The Air Force collects terabytes of data during each mission, most of which “never sees the light of day.” Gen. James Slife, the service's new deputy chief of staff, has made improving how the service uses its own data a top priority.
“We're totally unorganized, we're not educated, we're not trained, we don't have the right policies. We're not in any position to take advantage of this,” Slife said at the Feb. 29 AFCEA luncheon. mentioned in. This is going to be the subject that I will spend the next X years as the designated hammer within the Air Force. We still have a long way to go. ”
In his first public address since becoming the service's No. 2 in December, Mr. highlighted the need for services that address the challenges associated with its use as a strategic asset. Its operation.
Every time the F-35 stealth fighter jet takes off, various systems and sensors begin collecting information. The aircraft's electronic warfare system, electro-optical targeting system, communications suite and cameras provide airmen with a “detailed and consistent picture of everything.” [the aircraft] Look and feel. ” During that time, a large amount of data is recorded, but most of it is likely to be lost.
“That data incorporates lessons learned. There's a wingman who did something wrong. There's a bad radio call. There's a signal we've never seen before. We're going to take that into consideration in the future. It must be integrated into the mission to feed the algorithms with the truth they need for accurate AI models. The problem is that every bit of that valuable data will likely never see the light of day. Delete All And we're going to record it the next day,” Slife said.
This data is removed because it is too large to send. Hours of travel time, uninterrupted video footage of the plane flying from point A to point B, all of which take up a lot of space.
Recorded data must be indexed and tagged, which is a laborious and time-consuming process. If you don't have the time, that data will just be thrown into a so-called data lake.
“These data lakes contain more unusable data than actually usable data. So these lakes become data swamps,” Slife says.
Additionally, there is the problem of overclassification. For example, there is data about one of his F-35s that the aviator wants to use for future exercises. However, the tape includes a short conversation about a B-21 taking off somewhere, and notes that “99% of what happens on that sortie is unclassified and could be more easily accessed by troops.” Despite this, the entire recording is classified at a top secret level. ” said Slife.
“Our current solutions are slow and not completely accurate. And frankly, our own culture of overclassifying data and protecting data beyond the point where it loses operational relevance is part of our own problem,” Slife said.
For the C-17 cargo plane, a wealth of data is passed to and from all the various aircraft systems over the data bus, but none of the data is recorded.
“All 1,553 data buses monitor the rate at which a treasure trove of information passes through us every second. None of it is recorded, analyzed, stored, or seen,” says Slife. he said.
Given these challenges, Slife said there is a need for better solutions for moving large amounts of data. The current system in which Airmen must physically transport hard drives between bases is inadequate and unsustainable.
They also need automated data processing solutions to filter out irrelevant information and efficiently index, tag, and catalog data. Also, better cross-domain solutions to securely transfer data between different classification levels and place the right information in the right classification system quickly, accurately, and most importantly in an automated manner. is also required.
“I hope this is some kind of call to action. We need a more holistic approach to this. Vendor product A alone won't solve problem A,” Slife says. “I need help solving these problems that I will explain to you today.”
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