Recently, news broke that the United States Air Force (USAF) had partnered with Constellation Network to tackle the issues surrounding big data within the military, helping to unlock traditionally siloed and non-accessible data and data sources securely.
The company will be using its unique technologies, attempting to bridge the gap of real-world adoption for blockchain technologies by enterprise and business use cases. The issue, in an institution like the USAF, is there is data from sources like drones, planes, and satellites that need to be secured, cleaned and consolidated.
However, these data sources, commonly referred to as Multi-Domain Command and Control (MDC2) at the U.S. Air Force, are traditionally disbursed, disconnected and complicated. This has led to the military institution to look to new companies, and technologies, to help streamline the access and usage of this data.
The Daily Chain spoke with Ben Jorgensen, the CEO of Constellation Labs, to find out more about why the USAF is partnering with them and what this new technology can do at a governmental, military, level.
Jorgensen explained what Constellation’s aims are with their contract at the USAF.
“In simple terms, it means we are working to provide support and solutions for decision making across various systems. A command center, at the USAF, has inputs that are mostly manual and not automated,” he began.
“Furthermore, their data collection occurs across different data sources from aircraft, buildings, satellites, drones and other USAF assets and data is not seamlessly shared across devices and organizations.”
“This is having an impact on the data lifecycle. The data lifecycle is very broken starting with data collection and storage being siloed and ultimately impacting upstream decision making with an organization’s management. This is happening within the private sector as well as the public sector.”
“Just think of all of these devices that are collecting millions of data points every day. If we can collect all that data, and trust the data is valid, we could create some incredible insights and automated applications – artificial intelligence – just by understanding how all of these systems work in correspondence with one another.”
It is clear from Jorgensen’s assertions that there is a huge need for better data control and consolidation, especially at the level of the USAF which should be at the cutting edge in many areas, but will struggle to achieve this with low-quality data.
Jorgensen went on to add just how the power of Constellations protocol will help in this regard, and how it will be an innovative and never-before-seen usage of a decentralized network.
“Constellation’s Protocol, which provides data developer tools and Spore Platform (analytics and dashboard), will improve data validation on downstream streaming data collection/processing while adding cryptographic security at scale – which has not been done across a decentralized network!” explained the CEO.
“This is important as centralized data silo’s can be hacked, spoofed, or compromised. As such, we are improving not only the security but the data lifecycle for improved upstream data decisions providing visibility across the USAF organization.”
“This will create a trusted standardization for interoperability and improved AI. Our vision is to onboard isolated data sets, from the USAF, which will be processed and made available on Constellation’s open network for future development of new business applications across queryable database.”
“This will embrace a vision of interoperability of streaming data, beyond a single owned ecosystem, and expand with endless opportunities with other industries and organizations.”
Jorgensen goes on to explain how their technology, which is blockchain-like through their directed acyclic graph and protocol, is the solution to minimize centralized network security threats and where data is critical for missions and operations.
“Our initial strategy is to navigate the organization and establish clear deliverables and solutions with those that want to further invest their resources and time,” Jorgensen added. “
“Constellation believes that a blockchain-like solution, directed acyclic graph and protocol, is the perfect solution for an organization looking to minimize centralized network security threats and where data is critical for missions and operations.”
“Cryptographic security, applied to existing technologies, is not only a need, but a must-have for an organization that is faced with dynamic security threats.”
