Army and DOD data must be decentralized, says former service acquisition official

The Army and the Defense Department at large must decentralize their data, because going to an "enterprise data model" isn't realistic, a former Army acquisition senior official said today.

Young Bang, who departed his position of principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology on Jan. 20, said during a Potomac Officers Club event that the Army and the Office of the Secretary of Defense are in the process of trying to fix the “fight tonight” problem -- the need to communicate across different services, all of which have different systems.

“We have so many different things, and so many different systems, we’re never going to get to an enterprise data model. So, if you think that the Army or DOD’s going to get there, that’s a pipe dream. So, what we have to do in the meantime is figure out do you get some form technology to help us with this data mesh,” he said.

To some degree, Bang said this becomes a data mapping problem. The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office is taking on some efforts to help with data mapping “so we can actually do fires from the Army to the Navy or [the special operations forces] community or Air Force,” Bang noted.

“I think the whole notion of what the future needs to be is more of a combination of decentralized . . . not a totally centralized . . . architecture at echelon,” he said.

One of the biggest concerns Bang has is how to defend “operational deployments of algorithms” and prevent adversaries from being able to poison large language models.

“Our enemy’s always going to be looking at how do we actually impact the warfighter on the operational side. And I think the security of that, from attacks, from poisoning, all those things are critical for us to think about,” he said.