From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller (00:10):
Welcome to From the Crow's Nest, a podcast on electromagnetic spectrum operations, or EMSO. I'm your host, Ken Miller, Director of Advocacy and Outreach for the Association of Old Crows. Thanks for listening. We have a great show today. We are going to continue our conversation on open systems architecture, and I'm pleased to be here with Dr. Ilya Lipkin from the US Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Mr. Ben Peddicord from the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. I'm also going to sit down with retired US Air Force Colonel Jim Pryor, call sign Hook, to discuss the AOC's upcoming 58th annual International Symposium and Convention. This event is going to be in-person and the lineup of speakers is fantastic. Of course, From the Crow's Nest will be there and I'll be bringing you interviews with many of our speakers with a flurry of episodes that whole week.

Ken Miller (00:56):
So it'll be a great event and very much looking forward to it. Before I formally introduce my guest, I want to thank our episode sponsor, Pacific Defense. Pacific Defense rapidly delivers military use electromagnetic spectrum technology solutions to the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and the industry partners learn more at pacific-defense.com. All right, I want to welcome my first two guests to the show. They are Dr. Ilya Lipkin. He is the technical expert for open architectures that Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, home office for the US Air Force. He is also the steering committee chair for SOSA, the Sensor Open Systems Architecture Consortium. I also have Mr. Ben Peddicord. He is the Intel Technology and Architecture Branch Chief at US Army Futures Command Combat Capabilities Development Command C 5 ISR Center. Gentlemen, it's great to have you on From the Crow's Nest. Thanks for joining me.

Ben Peddicord (01:47):
Thanks for having us.

Ken Miller (01:48):
So this is our second dedicated episode on open systems architecture, but it's been a topic on many of our recent episodes as well. Back in July, we had an industry perspective on the topic with Roger Hosking, from Mercury Systems and Patrick Collier from Aspen Consulting, really talking about how industry is adapting to standards and this notion of conformance with the standards that were on the horizon back then. And so I wanted to have a followup episode with the government perspective and I wanted to have you both on to have a conversation about how government is addressing this topic. And so Dr. Lipkin, I wanted to start with you. Could you tell us a little bit about the SOSA Consortium, and then the 1.0 standards were just released, and could you talk a little bit about what those standards represent and the benchmark that they set for the standards conversation?

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (02:36):
Sure. So social consortium actually has been in years and years in the making and it all started, believe it or not, at the one meeting at the PAC server, Maryland, where NAVAIR hosted me and Ben and another partner to figure out what do we want to do? And when we reached an agreement between all three of us, that's when the SOSA was born. So, as a matter of fact, Ben is the key founder of SOSA, just like me. He was there at day minus one. What is it all about? Well, it's about a vision that we can do an open standard in partnership with the industry and government representation as a team. And what we wanted to accomplish is a holistic approach to standards development, where we account for what does it take to build a sensor system and a sense of framework? I think it's been one amazingly wild ride. We never knew we were going to grow this big when we initially started it. All we wanted to in the very beginning is to align our three services together for reuse. So it just grew from there.

Ken Miller (03:41):
What does the evolution of this consortium mean? You had mentioned earlier before we got on the air, you have some experience with the Navy, you worked for the army, obviously Dr. Lipkin with the Air Force. All services are represented in this effort. What does the evolution of SOSA mean when you look at it today?

Ben Peddicord (03:58):
You know, it's a big milestone getting us a release version one of SOSA. And I think one of the things that I always tell people is that no standard that we write today is going to be the standard that we're going to want tomorrow. They have to be maintained and matured. So we recognized early on that we needed a standards body to do that work. Not all standards bodies are created equally. Not all of them succeed in producing executable standards. I think with release of version one, we've shown that we can work with a very large group successfully. It's the Army, Navy, Air Force together with industry, we can come to consensus on how to build open modular systems for the military.

Ken Miller (04:36):
So can we get into the 1.0 standards? What are they and what are the first steps with the release of the standards? Dr. Lipkin, I'll start with you and then Ben, you can follow up.

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (04:48):
So 1.0 is a milestone where we agreed between everyone, what does it mean to have interoperability and reuse between our embedded avionic systems for sensors? And not just sensors, quite a bit of it is implemented as mission computers or this intelligent avionics systems, AIML. So what it really means at the end of the today is a first wholesale major agreement between government and industry to have seamless interoperability between our services in our sensor systems. So we're basically trying to build a guarantee if you built a SOSA, you can reuse it on other programs and services, and there you go, economies of scale.

Ken Miller (05:27):
So with army, they have what they call CMOSS. How does that relate to SOSA? I know that they work closely together. How do they align and how does 1.0 affect the Army CMOSS effort?

Ben Peddicord (05:39):
That's a great question. I think there's a lot of confusion sometimes between SOSA and CMOSS. So CMOSS is a C5 ISR modular open suite of standards. As Dr. Lipkin mentioned, we started working together very early on, about 10 years ago on the standards that are now incorporated into SOSA version 1.0. At the time, you had different on the Army, Navy and Air Force side, all kind of working independently towards common goals. We formed the SOSA consortium to help us align and build a common solution for those goals. You can think of CMOSS as being an army implementation of SOSA. That's I think the easiest way to explain it.

Ben Peddicord (06:14):
So, SOSA has more options in it than we haven't seen CMOSS, so it's kind of in some sense of subset of what's in SOSA, but we utilize the SOSA consortium to manage our standards development and industry engagement for the standards that we use within CMOSS. Getting to version 1.0 of SOSA and getting, as I said earlier, getting concurrence from all the industry and government partners on that standard is a sign of maturity, it's a sign of confidence from all the partners involved that these centers are ready to be used broadly in our various programs.

Ken Miller (06:49):
So with the evolution of CMOSS, and I think that this probably aligns also with SOSA too, when we talk electromagnetic spectrum operations, we oftentimes talk about the need for agility, adaptability, and really kind of the speed of development, getting new technology out there faster to the field, to the war fighter. What effect will CMOSS have in the Army and then also with SOSA to address these three fundamental challenges of modern combat, where we need to have greater agility, adaptability, and speed of development?

Ben Peddicord (07:20):
Yeah. So Sosa and CMOSS provide the framework with which we can build a truly open and modular C5 ISR and AW implementation. That means that we have a common functional decomposition of the solutions that are on the platform. We have common well-defined interfaces, and that means it's possible for any application on the platform now to access any of the information that's available to any sensors on the platform. And that really provides revolutionary agility and for that matter, in many cases, enhanced performance period for any particular application. Because you have a pool of sensors now, you have a pool of processors and a pool of effectors, and you don't have to live with just a piece of information that was built for your particular stove piped capability now. You can harness all the information available on the platform and use it however you need.

Ben Peddicord (08:06):
And so from an agility perspective, that makes all the difference in the world. You can now write a simple software application that can take information that you may not have originally known was important. Use it, process it, and cause an effect to happen in a very rapid timescale. In terms of adaptability, it's also, that was really one of the primary goals and drivers when we were developing the standards. You don't know for sure today what hardware you're going to need tomorrow and tomorrow's fight and when technology progresses and things change. With the support for truly cots, ruggedized, embedded computing elements, and transceivers and other infrastructure, CMOSS makes it much easier for you to buy an off the shelf ruggedize solution and deploy it in the field without developing custom integration kits for platforms and a whole bunch of other boring stuff that normally I think people don't appreciate how hard those things are.

Ben Peddicord (08:53):
So if you have a really new compute capability or new GPU, you need to feel it. If you have to develop custom integration kits on your platforms, that adds years to the deployment timeframe. And that's part of the reason why we struggle so much to really pace state of the art. CMOSS makes it possible for you to field new hardware very rapidly. It makes it possible for you to field new software applications very rapidly and enables frequent incremental changes rather than infrequent whole scale tear the roots and branches out and replace everything. If you have to adapt your solution and there's a particular piece of hardware or software you need, you can drop that in, replace a small component and reutilize all the existing infrastructure in a way that hasn't been possible previously.

Ken Miller (09:38):
And Dr. Lipkin, I was wondering if you could address that from a SOSA perspective. This notion of how the SOSA 1.0 standard is going to address directly agility, adaptability, and speed of development.

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (09:50):
Actually, I'm going to give you three short stories. First story happened when we released snapshot two of socio-technical standard, and we had a flight demo. Unfortunately, the vendor who was providing us the processing requirements and software bailed out, so after about five hours of intense calling SOSA members, I found an alternative solution. We can have later, we use that one instead. So without SOSA that wouldn't be possible. Imagine pivoting to somebody else who was not participating in that particular initiative, taking them and flying an alternative. Second story: we contracted with one of the performers to build us another solution and frankly, they failed to deliver on time on schedule. So what we did is we took an alternative solution completely from the left field, still based on SOSA and used that instead. It took us about three weeks to adjust the software, hardware implementation, and we were operational again.

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (10:49):
And the third story just happened in the last six weeks. An Army program called us for help because one of their solutions broke. So because there were no spares, they asked for help for the Air Force to see if we can provide them alone equipment based on socio technical standards snapshot three, I believe. We had a phone call on Monday. They had our operational deployment the following week. We shipped them the equipment overnight. They bolted it to the aircraft and it's flying now. So without SOSA, those speeds are simply impossible. So what I was going to say is what we built is already paying dividends, allowing us to field faster, react faster, and frankly sustain easier because all it took is a couple of phone calls to find another socio based solution and use that as a substitute.

Ben Peddicord (11:40):
Just to add a little bit to that, the Air Force, Army and Navy folks participating in SOSA are routinely benefiting from each other's efforts now. And that is something that hasn't been possible before we had common standards. We are using this interoperable components and are routinely able to swap in and cover each other's needs as necessary. And as more of us use more parts based on the same standards, it certainly makes it easier for industry to support us and build in quantity more affordably.

Ken Miller (12:08):
So these stories, I think represent something that's really important for I think our listeners to understand is that we're not just talking when we talk 1.0 standards, it's not just a piece of paper that's outlined in standards. I mean, it goes beyond theory and bureaucracy and everything. This has been demonstrated particularly over the summer. CMOSS and SOSA, they both been demonstrated over the summer and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about some of these demonstrations that have happened and the success and what it's taught you about how the path that we are on, that this is the right path moving forward, based on past experiences.

Ben Peddicord (12:39):
Sure, I'll talk a little bit about a couple of the exercises. I'm surely Ilya has some things to share. On the Army side, we have an annual network modernization exercise, we call it Net Mod X. We had a number of vendors, bring capabilities, seen also SOSA based capability to that event and they were able to, show actually what we were just talking about a little bit ago, that ability to really rapidly adapt and field new capability.

Ben Peddicord (13:02):
They brought literally out to the field of New Jersey solutions that were based on CMOSS, dropped them into our platform, integrated them in the period of a day or less, and then demonstrated them as part of the exercise and we had that from several vendors, as well as an implementation from the government side. We had multiple program offices that are building a CMOSS based solutions. There's a pod that flies on a gray Eagle currently, and a couple other implementations in progress right now. We are preparing for an exercise just next month that will be in New Mexico. So there's a lot of hardware, a lot of different program offices implementing and we're having tremendous success getting our solutions to inter-operate in it and adapt rapidly.

Ken Miller (13:43):
And Dr. Lipkin, do you have anything to add?

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (13:45):
Yeah. One of the things is, as you know, SOSA is multicentric so we're building a common ecosystem between software and hardware to support it. And a cool example of it is, I have an EOIR prototype I'm currently developing for the Air Force and a lot of the equipment inside that EOIR prototypes are actually built for RF exploit, such as radar, SIG and AW. So what we've been demonstrating is the commonality of a multient and the electromagnetic spectrum domain is actually paying dividends, cutting across silos of excellence. In the past, people wouldn't consider reusing RF components to support EOIR systems. After all, one's a camera, the other one's an antenna, but if you break it down to common standards, common interfaces, you can actually demonstrate savings and reuse across a phenomenologies of interest. So we've had a lot of success leveraging stuff developed for radar in EW or stuff developed for EOIR, Sigent, so on and so forth. So it's really becoming an interesting challenge to keep it all together.

Ken Miller (14:50):
One of the things that we oftentimes talk about when we talk electromagnetic warfare is this notion of multifunction systems. And for years we've said, Hey, okay, this is where technology is taking us. You're no longer talking about an EDW box, you're talking about a box that does EW along with radar and other things. But one of the challenges was always can the government buy a multifunctional system? Does it know how to buy a multifunction system? And it seems to me, hearing you talk that with SOSA and CMOSS, this is basically the mechanism where DOD now understands how to develop and buy these types of systems. Is that an accurate take that basically these standards allow us or provide us the ability and understanding to really pursue multifunction systems in the scale that we need to for modern combat?

Ben Peddicord (15:36):
So I'll speak a little bit to that. I think what CMOSS and SOSA has shown is that it's technically possible for us to build these types of systems in a truly open and modular way. In the old days, if we wanted to build a multi-function system, it would have been integrated by a single system integrator who would have kind of permanently owned all access to that system. It would have been assembled probably even from their perspective in a largely proprietary manner and I think that they would have themselves struggled to keep it maintained and up to date, because it would have been difficult to find parts that could slot in and be upgraded easily. So what SOSA and CMOSS has shown is that we can build an ecosystem of components and functional blocks that can be easily put together and integrated.

Ben Peddicord (16:20):
There are still challenges on the acquisition side of things. The DOD acquisition is not structured around sharing hardware across programs and sharing capabilities. The way that we develop requirements and other things traditionally is fairly stovepiped. We're working to address that, we're working hard in the Army to address that. Army Futures Command has done a lot of work that's kind of helping us move the ball forward in that respect and as I mentioned earlier, we're currently working on a solution that integrates position navigation and timing along with comms, EW and mission command and we have a requirement developed for us to build that for the Army. But it is still I think a structural challenge to figure out how to do that. But on the technical side, we've removed a lot of the technical barriers. I think a number of our vendors are choosing to use SOSA and CMOSS internally, even if not required by the government, for the reason I mentioned earlier, which is that it helps them actually to maintain an state-of-the-art within their solution because they now have standard components that they can drop in easily themselves.

Ben Peddicord (17:23):
I think what a lot of us have come to realize is that your speed of innovation, the speed with which the performance of a solution improves, is actually more important than how performant it is today, because over the long-term that's going to actually control how well you do. So if you spend a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of time making a really great system today, but you can't upgrade it next year, then you're very quickly going to have a mediocre system and then an obsolete system. We've removed a lot of the technical barriers there's still work to do on the hard problems, which are DOD acquisition related.

Ken Miller (17:57):
Dr. Lipkin?

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (17:58):
I would say it's one-for-one for the Air Force, but we have more bureaucracy. That would be the best way to differentiate the two services. We're definitely struggling with exact same issues. How do I get the EOIR program to work together, whether it's a radar program or a siggen program, even though they can leverage same commonalities? So that is the biggest challenge there is currently within Air Force. How do I enable silos of excellence to talk to each other once you realize they're actually buying the same equipment or same components or same modules? So a lot of our activities are actually on our end trying to reduce the risk so that the programs with the prototypes and demonstration events, that this is mature enough for them to go full scale. Hopefully that kind of helps to frame.

Ken Miller (18:44):
So what is the next step then in this challenge? Because obviously there's a lot of lessons that we can learn on the positive side about how these standards have been developed and the technical barriers that have been overcome by SOSA and CMOSS. Certainly what is the next step then in addressing some of these challenges? What do you see on the horizon as where DOD is going?

Ben Peddicord (19:04):
So I can speak to some of the work that I know we're doing. The Army is very serious about deploying modular open systems right now. CMOSS is a very important part of that. We have been asked to deliver integrated modular open tactical communications, mission command, EW, and position navigation assured position, navigation and timing in the very near future. And so there are requirements rolling out for that. That represents a lot of different technologies, a lot of different vendors that need to work together. And we are working to support the industrial base in implementing standards-based solutions that can be rapidly and easily integrated into upcoming events that demonstrate that we can do that.

Ben Peddicord (19:45):
We know that we can't field solutions that are state-of-the-art, that are best in class if we can't integrate them. That's true with or without CMOSS. The ability to fuse and utilize all the information and all of the sensors and all of the effectors on a platform for every application is essentially, from a technical perspective, low hanging fruit. And if we can't go ahead and take that fruit and use it, we will not pace our adversaries. We're taking the steps forward to do that and we want to do it in an open, modular way that enables us to have the agility and adaptability we talked about earlier.

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (20:19):
On the Air Force side, to be honest, I don't know how to answer that question because we're still trying to figure out what our strategy is. There are several initiatives within the Air Force that try to address that question as we speak and until they form up or more mature, I'm simply not comfortable discussing them. But the best I can tell you is we have internal requirements that drives us to do this. We're just trying to figure out what is the most effective and efficient way to address them at this moment in time. I would say we're in a discovery phase would be the best way of putting it.

Ben Peddicord (20:51):
One other thing I'd mentioned is that we also have international partners that are working and using these same standards. And I can say in an open forum that the United Kingdom is also pursuing solutions based on these standards.

Ken Miller (21:03):
You actually jumped like three questions ahead of me, but we'll go with that for right now. I did want to talk about now that CMOSS and SOSA standards are a reality and the industrial base is kind of rapidly growing. How fast do you see the US government moving to unify around these and how will you advance cooperation with NATO and Ally forces in terms of pushing these standards forward?

Ben Peddicord (21:25):
I think one of the important decisions we made as we developed the standards that became SOSA and CMOSS is that we worked hard to try to utilize standards that were already supported, already available publicly. And we ended up building a suite of standards which is publicly releasable. It's not only unclassified, but it's publicly releasable, it's available without any limitation on distribution and that has really eased a lot of the concerns of our international partners. A lot of times in the past, the DOD has spent a lot of money developing really great standards and specifications, which were then very difficult for our international partners to use due to concerns, ITAR concerns of basically arms export regulations. By producing a standard that's publicly released that has made it tremendously easier for our international partners to leverage the standards. Their industrial base and their manufacturers can access and utilize the standards without any concerns about violating export regulations.

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (22:22):
I would say one more thing. We also figured out a sweet spot between the need to keep things US only and the need to work with NATO partners. For example, everything we do is pay approved to be distribution A available to everybody in and around the world. But we do have a specialized appendixes that are available at the higher levels of approval based on what we want to do. But those are appendixes, those are not the actual standard, and they're there to serve the needs for the armed services to keep something back that we think is critical for our war fighter's success. And so it's a sweet spot, that would be the best way to describe it. It's very open and just restrictive enough to make it useful.

Ken Miller (23:04):
Dr. Lipkin, oftentimes when we talk about standards, we talk about developing new technology and getting into the field. The other component of this is of course, and you mentioned earlier in one of your answers, I wanted to pull the thread a little bit more, is this notion of sustaining technology, sustaining systems in the field. You were at the Lifecycle Management Center, obviously you're involved in this on a daily basis. Could you talk a little bit about how standards really improved our ability to sustain capability in the field as new threats arise and so forth?

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (23:33):
Absolutely. So one of our challenges today is it takes us a very long time to develop the system, then field the system. By the time it's fielded, we're looking five years from the moment you went go, here's your money. And if you think about it, it's a four year cycle before industry goes into obsolescence for commercial available components, you basically fielding systems that are obsolete. So what standards, what we can do is we can feel it against the standard with what's commercially latest available at day zero and then do a seamless tech refresh right before fielding right into the same components, because with an open standards you're guaranteed inter-operability and plug and play ability. So this actually gives us the ability to field cutting edge technologies through the life cycle of the system. When I say lifecycle, I'm talking 20, 30, 40 years. So what we're really doing is, we're building in a tech refresh speed into our current systems using open standards that are widely commercially available.

Ken Miller (24:30):
Ben, do you have anything to add?

Ben Peddicord (24:32):
Sure. You know, we kind of did our homework when we were getting ready to kick off the work that became SOSA, we did a bunch of analysis. One of those was kind of costing exercising. When you look at the majority of the expense for a DOD system is in the sustainment phase. We spend lots of money developing systems, but it pales in comparison to the long-term sustainment costs. Sustainment costs really matter and they're tremendous savings that we expect from using these standards in the sustainment phase of things. And it's not just a matter of cost savings, but it's actually an opportunity to simultaneously save money and improve performance, which is something you don't usually get to improve performance and save money at the same time. And so an example of how that happens is that we can upgrade via spares.

Ben Peddicord (25:10):
So we have a lot of simple computers in our platforms and Intel processors basically. And if for whatever reason, one of those fails you need to replace it. What we frequently do is we replace that part with an identical part, even if it's an obsolete 30 year old part. Just because we can't afford the integration headaches that we have otherwise. What SOSA and CMOSS enable for us to take a newer, much more capable part and drop it in as a replacement one when a component fails. So let's just upgrade via spares, it lets us have a greatly reduced number of types of items that are in the inventory so that we can have the spares we need without having as many as large a variety in the warehouse, which drives tremendous amounts of savings by having common components across programs and across services, it reduces the cost of the individual components as they're replaced. So I think on the logistics and training and sustainment side, there are actually enormous benefits to this approach.

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (26:08):
Also it creates a lot of fun challenges. I was at one of the programs meetings and they said, well, we can reuse between these two programs, great. But the logisticians were really nervous because that means program A can borrow parts from program B if a higher level officer tells them to do so. And then they're, what are you going to do to my spares? I didn't spare it for two programs, I only spared it for one. So that creates an interesting conundrum on my side. How do we deal with the changes that the open center is bringing in a more flexible supply chain logistics? Where it's not just one program parts, it's two program parts that are commonly shared.

Ben Peddicord (26:45):
All of these things require adaptation in our approach to business. As Dr. Lipkin just mentioned, folks are used to planning, sparing for a particular program. Now we need to think across programs to realize some of the savings and benefits, but in reality, I think when you speak to logisticians, this is again actually an opportunity to make the overall job easier. Because when you're looking at sparing for a particular item, particularly if it's not fielded in very large quantities, you can have very large spikes in demand and then spots where you have very little demand. Whereas if you spread this out across a larger number of units and across more programs, you have a statistical process that smooths out the logistical side of things and you don't have to plan for big spikes and droughts as much.

Ken Miller (27:26):
So we have time for one more quick question. And I asked this, when I opened the show, I mentioned that this is our second episode. The first one we did was with an industry perspective and I asked them a similar question about government that I want to end with asking you about industry. There's been a lot of success on standards here up to today. For the success to continue, obviously you have to work in partnership with all the services and then of course industry. So what do you need from industry to continue the success of SOSA and CMOSS moving forward? And Dr. Lipkin, I'll start with you.

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (27:56):
The honest, keep advocating to use SOSA everywhere. A lot of times when I go into the program of record, if the industry partner already introduced them to SOSA, it's an easy sell because their risk is reduced, my prions recommending. So I would say keep industry advocating for us everywhere. That is the best way forward.

Ben Peddicord (28:15):
It's pretty simple. I think the two things we really need from industry are for them to utilize the standards in their products, whether they're a prime integrator or whether they're a cot supplier. Build your systems with support for the standards that we're asking for, that makes it tremendously easier for us and everybody to build standards-based solutions. The second thing would be to participate in center's development. We know that the standard we have today isn't the standard or we're going to want tomorrow. It's never going to be perfect. We want your input. The SOSA consortium provides a venue for you to help us make things better.

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (28:48):
Ben did make a good point. SOSA does have a venue that is quite unique within the United States and DOD. We have major vendors who generate the silicon such as Intel and the primes could put it all together as well as the end-users. So I'm hoping that the industry will take advantage of the fact that we're all around the same table as we develop the standard to make sure we address all the areas of concern, all the way from the silicon to how we actually use it with the end user.

Ken Miller (29:17):
All right. That is all the time we have for today. Dr. Lipkin and Mr. Peddicord, I really appreciate you taking time to join me on From the Crow's Nest. Great discussion. I look forward to continuing discussing this topic with you in the future.

Ben Peddicord (29:28):
Thank you very much for having us.

Dr. Ilya Lipkin (29:30):
Thank you as well. This has been a great experience.

Ken Miller (29:33):
All right, to wrap up this episode, I am here with retired US Air Force Colonel Jim Pryor, call sign Hook. He is a member of the AOC board of directors and he is also chairman of our fast approaching AOC 2021, the 58th Annual AOC International Symposium and Convention. Hook, it's great to have you on From the Crow's Nest. Thanks for joining me.

Jim Pryor (29:56):
Thanks, Ken. It's good to be here.

Ken Miller (29:58):
So I wanted to have you on the podcast to talk a little bit about the convention that's coming up. The theme for this year's convention is "All Domain Operations, Integrating Effects Across the Spectrum." Could you unpack that theme for us a little bit and tell us what kind of message you want to share with the attendees about the role that EMSO plays in all domain operations?

Jim Pryor (30:16):
You bet. After being involved in the electromagnetic spectrum work for the better part of 35 years or so, it's apparent to me, as well to the larger majority of the membership of the association Vulcros and those that participate in it, is it the spectrum is foundational to success in all domains and in all operations? So we really can't overemphasize the importance of the electromagnetic spectrum as it empowers all those operations. You really have to have an integrated and synchronized application of capabilities across all those war-fighting domains throughout the electromagnetic spectrum in order to be effective. You have to be able to not only field those capabilities, but command and control them, and when necessary, fully utilize, strategize, plan and effectively execute any of the missions anywhere in the world. And so we see the electromagnetic spectrum as the key enabler to all domain operations.

Ken Miller (31:09):
And when you talk about EMSOs being a foundational element or the backbone of almost everything we want to do, and all the main operations, that brings you face to face with a host of issues. So with our convention, we have it organized, we have a number of general sessions, keynote speakers, but we also have a series of breakouts so that we can start to dive into these topics with some more depth. Could you talk a little bit about some of the breakout sessions that we have and other speakers that we have coming and what pieces of this issue are they going to be talking about?

Jim Pryor (31:38):
Sure. So I think outside of those specific sessions that are important to the discussion, the ones that particularly speak to me that I'm the most excited about is one: we have our program manager briefing series. And these are very particular events where the attendees that can attend those interact directly with the program managers offices on status and efforts of key programs that are part and parcel to operations inside the electromagnetic spectrum. That is one of the primary efforts inside the symposium is to bring everybody together and also put industry governance and Department of Defense, military, as well as civilian controllers into face-to-face conversations about what's going on inside these advanced programs. And so one of the most important ones. And I really enjoy those particular briefing series because they are one-on-one and they're very personal. We also have several keynote and spotlight speakers such as Lieutenant General Clinton Hinote.

Jim Pryor (32:36):
He's the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy Integration Requirements for the Air Force. And I've known General Hinote for a while. He is working really hard to solve a lot of these long range problems and issues inside the electromagnetic spectrum and he's the guy to help us do that. We also have people like Mr. John Sherman, who's the acting CIO for the DOD. We have Lieutenant General Thomas Todd, who's closing out our sessions at the convention and he is the Deputy Commanding General for Army Futures Command and so he'll be talking about PC21. We have the Air Force's chief scientist, General Coleman. We have Michele Flournoy and the Honorable Heidi Shu, who's the CTO for the Office of the Secretary under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and several other individual panel speakers that speak to not just tactical application, but also operational control, doctrine and policy issues that we need to address inside the electromagnetic spectrum and all domain operations.

Jim Pryor (33:35):
And in addition, I think there's also several sessions that speak to a broader AOC membership and audience, and that ranges from TED Talk style presentation on autonomy and software programmable radios. It's going to be given by a group of Young Crows and that's folks that are a little bit younger, beginning on their journey as advocates for the spectrum, as well as the Young Crows themselves, to a panel on some of the most exciting things that are coming out after the last few years inside the US's Department of Defense, like a panel on models based systems engineering and how that applies to all domain operations and how that accelerates the ability to develop in field capability. So that's just a ballpark of what we have planned for this particular symposium and I think we have a pretty broad offering and it's all really exciting stuff.

Ken Miller (34:28):
It's clear from the agenda the tremendous scope of the speakers, the services represented, the topics covered, the seniority, the levels of technical and operational expertise and it speaks to something that's very relevant with our community is that we're really spread out across the defense industrial base complex of government industry academia. We're not centralized in any way and so it's very important for us to have these events where we can come together and the great thing about this convention coming up is for the first time, obviously in two years, we are back in person. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of coming together in-person and particularly for the EMSO community? Why is it necessary that if you're in this professional space that you come to our convention in-person?

Jim Pryor (35:14):
Sure. So, and you touched on the premise, right? Which is that electronic warfare and electromagnetic spectrum operations touches almost everything we do. And that means that stakeholders, those participants, those users of the spectrum are really broad and across the entire globe. And there's always the opportunity to connect via electronic means: email, phone calls, things like that, but there's never anything better than a face-to-face discussion where you can actually see other people, see the passion, see the intricate details of what they're trying to explain to you. There's just no way around it, that that is not a great way to further both knowledge and progress inside the EMSO community.

Jim Pryor (36:01):
And I think the AOC symposium is one of the only places where this particular group of people comes together. I mean, there are part and parcel and pieces and parts that are through other shows, symposiums and conventions throughout the year at other locations, but this is the only one that is dedicated to this particular effort. And so I think that, as you said, it's just important to have that one-on-one so that a conversation that begins after seeing a panel that turns into a discussion later between two individuals after a panel, and may even progress later into the afternoon, over dinner, to really start and resolve some of the issues that they see. You really can't replace that.

Ken Miller (36:43):
It's really about building trust in those relationships that you just can't seem to develop as quickly, virtually, so we look forward to having those at the convention throughout the week. And obviously since we're back in person though, there's a lot of concern about that and so we do have a policy of vaccination policy that we've had to implement for this weekend. I was wondering if you could just briefly tell the listeners what to expect from a vaccination safety standpoint for the AOC?

Jim Pryor (37:08):
So what we've coordinated for our particular effort is cleared through the standard practices that I think we've seen at other shows in the metropolitan DC area, as well as the local jurisdictions. And so what that means is in order to gain your credentials, to attend the sessions, you will have to show proof of vaccination in order to attend and we will be wearing masks during the event as well. So that's where we sit with this and I think that is a great way for us to ensure that as we are meeting face to face and having these conversations, that we're all doing it in a relatively safe environment so that we're not causing anybody any health issues in the future.

Ken Miller (37:52):
Great. Well, thank you for taking some time to talk about the convention. That will conclude this episode of From the Crow's Nest. I'd like to thank my guests Dr. Ilya Lipkin, Mr. Ben Peddicord and AOC convention chair, Jim Pryor. I also want to thank our episode sponsor Pacific Defense. Pacific Defense rapidly delivers military-use electromagnetic spectrum technology solutions to the Department of Defense, the intelligence community and industry partners. Learn more at pacific-defense.com. Finally, to learn more about the upcoming 58th Annual AOC International Symposium and Convention, please visit our website at crows.org/2021home. Thank you for listening.