Innovative thinkers gather at USTRANSCOM
USTRANSCOM and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency served as hosts for the Innovation Roundtable.
Optimizing the worldwide movement of government, military personnel and their supplies is no easy task, but it's a task that USTRANSCOM is tackling under the banner of a program called Agile Transportation for the 21st Century, or AT21.
This unprecedented roundtable targeted the best and brightest representatives from more than 80 diverse organizations to explore the "Art of the Impossible" as the event was labeled, and collaboratively work toward the goal of defining long-range future global transportation challenges and identify potential technological approaches and solutions for USTRANSCOM.
Col. Jim Patterson was one of the engineers of the event. "When General McNabb (USTRANSCOM Commander Gen. Duncan J. McNabb) said that he wanted to have a roundtable that focused on industry and government personnel we started talking to people at DARPA, Boeing, IBM, and other prominent industry leaders asking them to participate," Patterson said.
"We also started talking to academia," Patterson continued. "We wanted to gather the brightest and best minds to help us see what the path would be for the next generation of AT21. Over a period of months we began soliciting their participation and received a remarkable response."
"General McNabb's guidance to the planning team was that this event would be different from anything done previously," said Maj. Heather Hunn, an event coordinator, "which was attended by top planners from Dell, Lockheed Martin, FedEx, IBM, Google, Electronic Arts, St. Louis University and MIT (Lincoln Labs)."
McNabb opened the roundtable and welcomed the attendees. "This is your chance to make a true difference in one of the greatest asymmetric advantages our nation has... its strategic ability to move and sustain forces worldwide," he said. "This is your time to help us define the vision, CONOPs (concept of operations) and technology to take our global enterprise to a whole new level and propel us into the future.
"We do a great job, but it takes a lot of money to do it," McNabb continued. "We're looking for ways that we can do it better. We can do this in a smarter more efficient way if we all get together, and that's what this is about. If we can get the right IT, we can."
Those attending the meeting provided new information that will help USTRANSCOM chart its future.
"When they came here, everybody was very energized and participated very well," Patterson said, "and I think we came up with the way ahead that's going to lead us to that next generation. The outcome is that we learned about emerging technologies, and innovative approaches to new discoveries.
"That was the one thing we were trying to figure out, how do we go, how do we build, what do we do next to get to our ultimate destination," Patterson added. "These leaders from industry and academia were able to contribute those ideas. I think we have a good pathway.
"One introduction that came as a result of the conference was gaming," Patterson added. "That technology is something that we hadn't anticipated. Gaming is a technology that I know we will explore in more detail."
Jeff Morris, from Lockheed Martin, was the lead facilitator for the roundtable.
"The outcome was identification of several new technologies that we can bring into the command as soon as possible," Morris said. "There was a lot of discussion on gaming and immersion technology. Immersion is where you go into a virtual space in a computerized world, you become an avatar, which is a fictional person, and then you go through the actual motions of doing your job in this virtual space.
"The beauty is that you don't have to be in any one physical location," Morris continued. "You could transport, in essence, through the Intranet to become an avatar in a foreign country to help solve a problem, because all that information would exist in that virtual world."
USTRANSCOM is one of ten combatant commands and provides air, land and sea transportation, terminal management, and aerial refueling to support the global deployment, employment, sustainment, and redeployment of U.S. forces. Additionally the command assists with national disasters around the world, yet many may have no idea what the command accomplishes daily.
"A lot of the people, including myself, had very, very little insight as to what this operation was," Morris said. "So we, by design, walked into this with no preconceived notions about what to expect, or what the solutions should be. It was simply, here are the problems, how would you solve those and how quickly could you do it?
"I think what's really critical in this," Morris continued, "first of all, this is the first time I've seen this in my 30 years of working with the DOD, the first time I've seen this kind of event as driven by a command. And I think that this is just game-changing.
"Second thing is the support from General McNabb on down is what will make it happen," Morris added. "That's really critical. I think his commitment and vision is what people want, what they want to hear. And I think if they give them these audacious goals, they will deliver."
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