In Defense of Data: How Real-time Insights Drive DOD Missions Forward

Former Naval Officer Juliana Vida was flying a mission to protect USS Nimitz — a supercarrier of the U.S. Navy — when she learned the true value of data. Vida’s co-pilot had accidentally fired chaff, creating a loud bang and a plume of smoke. As it turns out, this accident happened because a routine maintenance check found a faulty chaff launch switch on the helicopter. However, Vida and her co-pilot didn’t know about the failure because it wasn’t properly logged into the system used for maintenance checks.

“The information existed,” she explained. “It just didn’t exist in the cockpit when and where we needed it.”

Over a decade later, data has become somewhat of a double-edged sword: It has the power to produce valuable insights and help warfighters and operators make real-time decisions with confidence that directly impact U.S. national defense. But the sheer volume is nearly impossible for humans to process all on their own. So what steps can the Defense Department take to leverage data in a way that better informs the mission? Vida, who now serves as the Chief Technical Advisor for public sector at Splunk, joined other defense leaders at GovExec’s recent webcast, “Data and the Future of Defense,” to help answer that question.

Check out some key takeaways from the webcast in the article below!