Photo By Jim Martinez | A team at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is targeting data congestion challenges by...... read more read more
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JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas – Not many people enjoy traffic and, even less, sitting idly in a traffic jam. At Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, it’s congested data highways and digital traffic jams stunting optimal operations that is driving Lt. Col. Kyle Kremer and his team to action.
Originally from Windham, New Hampshire, Kremer is director of operations for the 45th Test Squadron. He and his team, as one of eight finalist for the 2022 Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center Innovation Rodeo, are proposing a commercially available network that would relieve data congestions by providing dedicated pathway speeds up to 800 Gigabits per second.
Kremer provided some insight into the necessity of an increased transport pathway and his thoughts about representing the Network Bandwidth Expansion-Eglin team in San Antonio as a finalist.
Q: What is the name of your idea?
Network Bandwidth Expansion – Eglin, or NBE-E
Q: What is the problem you’re solving?
The Eglin tri-base enterprise in Florida, which includes Eglin, Hurlburt Field and Duke Field, is constrained to a shared 10Gbps transport layer. Sharing this relatively small transport layer hinders their digital transformation initiative and fielding cloud-based test tools and data analytics capabilities. Data throughput is limited or causes a tedious, timely manual process to share data and information among organizations.
Q: What is your solution to that problem?
Our solution is to install commercially available network switches to the existing Eglin optical transport layer to, initially, link 18 test and acquisition organizations across 43 sites. Customers will no longer share a 10Gbps network or manually hand carry terabytes of data. Instead, they’ll receive a dedicated data transport pathway, ranging from 10Gbps-800Gbps, to share data near real time.
Q: How did you come up with the idea?
To meet the future needs of the Air Force and Department of Defense, the 96th Cyberspace Test Group realized networks don’t support moving forward with joint all-domain command and control and avionics cyber testing. After engaging with the 96th Communications Squadron, we realized numerous agencies and stakeholders have similar requirements and were working individual efforts to solve the problem.
It was clear the Eglin acquisition, test and operations community needed a fully integrated model-based systems engineering, digital engineering and modeling and simulation and analysis capability on a common digital ecosystem. To realize the above, a collaborative effort between the 96th Cyberspace Test Group and the 96th CS established a small team to identify stakeholder requirements and develop a technical solution that could transfer large amounts of data and leverage existing infrastructure. NBE-E was the result.
Q. How will your idea help the Air Force deliver installation and mission support capabilities, improve installations or support families in a better way?
The end state provides the Eglin enterprise, a nine wing/wing equivalent and 35 unit base, the ability to share large amounts of test, modeling and program data near real time. Additionally, NBE-E enhances secure high-speed big data transfers, analytics, web services access, communications, and connectivity for cyber, electronic warfare, radio frequency, weapons and next generation testing.
Q. How does it feel to be selected as a finalist for the 2022 Innovation Rodeo?
It’s an honor to be selected as a finalist and represent the NBE-E team that’s worked extremely hard over the past year to overcome technical, cost and schedule challenges to make NBE-E a reality at Eglin.
Q. You’ll be spending a week in San Antonio, learning from leading innovators, collaborating with industry partners and networking with peers, senior leaders and innovation teams. What are you hoping to gain from that experience?
Continuously learning new things is a personal passion of mine. The opportunity to meet and collaborate with other military and industry peers and leaders that like to think outside the box is an exciting opportunity. I look forward to that opportunity and learning how to refine and pitch an idea in a short amount of time.
Q: Why do you think innovation and a culture change that empowers Airmen and Guardians is important in today’s Air and Space Forces?
I like the saying, work smarter, not harder. We not only need to work smarter, but faster as well to respond to an always-evolving environment. A solution to anything is out there, and it’s important that we empower our Airmen and Guardians to think outside the box, innovate and contribute to the problem-solving process.
Q: Is there anything you would like to add?
I'd like to recognize and thank the NBE-E team for all their hard work. We are a small team of people who haven’t taken “no” for an answer and are always finding ways to make NBE-E a reality.
The 2022 AFIMSC Innovation Rodeo will be streamed live on Aug. 19. For more information on the rodeo, visit https://www.afimsc.af.mil/innovationrodeo/.
| Date Taken: | 08.08.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 08.08.2022 15:00 |
| Story ID: | 426796 |
| Location: | US |
| Hometown: | WINDHAM, NH, US |
| Web Views: | 46 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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