CENTRAL COMMAND — The 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division deployed in support of Operation Epic Fury and achieved only a partially digitalized kill chain. The technical workarounds used by the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division left the process too slow for combat operations in Central Command.

The 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division invested approximately 3,500 paratrooper man-hours in integration, testing, and experimentation. Sensors, cloud services, targeting software, and fire direction systems used by the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division were developed and fielded for different purposes, on different timelines, and with different technical interfaces. Connecting the disparate systems required bespoke network configurations, data links, constant troubleshooting, and repeated testing.

Drone video and targeting data could be routed to an IL5 cloud environment by the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, but operators in the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division had to check and correct data due to integration and translation problems. Operators in the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division also had to manually transmit targeting packets to lethal fire direction systems because the systems could not reliably exchange information. The lack of direct on-site engineering support made it slow and labor-intensive for the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division to troubleshoot links or establish additional ones, and technical support for the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division was only intermittently available.

The 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division had access to Palantir’s Maven and successfully integrated some, but not most, of its sensors and digital systems with Palantir’s Maven. Data cleanliness and translation problems persisted in the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division even when links to Palantir’s Maven were established. Removing intermediate steps in the fire mission process concentrated more traffic at the receiving end, increasing the burden on personnel processing fire missions and network congestion.

The 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division's legacy kill chain process involved a sensor using full-motion video to observe possible targets. Junior paratroopers in the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division watched video, wrote down grids in notebooks, and verbally transmitted them as fire missions through multiple physical command posts.

Integration approvals for the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division rested with different authorities depending on the systems involved, and the Army command controlling the funds restricted their release for brigade priorities for the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. In contrast, the 4th Infantry Division and the 25th Infantry Division worked with dozens of industry partners and multiple Army program offices during heavily supported prototyping and experimentation efforts. Those efforts occurred largely in training and experimentation environments and benefited from purposeful funding, direct and robust technical support, and access to development partners that tactical formations do not routinely possess. The 25th Infantry Division demonstrated a fully digitized fires chain.