As geopolitical situations evolve, U.S. military officials said the way future conflicts will play out is changing quickly, too. That is why the military is beginning preparations now for potential escalations in the short and long term.
One example is reclaiming an airfield from the jungle on Tinian Island, in the Philippine Sea less than 2,000 miles from the coast of China. The U.S. Air Force used the island’s North Field to launch the nuclear attacks on Japan during World War II.
In places like Tinian Island, the infrastructure is sparse. This is why Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said new technology that helps troops quickly adapt to their surroundings is essential.
“We need fully capable units with all the assets they need to fight China or possibly Russia on short or no notice,” Kendall said. “We need units fully ready to either deploy or conduct operations in place, also on short or no notice.”
During Special Operations Forces Week 2024 in May, Cubic Defense introduced technology that allows units to operate using a much smaller footprint. The D-Tech Fusion Edge High-Performance Compute, also known as “The Box,” is one of those tools.
“It took racks and racks took probably three or four trucks to do what hauling racks of servers around to do what this one box will do for the future warfighter books out there,” Retired Lt. Gen. James Terry, vice president of business development and strategy at Cubic Defense, said.
People involved with designing The Box said it can run a remote command and control operation. Additionally, it can take data produced by the tools in use and quickly format it for easy interpretation by ground teams as they make combat decisions.
“It’s about converging data transfer, translating that into intelligence, and then delivering that to a decision making in a timely manner so they can make the right decisions, and that’s what this does,” Terry said. “This is going to be exactly what those warfighters are going to need out there at those levels.”
Cubic Defense currently has several government contracts, but they have not confirmed who will use The Box first.
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