The US Nellis Air Force Base’s (AFB) Shadow Operations Center (ShOC-N) is supporting the development of the US Air Force’s efforts to build the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS).
ShOC-N is contributing through DevSecOps, which is bringing together software developers, information technology (IT) operators and troops.
Go deeper with GlobalData
This integration right from the beginning will allow quick delivery of operationally relevant and cyber-secure software to troops, reports 1st lieutenant Nicolle Mathison.
The ABMS development is aimed at creating decision superiority by delivering ‘information and capabilities’ to decision-makers at all airforce echelons.
USAF 805th Combat Training Squadron commander lieutenant colonel David Spitler said: “The ShOC-N (Shadow Operations Center) is the virtual and physical playground for information collection and sense-making using data.
“We can accommodate many levels of classification and expose data to new applications and tools at the appropriate classification to enable decision-making.”
It has been tasked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to become the USAF’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) battle laboratory for information gathering.
According to USAF, one of the ways that the ShOC-N laboratory helped get at the JADC2 goal of allowing rapid decision-making was to host a JADC2 21-1, J6 campaign.
This campaign involved gathering experts from all domains at Nellis AFB and connected 17 different battle laboratories from across the DoD to interchange ‘operationally relevant data’, which was viewed using experimental software applications.
Spitler added: “The goal of the exercises and campaigns is to enable better understanding of the cyber domain from all branches’ perspectives.
“So what we did was bring in a software tool or application that we didn’t have before. It didn’t involve a ten-year cycle to make, because it was already developed.”
Another goal for the development process of applications at the ShOC-N laboratory is to allow the messaging of command actions through a consolidated number of tools.
