Amid the chatter of the trade show floor at DTX Europe, hosted at London’s Excel, I ask Colonel Ian Large what the modern battlefield looks like. “Today’s battlefield looks contested, congested, and confused — and absolutely swamped with data,” he replies. Large has one of those job titles that could only exist within the confines […]
Amid the chatter of the trade show floor at DTX Europe, hosted at London’s Excel, I ask Colonel Ian Large what the modern battlefield looks like.
“Today’s battlefield looks contested, congested, and confused — and absolutely swamped with data,” he replies.
Large has one of those job titles that could only exist within the confines of the UK military — he’s the British Army’s assistant head of information exploitation.
He adds, “Different sorts of data structure and exquisite military data are being fed in from sensors, informers, or intelligence sources; the scale of it is huge.”
However, he reflects, once you strip a lot of that away, the battlefield is essentially the same old place: “A terrible clash of person-on-person; a clash of wills, endurance, and confidence.”
Most physical battles now are more long-range, though. Others are fought in the digital landscape.
This is what draws Large to technology conventions. Like every other tech leader of a big brand, he’s keen to see how other CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs are transforming their operations. Digital transformation in defence can learn from other sectors.
He reveals that the British Army is currently partnering with like-minded organisations — ones that operate in contested, pressurised environments with similar comms challenges and limited bandwidth.
F1 partnership
Currently, this includes a partnership with Formula One, where teams are collecting data rapidly from sensors on vehicles and people. Both organisations make impactful decisions at lightning speed.
According to Large, one of the main challenges both organisations face is where and how they process huge quantities of different data sources.
“Do we gather all the data and send it to somewhere with big servers, lots of processing power, and time, and then let them feed some of this information back to us?”
“Or do we bring the algorithm to the site (whether it’s a battlefield or a racetrack) using cloud computing at the edge, where we don’t have the processing power or the time, but we can get to it quickly.”
He adds that the army’s choice often depends on its phase of operation and the time it has available.
“If we are in high-intensity conflict, we are probably going to take more risk and make decisions based on what we can get hold of quickly enough; if we are in a build-up or stabilisation phase of conflict, then we’ve probably got a bit more time to make sure that we are absolutely right and we take in as much info as possible,” he reasons.
How Formula One accelerated its remote tech plans
Oil and gas is another sector the British Army examines closely, primarily due to their similar environmental and security conditions.
“There’s a huge amount of safety data and other material an oil rig on the North Sea needs to manage. What are they processing on-site? What are they sending back?”
“The point I’m making is that we are very open to conversations with industry and partners because we certainly don’t have all the answers. We probably have some things of interest that might help our partners, and they will certainly have info and skills that help us,” he says.
Large adds that, as part of its ongoing DTX programme THEIA, the British Army also runs an industry consortium with representatives from different companies who dial into a monthly call to find out more about what the army is up to.
“They might say, ‘Hey, you know what? I know a person or a bit of the business or a product that may be of interest to you. Let’s have a conversation.’”
Future Soldier
At this level, the British Army now seems far more open, agile, and flexible than it did even a couple of years ago. When it comes to digital transformation, defence has opened up.
This can be attributed to a wider change in the army that was introduced four years ago when the Ministry of Defence announced the Future Solider Programme.
The MoD described it at the time as “the most radical transformation programme in over 20 years” for the British Army. The use of advanced technology was highlighted as a key pillar.
The programme includes a support package of £8.6bn worth of equipment investment over the next 10 years, bringing total equipment investment to £41.3bn for the coming decade.
Future Solider also focuses on emerging technologies and cyber capabilities.
“With Future Solider, we’ve been on a two-year sprint to make the army more deployable, prepared, and sharper, and that is crossing over into modernisation,” explains Large.
“What underpins Future Solider is delivering connectivity and the digitalisation of the army to make it a modern fighting force,” he adds.
Ian Large, assistant head of information exploitation, British Army
Other projects encompassed by Future Soldier include Project WAVELL, which is the formulation of a set of principles that focus on how the Army of 2035 will fight and operate.
Several strategies have also been laid out for fighting and winning wars as the army deals with future threats to the UK.
Large explains: “These are about how we fight, both within a 2026 timeframe and then beyond that into the 2030s with a modernising agenda.”
Army GPT
For all its future gazing, some trends just come along and transform industries like a bolt out of the blue.
According to Large, the British Army has already introduced generative AIs such as Open AI’s Chat GPT into the army — but he’s keen to emphasise that the army is doing “responsible things with algorithms.”
“We need to make sure that the algorithms we are using are auditable and that the decisions that they help us make are auditable. So, we need to understand what they are, where they have come from, the data they’ve been trained on, how they’ve been built, etc.”
With ChatGPT, Large says that the army is using it on its own data: “It’s just helping us trawl through huge volumes of data. And that’s only going to continue. Of course, we can use some automation, but when it comes to serious decisions, these will always be presented to and taken by humans,” he adds.
Cyber regiment
Another move by the British Army to protect frontline operations from digital attacks has been the reinstatement of a cyber regiment known as the 13th Signal Regiment.
First formed between the two world wars, the regiment was active until 1994, when it was disbanded under John Major’s government.
The reformation of the 13th Signal in June 2020 marked the launch of the Army’s first dedicated cyber regiment — described by the then Defence Secretary Ben Wallace as “a step change in the modernisation of the UK Armed Forces for information warfare.”
Although the 250-strong Dorset-based regiment will formally come under Army command, it has been working with the Royal Navy and the Royal Airforce to secure comms networks on the battlefield, both overseas and at home.
“They’ve got some fantastically trained people in terms of military personnel who help us secure our networks and secure our data both in the business and in the operational space.”
