MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. -- As the face of modern warfare continues to change, Marine Corps Systems Command is taking steps to ensure the warfighter is equipped to win the fight in any clime or (cyber) place.
To ensure Marines remain lethal in future battlefields, team members from MARCORSYSCOM’s Program Manager for Marine Corps Cyberspace Operations are working with Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command to field Big Data Platform-Cyber Hunt & Analytic Operations System (BDP-CHAOS), a system capable of ingesting hundreds of new data flows and developing situational awareness and common operating pictures for the Joint Cyber Force.
“BDP-CHAOS allows the Marine Corps to secure, operate and defend the network we use to command and control on the battlefield,” said Col. Thomas Dono, program manager for Marine Corps Cyberspace Operations. “At a high level, BDP-CHAOS collects log data and conducts big data analytics to determine trends on the traffic and the overall security of the network traffic.”
According to Chris Carrigan, product manager for the ARCHIMEDES Program, BDP-CHAOS is also poised to help shape the future network environment.
Not only does BPD-CHAOSÂ provide an enterprise platform in which large amounts of data are collected, stored, and visualized. We can now look at, plan for, and strategize what the future of this big data platform can be so we can continue to push it further downrange to the tactical edge. Chris Carrigan, ARCHIMEDES product manager
“Not only does this system provide an enterprise platform in which large amounts of data are collected, stored, and visualized,” Carrigan explained. “We can now look at, plan for, and strategize what the future of this big data platform can be so we can continue to push it further downrange to the tactical edge where smaller amounts of data can be gathered, stored, and visualized based on a particular location.”
Big Data for the Future
This innovative system reflects Marine Corps Commandant’s latest Force Design update that calls on the Corps to put a stronger emphasis on the adversarial reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance competition as foundational to fleet lethality.
In the Force Design update from May 2022, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger notes, “We believe that in a conflict with a peer adversary, first moves may be in space and cyber, so we must enable our Stand-in Forces, MEUs, and MEFs to integrate with, and have access to, those capabilities now.”
Furthermore, this effort falls in line with the Department’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control Implementation Plan—or JADC2—a “warfighting necessity to keep pace with the volume and complexity of data in modern warfare and to defeat adversaries decisively,” which enables the Joint Force to “sense, make sense, and act” on information across the battlespace.
For their efforts, the BDP-CHAOS team recently won the award for Excellence in Cybersecurity at the GITEC 2022 Emerging Technology Awards.
But the BDP-CHAOS team’s success would not have been possible without a laser-sharp focus on feedback from Marines on the ground.
“I believe we won the GITEC award because of our process,” said Dono. “We ask Marines for feedback on what new features they want and put that information through our SAFe, agile process to quickly develop a minimal viable capability. That capability is then put right back into a return mechanism through which we receive further user feedback.”
Such a data-driven approach has ultimately increased user engagement and helped the team continue to improve their processes at a quick pace. According to Carrigan, this was the product of the team’s early realization that beyond needing a solid acquisitions process, it also needed a data governance structure implemented in data analysis.
“With these structures in place, we were able to brief both our stakeholders and our operators,” Carrigan said. “Once they understood that there was more or less a front door for them to get their requirements in, our operational user base increased by about 250%.”
Innovation through Collaboration
According to Dono, however, the lessons learned by his team can be applied to any acquisitions environment. As far as he’s concerned, teams can increase efficiency and reach acquisitions solutions faster by taking the time to think through problems before determining which repeatable processes can be implemented to mitigate them.
“A good example can be seen in the requests our team receives to ‘do more,’” Dono explained. “In the past, we didn’t have a process through which we could adequately document and flow these new requests. However, by establishing – and advertising – a repeatable, documented process that could be followed, we were able to get our stakeholders onboard and actually increased program efficiency by more than 500%.”
Another lesson learned is the importance of empowering team members to use their talents and abilities efficiently in a way that allows them to advance projects without being hindered by red tape.
“One reason I think our team is able to operate so efficiently is that everybody feels trained and capable to do the work with which they’re tasked,” said Dono. “For those of us in leadership, the focus should always be to ensure our team members are empowered to do the work they’re passionate about.”
“I think our team leadership demonstrates the importance of individual empowerment -- something which really goes a long way for those folks who really want to do their job well,” said Carrigan. “At the end of the day, it provides us the space to fail upwards, and allows us to turn any failure into a positive.”
At the end of the day, as the Marine Corps looks to the future, there’s little doubt that the BDP-CHAOS team will be helping lead the way.