Gen. Herbert Carlisle has indicated that the U.S. Air Force plans to use cloud-based technologies and associated collaborative work with other services in order to share combat information, C4ISR & Networks reported Monday.
Amber Corrin writes that Carlisle, U.S. Pacific Command air component commander and Pacific Air Combat Operations Staff executive director, has highlighted this need for “technological and tactical collaboration” during a discussion at the recent Air and Space Conference of the Air Force Association.
“Our ability to do centralized command, distributed control and decentralized execution — how you execute that and what you’re able to do — that is dependent not only on cloud technology but on network technology, network collaboration [and] teaming between manned and unmanned systems,” he said.
The “combat cloud,” a term used by Air Combat Command Chief Gen. Michael Hostage, would serve as a storehouse of combat and mission data designed to meet air and space requirements, the report said.
Hostage said the theoretical combat cloud would have two features different from civilian cloud infrastructures.
“One is it’s got to be gracefully degradable …Â It’s got to live in enough places so that even if someone leaves and someone shows back up it’s still got that pervasive information out there,” he said.
He also noted that the data should also be secured and curated for safe and efficient access, Corrin reports.
