unique mission needs. No matter the challenge, the issue, or the mission, we always start with the customer first and work backwards.

In our National Security Series with Defense One, we tackle topics from resiliency to security to analytics. Discover how the AWS Cloud enables warfighters and intelligence mission success:

Maximizing operational resiliency with the AWS Cloud

When it comes to mission readiness, there are no allowances for down time or technology outages. This is why an increasing number of organizations are moving their disaster recovery and continuity of operations (COOP) to the AWS Cloud. This upfront investment can make sure that your operations are always running—regardless of natural disasters, inadvertent errors, and power outages—and automate outage detection and recovery tasks so that your teams can focus on mission-critical tasks.

From data collection at the edge to actionable insights at the command center

Now, more than ever, data (and the speed at which it’s collected, processed, and analyzed) is the key to mission success or failure. Disparate teams all around the globe collect it from edge locations across all domains (land, air, sea, and space), process it for analytics, and get it to decision makers using the cloud, accelerating time to actionable insights.

“Part of our work is sifting through that information to figure out what’s relevant and what’s of interest to those investigations,” said Gurvais Grigg, assistant director of the FBI’s Laboratory Division. “We at the FBI Lab have responsibility, whether data is coming in the form of DNA, whether it’s coming in for photographic imagery from a crime scene, whether it’s coming in on information regarding a chemical analysis or a toxicology report. We have to run that gamut of that data being collected and figure out what it means to our investigations.”

Delivering (maintaining) the competitive edge—at the speed of relevance

The ability to stay ahead of adversaries is dependent on the speed and efficiency with which warfighters and intelligence organizations are equipped with effective applications and tools. However, aggregating research, developing and testing applications, and deploying them to users worldwide while ensuring that the entire development pipeline is completely secure takes early leadership investment and accountability to measurable outcomes. AWS experts help DoD and national security organizations bring together research communities and turn data into powerful and secure applications to maintain a competitive edge.

As Nicolas Chaillan, the U.S. Air Force chief software officer and co-lead of the Department of Defense Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative, said, “When you take a step back and you look at the adoption of cloud over the past ten years, it’s really empowering the ability to move at the pace of relevance.”

Innovating for the warfighters in the field—delivering on-demand sensor-to-shooter capabilities

Battlefields across land, air, sea, and space are increasing in weapons lethality, and the speed and accuracy with which military forces need to securely detect and engage enemy targets is exponentially increasing. AWS capabilities can enable and secure communications across teams so that systems implement commands accurately and immediately. You can automate and scale manual sensor-to-shooter processes so that teams can focus on mission-critical tasks. And, use advanced analytics and artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled capabilities to increase shooter accuracy, particularly for targets beyond the line of sight.

Hear from leaders from the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and AWS on how we are enabling warfighters and analysts to bring cloud capabilities to the edge. Topics include cloud migration and adoption, the use of analytics to effectively interpret data, DevSecOps, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to streamline operations, and more. Watch the following on-demand sessions:

• Data collection at the edge to decision-making at the command center with Gurvais Grigg, assistant director, laboratory division, FBI, and Christine Halvorsen, senior technical business development manager, mission acceleration team, AWS
• Innovating for the warfighters in the field with Nicolas Chaillan, chief software officer/co-lead, U.S. Air Force/DoD Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative, and Liz Martin, senior manager for department of defense, AWS
• Fireside chat with David Levy, vice president, US federal government, nonprofit, and healthcare, AWS, Jen Nelson, national security lead, AWS, and Tim Hartman, chief executive officer, Government Executive Media Group, Inc.

Learn more about the cloud computing for defense.