Project Olympus Forges Critical Digital Pathways to Enable Interoperability

The Defense Department is moving rapidly toward the future of warfare in which decision advantage will reign as the decisive factor in deterring conflict, and when needed, defeating adversaries.

Military leaders have long recognized the imperative to maintain the information edge in an increasingly complex and distributed global security landscape.

Earlier this year, DOD announced it had reached a minimum viable capability of Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control, the department's approach to providing material and nonmaterial solutions to arm front-line commanders with rapid access to actionable battlefield information across all warfighting domains and throughout the globe.

The capability represents not only a force multiplier for the Joint Force but will also provide the foundation for ever increasing interoperability between the U.S. and global network of allies and partners.

That ability to work seamlessly across warfighting domains and theaters with a range of partners is key to maintaining the United States' enduring strength around the globe. It remains a prime focus among military leaders that shape how the U.S. plans, trains and fights.

But achieving the reality of seamless integration for CJADC2 between the U.S. and its broad range of partners is not without its challenges.

Disparate technologies among forces along with policy hurdles have presented a perennial challenge for integrating partner nations onto a single network.

Project Olympus, a Joint Staff J-6-led initiative, is working to solve these challenges through digital transformation initiatives that synchronize current warfighting capabilities and enhanced security frameworks that manage access to data at the end-user level.

"Project Olympus is a concept that was formed in the Joint Staff based on lessons learned from previous events that we've done with capabilities employing new technology, such as zero trust and data centric security which is really focused on access control to data based on specific attributes to somebody's identity," said Fred Stanley, the Coalition Interoperability Division Chief within the Joint Staff Deputy Directorate for Command, Control, Communications and Computer (C4)/ Cyber Integration.

Members of Project Olympus work alongside international partners to test, develop and integrate capabilities critical to CJADC2 through iterative experiments and demonstrations.

Over the past couple of years, Project Olympus participated in a series of demonstrations and events involving a range of participants including U.S. Central Command, U.S. Transportation Command Joint Communications Support Element and partner forces from the U.K., among others.

This year, Project Olympus is focused on implementing its first-ever mission partner environment architecture on a live network that will support a U.K.-led maritime mission spanning multiple U.S. combatant commands and involving 16 international partners.

The new security frameworks being demonstrated as part of Project Olympus move the U.S. and partner forces beyond traditional network security methods, allowing for agile and targeted access to critical information on an integrated network.

"We've historically looked at security as the antithesis for information sharing," said Jim Knight, the U.K. lead for Project Olympus during a demonstration last month. "The security folks come in and want to sort of clamp down. With zero trust and data centric security, they are security mechanisms, but they are enabling information sharing."

"I think that's a key focus point," he said. "For the first time, we're getting that balance right in terms of applying more security. And by applying more security, we're getting greater information sharing."

Knight said what Project Olympus is demonstrating goes beyond technology.

"It's a paradigm shift," he said. "We're moving from not only securing our networks at the boundary, having high castle walls... but we're also applying security and information sharing to individual data objects."

Project Olympus' success is forged through consistent test and evaluation of capabilities in complex scenarios involving a dynamic array of capabilities and partner forces.

In October, members of Project Olympus took part in the latest iteration of Bold Quest - a Joint Staff-sponsored multinational demonstration and assessment that provides a proving ground for new technology and warfighting concepts.

During the demonstration, hosted at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, military participants and observers from allied and partner nations gathered to evaluate technical and procedural means of working together across strategic, operational and tactical levels in all domains.

This approach expedites learning and adaptation. By regularly collaborating, coalition partners can identify and address gaps in technology and policy before they create critical risk in real-world crises.

"Interoperability is crucial long before a crisis takes place. Waiting for a crisis to bring partners together is unacceptable," Stanley said, adding that "we need to be able to bring our partners in at the ground floor."

Demonstrations like Bold Quest underscore the importance of iterative demonstrations and assessments to push boundaries and foster a culture of true interoperability.

"We have to keep doing exercises or events, not once a year but multiple times, to continue pushing the boundary," said Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Cavanagh, a Project Olympus representative from U.S. Transcom's Joint Communications Support Element.

That same sense of a need to continually innovate resonates throughout the department.

Last year, in a keynote address titled "The Urgency to Innovate," Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks spoke to cloud computing's necessity in implementing CJADC2.

She said digital foundations, like those being developed by Project Olympus, are helping realize Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control.

"This is not a platform or single system that we're buying," Hicks said. "It's a whole set of concepts, technologies, policies, and talent that's advancing … command and control."