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TAMPA, Fla. — Guns, bombs, drones and artificial intelligence steal the headlines, but a less-snazzy side to the world of U.S. special operations forces is central to accomplishing missions quickly, effectively and safely.
Trailer-mounted shelters, flashlights, mobile command centers and data-protection apps on display at the recent Special Operations Forces Week convention help form the backbone of capabilities of America’s most elite fighting forces.
Across the sprawling convention center floor were examples of cutting-edge products that military officials say represent the kind of nuts-and-bolts innovation that has kept U.S. Special Forces and their private industry partners a step ahead of their adversaries.
“We need to think differently, and we need to move faster. … SOF knows how to do that better than anyone else,” Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience during his keynote speech.
Consider, for example, the humble flashlight.
Flashlights are household mainstays, and with built-in smartphone apps, are now at the tips of our fingers. Still, industry insiders point out the irreplaceable role of flashlights in military missions, whether handheld or mounted on helmets or weapons.
“In a rescue situation, if you’re on the ground or in a collapsed building … light is hope,” said Matt Baker, director of military and federal sales for Streamlight, based in Eagleville, Pennsylvania.
In an interview on the convention floor, Mr. Baker demonstrated several of his company’s products, including the Moonbeam anglehead flashlight issued to Marines at the outset of their training.
“It’s just part of the culture,” he said. “Baked in at Day One of boot camp is a flashlight.”
Mr. Baker offered other examples, such as how military personnel routinely use lights to communicate, signal to aircraft overhead or indicate wind direction.
War and smartphones
Jared Shepard, an Army veteran and president and CEO of Hypori, said his Reston, Virginia-based company offers military personnel a secure way to access sensitive information on their personal cellphones or tablets without compromising national security.
He said the company’s approach centers on giving users a secure window to information stored in the cloud. Users can access the information they need without it ever being present on their devices, protecting the data from adversaries or hackers.
“I assume the device has malware on it, it has bad-acting platforms of some kind, whether you know it or you don’t know it,” he told The Washington Times. “What I enable you to do is access a secure environment,” such as the government’s Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network, or NIPRNet.
“I’m going to enable you to access that environment and manipulate data in that environment but never actually be in possession of that data,” he said. “That way, you can’t lose it. Your device can’t compromise it, and it can’t be — I don’t want to say hacked, because everything can be hacked — but it can’t ultimately be intercepted or be used against the government.”
Keeping data safe is one piece of the equation. Another is ensuring that the data can be shared quickly and easily from one corner of the battlefield to another. General Dynamics Information Technology says its Raven 2 enhanced mobile command center does just that.
The command center, parked outside the Tampa Convention Center throughout the weeklong event, made an impression. The company said the Raven “enables the rapid collection and dissemination of data and insight from the tactical edge, directly to users, and back to the enterprise, significantly increasing the speed of mission impact.”
In layman’s terms, the mobile command center helps process data in real time on the battlefield.
“Data is exponential now. It’s growing so much. You can’t wait until the next day to get the latest imagery” from a drone or another source, said Dale Hogan, a senior program director with the company.
“And that’s what this truck does. It brings continual connectivity wherever you are in the world,” he said.
At an even more elemental level, U.S. special operations forces need shelters that can be set up quickly and easily in forbidding terrain. Jeff Lindstrom, U.S. West regional manager for Weatherhaven, said his company’s TRECC-T trailer-mounted expanding shelter is designed to meet that need.
The company says the shelter can be set up by two people in less than five minutes. It can be used as a command-and-control center, a medical facility, a mobile office space, or for various other functions on the battlefield.
“When it’s time to move, you can pack up quickly and displace it to wherever your next location needs to be, all the while being relatively unseen,” he said.
Like thousands of others on the convention floor, Mr. Lindstrom said his company’s products may not grab as much attention as a next-generation drone or a groundbreaking AI tool, but they are equally important to mission success.
“All of that other stuff is neat. Everybody loves to watch it on YouTube, the guns and explosions,” Mr. Lindstrom said. “But this is the dirty end of the stick. This is where everything is being planned and executed.”
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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