Increase military readiness with AWS IoT for Defense and National Security

In this post we discuss how AWS IoT for Defense and National Security (IoT4D) increases readiness by driving operational excellence for manufacturing and supply chains, improving sustainability for buildings and bases, improving equipment maintenance and uptime, and providing situational awareness at the tactical edge.

IoT workloads securely collect, aggregate, and store data from fleets of physical assets, analyze IoT data using AI/ML tools at the edge or in the cloud, and enable organizations to take proactive action based on actionable insights. The source of data is increasingly coming from connected edge devices, which can range from small, low-power devices like sensors, to more powerful devices like edge gateways, and cameras.

Managing these assets is relatively straightforward for physical assets that are stationary, easily accessed, and where the data is unclassified. However, when it comes to IoT4D, additional considerations apply. Assets like aircraft, ships, weapons systems, and ground equipment are often mobile, deployed in austere environments (where connectivity may be a challenge), and involve data that must be protected at the highest classifications – including Secret and Top Secret.

AWS IoT provides services and capabilities to connect and manage billions of devices that let you collect, store, and analyze IoT data for industrial, commercial, and tactical edge workloads in defense and national security at confidential, secret, and top secret classification levels. AWS enables innovation by providing the a full range of IoT services. From secure device connectivity to management, storage, and analytics, AWS IoT has the broad and deep services you need to build complete solutions.

Industrial IoT4D  

The Industrial IoT4D segment encompasses depot management, warehouse operations, logistics and supply chain, smart factory, predictive maintenance, and factory automation. These use cases answer customer questions like: how to move from reactive to predictive maintenance, how to extract and migrate data securely, how to I optimize the supply chain to improve customer outcomes, and how to lower operating costs.

By delivering operational excellence through improved processes and procedures, readiness is increased, costs are managed, quality is improved, and supply chains serve the needs of the warfighter. Lockheed Martin’s Intelligent Factory Framework (IFF) is an example of IoT applied in the industrial sector. The IFF lays the groundwork for faster and more agile production operations with a new, cybersecure and standards-based network that can automatically predict maintenance needs, analyze production performance, and monitor quality.

Commercial IoT4D

The Commercial IoT4D segment provides capabilities to improve facility security, maintenance, and operations – leveraging digital twins that provide a virtual representation of the building, campus, or high-value asset, creating a virtual representation of any physical environment and creating a holistic view of operations.

By enhancing sustainability for buildings, campuses, and other physical facilities Commercial IoT4D answers questions like how to create a single source of asset data on all structures, how to keep my facilities secure, how to manage devices from multiple vendors, and how to reduce energy and maintenance costs.

For example, Novetta’s Platform for Integrated C3 and Responsive Defense – PICARD – is being deployed across United States Air Force facilities, consolidating sensor data from multiple systems to improve security, access, and facility operations. PICARD uses an IoT approach to sensor fusion, integrating dispersed forces with intelligent systems to enable rapid decision-making across the full spectrum of defense operations.

Siemens and Carrier are embedding AWS IoT TwinMaker to simplify and accelerate the deployment of digital twins that optimize energy and space usage, resulting in accelerated innovation and deployment cycles, reductions in energy and maintenance costs, and optimized occupancy management for safe, secure, and sustainable facilities, from permanent locations to forward operating bases. These capabilities enhance global sustainability initiatives by enhancing security, managing energy consumption, and making facilities more efficient.

Tactical Edge IoT4D

At the tactical edge, where connectivity may be austere, and decision-making needs to be accelerated, IoT provides command and control (C2) capabilities for reconnaissance, surveillance, multi-channel communications, condition monitoring and equipment maintenance, force protection, humanitarian assistance/disaster response, logistics optimization, and unmanned warfare. Key questions for these use cases include how to synchronize data in remote, disconnected locations, how to communicate incidents quickly and securely, how do leverage AI and ML to accelerate the data-to-decision process to support mission outcomes, and how to maintain situational awareness.

At the tactical edge, situational awareness is the outcome of connecting and integrating sensors for intelligence gathering and tactical response. For example, Novetta developed a solution to improve situational awareness during disaster response efforts, combining AWS storage, edge computing, loT technology, machine learning, long-range low-power wide area wireless networking (LoRaWAN), and Novetta’s Ageon ISR software.

The value of AWS IoT for Defense and National Security

AWS IoT increases operational excellence, sustainability, and situation awareness for meeting our defense needs and increasing readiness with integrated services to collect, store, and analyze IoT data for industrial, commercial, and tactical edge workloads.

AWS IoT secures your IoT applications from the edge to cloud, providing application and device security and connectivity across all workloads and security levels.

AWS IoT makes devices more intelligent by bringing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and IoT together, creating models in the cloud and deploying them to devices with up to 25x better performance and less than 1/10th the runtime footprint.

Finally, AWS IoT enables you to scale easily and reliably to build innovative, differentiated solutions on secure, proven, and elastic cloud infrastructure that scales to billions of devices and trillions of messages.

Read our recent blogs on how the cloud enables common operating picture and sustainability. To learn more about AWS Cloud Computing for Defense, visit our homepage or contact our team.

Phil Silver is a retired U.S. Navy Captain. At AWS (Amazon Web Services) he is the Worldwide GTM Leader for IoT for Defense & National Security (IoT4D).