Defense leaders are redefining what it means to operate at the edge

Delivering timely military data to warfighters in the air, at sea or on the battlefield has almost always meant bridging insurmountable technical chasms. That’s starting to change as defense leaders shift their perspective on what it means to operate “at the edge.”

“The edge no longer just means that literal front line of the battlefield. It really is where airmen and guardians are operating and conducting their day-to-day business operations. That could be in a distributed or disconnected, or even contested environment,” said Julianne Lefebvre, Director, Business Enterprise Management, Office of the CIO, Department of Air Force, during an executive panel at the GDIT Battlespace of the Future summit, hosted by Scoop News Group.

Co-panelist Michael Frank, Deputy CTO for the Department of the Navy, agreed. “The edge is not a location… It’s more of a mentality of where the mission is actually occurring,” he explained.

That requires “pushing foundational capabilities, enterprise business system capabilities such as finance operations, logistics, pushing out maintenance data, and even personnel readiness to those austere locations,” Lefebvre explained.

This strategic shift in perspective is forcing military and industry leadership to rethink how software frameworks are designed for remote operators. It’s also compelling them to recognize that enterprise business platforms can no longer be treated as secondary administrative backbones.

Instead, these underlying systems must be redesigned to function locally in the field, process data in degraded or disconnected communication environments, and seamlessly synchronize once connectivity is restored.

Operationalizing the tactical data architecture

The U.S. Army’s ongoing data management initiatives, including “Operation Jailbreak,” serve as a blueprint for this architectural transition, noted GDIT Chief Technology Officer Ben Gianni during the panel.

Long-term planning cycles are being bypassed in favor of modular open systems architectures (MOSA) that decouple applications from underlying hardware layers, ensuring that field units maintain an interoperable, loosely coupled technical environment capable of seamless communication across platforms and operators. 

“We have to build systems that can do that, and can talk platform to platform, operator to operator,” he asserted.

Gianni stressed that the greatest vulnerability to field data mobility remains the bloat of proprietary software. He cautioned defense contractors against delivering standalone systems that rely on complex, custom API integrations, dependencies that ultimately worsen real-world data bottlenecks.

To maintain high tactical speed, defense technology providers need to focus heavily on developmental piloting and on automated data mesh frameworks that enable low-latency execution at the tactical edge without requiring vast on-site data warehouses.

Treating ERP software as a weapon system

Lefebvre acknowledged this push toward modern edge operations requires addressing deep technical debt within legacy platforms that have stood for 20 to 40 years. Legacy systems, siloed data architectures, static procurement policies, and massive Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) databases built for fixed, centralized databases and data lakes create massive operational friction for modern forces operating in distributed, agile combat environments.

To address that, Lefebvre said, “we’re treating our business systems as a war-fighting function. If an airman or guardian cannot order a critical part, or a base, operating in a forward location, can’t process a logistics transaction and get that part to even more forward-deployed forces, we’re failing in our operational mission.”

To eliminate this operational friction, the Air Force is aggressively prioritizing modular cloud-native architectures, open-source codebases, and robust zero-trust security controls, she explained. Rather than merely trying to protect the network perimeter, modern defense configurations are embedding granular protection directly into the data layer itself, giving operators the agility to move securely without waiting on slow central authentication servers.

Balancing mission risk and automation

The integration of these next-generation capabilities means that human personnel must adapt alongside the software stacks they deploy, noted Frank.

“We’re acquiring a lot of robotic and autonomous systems right now,” added Lefebvre. “So, we need to take that next step of, how do we educate the workforce on how to actually use them? And then, how do we build our doctrine around this kind of new capability?”

The military and industry partners must invest in comprehensive training programs to ensure the workforce knows exactly how to employ autonomous systems at the edge. As the Defense Department deploys modern capabilities that operate beyond the physical speed of human cognition, it will also require a greater level of technical integration to deliver continuous, risk-based command decisions at the edge.

“Every security decision is ultimately a risk decision,” said Frank. As a consequence, Authority to Operate (ATO) protocols must adapt dynamically during active engagement. “When we are operating at an edge or in a full kind of competition environment, there are going to be greater risk acceptances made based on what we need to accomplish the mission.”

Looking ahead over the next three to five years, Gianni suggested that contractors must prioritize developing comprehensive autonomous stacks. That includes paying close attention to the security of mobile solutions and ensuring that data fabrics, such as data meshes, can handle unclassified and classified workflows simultaneously, all the way to the edge. 

At the same time, Gianni added, contractors must plan for emerging developments, such as quantum computing networks, quantum timing clocks, and advanced quantum encryption, which will fundamentally change the dynamics of the digital battlefield.   

This article was produced by Scoop News Group for DefenseScoop and sponsored by GDIT.