Cybersecurity Spotlight: 75th Innovation Command

“The 75th Innovation Command drives operational innovation, concepts, and capabilities to enhance the readiness and lethality of the Future Force by leveraging the unique skills, agility, and private sector connectivity of America’s Army Reserve.”

A Q&A interview with:

Majors Brian Kime and Gay Mullaney of the U.S. Army 75th Innovation Command

Thank you both for joining us today! Could you please tell us a little more about the 75th Innovation Command and why you’re joining us today?

Yes, of course. The 75th Innovation Command is a new command in the U.S. Army Reserve directly supporting the Army’s effort to modernize in an ever-changing and challenging global environment. We aim first to deter threats to America’s interest and, if necessary, win our nation’s future conflicts. We represent the City of Atlanta team, which is charged with embedding in the thriving innovation ecosystem here in Georgia to understand what research and technology is being created here that may have Army application. We both live and work in Atlanta.

Our unit’s team in Atlanta lives here, and many of us have undergraduate and graduate degrees from Atlanta research universities. So, we aren’t commuting here from the Washington, D.C. Beltway, or Austin, Texas. Concurrently, we are building relationships with our Army stakeholders in the state and region, like the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning and the Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, so we can understand their challenges and technology gaps. We also have deep Army operational experience, so working with these teams is natural for us.

Ultimately, we are aiming to bridge these two communities, making connections between innovators in the Georgia ecosystem looking to apply their technologies and innovations to solve problems and Army stakeholders hungry for modernization solutions.

Could you speak a little more about the role your team would play that may benefit our Georgia stakeholders?

To be clear, we do not hold or pull the purse strings to any Army funding, but we still think we can be valuable members to the innovation ecosystem. We can help articulate the Army’s problems and needs to help determine if there is a fit. We can also submit technology or innovation solutions into the Army Modernization community for evaluation and feedback. We serve in other ways too, like supporting Hacking for Defense courses or serving as judges for Capstone projects. Our team served as judges for both Georgia Tech and University of Georgia’s capstones projects during the 2019-2020 academic year.

Do you have any examples that you could share about where you have successfully made connections?

Yes, we recently helped facilitate a connection between the Army’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment and Georgia Tech, which led to the Ranger Regiment submitting three problem statements for Georgia Tech students to work on during their Spring Capstone. The students were excited to help support the Rangers and built three prototypes the Rangers tested in exercises during the summer.

Are there any modernization events in Georgia that may be of interest to Georgia-based technology innovators and entrepreneurs?

Yes! Georgia is host to several modernization stakeholders across multiple modernization priorities. Two of the Army’s four annual modernization experiments occur in the state – Cyber Quest and the Army Expeditionary Warfighting Experiment.

Cyber Quest is an annual prototyping experiment to assess emerging technologies in cyber defense and electronic warfare at Fort Gordon, near Augusta. Cyber Quest 2020 is occurring throughout September.

The Army Expeditionary Warfighting Experiment (AEWE) is hosted at Fort Benning near Columbus, and involves our partners in the UK Army. Army Expeditionary Warfighting Experiment is the Army’s primary venue for small unit (e.g. squads and platoons) modernization providing those stakeholders a repeatable, credible, rigorous and validated operational experiment supporting conceptual and prototype development. Army Expeditionary Warfighting Experiment will commence again in March 2021. There is a significant clustering of modernization stakeholders in Georgia that need help from innovators in the state.

What should readers do if they want to reach you or learn more?

Feel free to reach out to our team via email, and we can set up time to talk. We’ve also included links to some websites that can provide some good information on the Army modernization efforts.

You can get more information on the Army’s technology focus areas and find out if the Army is a viable market for your company or technology by visiting the Army Applications Laboratory website at https://aal.army.

The special operations forces community has its own platform for technology scouting and collaboration. Vulcan can be accessed at https://vulcan-sof.com

The U.S. Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer Program hosts the Broad Agency Announcements for many RFPs designed for technology startups and researchers to compete for funding. The portal can be found at https://www.dodsbirsttr.mil/submissions/login.

###

To learn more about the 75th Innovation Command, visit: https://www.usar.army.mil/75thIC

To learn more about Georgia’s cybersecurity industries: www.georgia.org/industries/technology/cybersecurity