Mattermost recently won a U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research Phase II award intended to enhance low-bandwidth tactical ChatOps.
The project is intended to optimize distributed collaboration and improve warfighter efficiency, safety and accuracy, Mattermost announced from its Palo Alto, California headquarters last week.
“Effective ChatOps is crucial for maintaining decision quality and decision advantage as mission conditions evolve, especially in contested, potentially low-bandwidth environments,” Barry Duplantis, vice president and general manager of North America public sector at Mattermost, told ExecutiveGov.
This contract is a joint effort with partner goTenna, a mobile mesh networking platform. Under the award, Mattermost will develop a plugin compatible with Tactical Assault Kit, or TAK, servers and company channels and cooperate with goTenna to build transmission layer integrations to enable data movement within TAK.
While carrying out their responsibilities, the two companies will work alongside the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate and the TAK Product Center.
Activities under the contract are intended to promote near-real-time tactical-enterprise collaboration. The Mattermost-goTenna team will be responsible for providing a proof-of-concept that uses goTenna’s mesh radios in low-bandwidth environments. When adopted, Mattermost’s plugin is expected to enable the secure coordination of mission-critical information across different sectors.
“By partnering with goTenna and working closely with AFRL and project stakeholders, we look forward to creating an innovative solution to address these tactical challenges,” Duplantis said.
In October, Mattermost collaborated with the Air Mobility Command to test its ChatOps platform during the Mobility Guardian 2023 exercise, in which 3,000 U.S. and Allied Forces personnel simultaneously participated in exercises that focused on asynchronous communication channels and collaboration platforms.
Mobility Guardian, said Duplantis, showcased the “critical value of ChatOps in supporting mission operations and enabling teams to move at the speed of the mission.”
