As many as 98% of personnel on active military duty believe that effective decision making is now reliant on the quick delivery of trusted data. Our survey of decision makers in defence and aerospace across the UK, Canada, the Nordics, Australia and the Middle East also found that 90% see an urgent need for more seamless information sharing across domains.
Multi-Domain Integration (MDI) has been earmarked as an approach to bring this much needed accuracy of information, connectivity across domains, and speed of delivery to troops on the frontline. The key driver: to optimise ultimate decision making. By deploying technologies that can link critical data across land, air, sea, space and cyber, we can bring a more comprehensive and accurate picture of the operational landscape to those in the proverbial – or sometimes, literal – firing line.
Clear decision advantage
At present, that clarity of information is difficult to achieve given that so much of the data derived from these five domains is available in both the civilian (open source) and military (secure) context. The challenge here is not only knowing what information is available, but what is relevant. For many decision makers, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.
The opportunity that MDI brings is to wade through the hay, and to make the most in-demand needles visible much faster. For more than half of decision makers surveyed, improved situational awareness (54%) and improved quality of decision making (51%) were offered as immediate benefits of doing so – understanding troops’ real-time situations and how best to instruct them being two immediate upshots of having the correct information to hand, in real time.
Indeed, speed of decision making was also seen as a clear benefit of MDI among 48% of respondents, confirming the three-pronged benefits of information accuracy, speed of access and communication to the frontline.
As my colleague and our Head of Products Mark Todd MBE surmises: “When executed properly, Multi-Domain Integration will provide forces with a clear decision advantage.”
Keeping nations and citizens safe
A lack of visibility caused by the sheer proliferation of data and the lack of tools to connect and filter it, would be a problem in any business or industry context. The consequence in defence can, of course, be much more severe than lost profits or missed KPIs.
In this area of society perhaps more than any, there needs to be an acknowledgement of data’s dynamism in the modern, information battlespace.
To borrow a quote from Mark Fitton, Senior Engineering Sales Manager at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence: “The complexities of the modern battlespace demand a higher standard of integration, cohesion and seamless interoperability to bridge the gaps that have historically impeded swift action. We need to look at information as a dynamic force rather than just a static resource. Information must be timely, actionable, intelligent and available. It doesn’t solely inform but also empowers decision-makers to respond with agility and insight.”
MDI offers this agility, this enabler of collaboration and this driver of more accurate and timely information to those in vulnerable and high-pressured situations. It triggers the implementation of automation, AI and machine learning, advanced connectivity solutions and CEMA systems that will ensure greater system interoperability.
Vitally, it will arm those who strive to keep our nations and citizens safe, with the information they need to do so.
Read our new report, ‘Optimising Data and Decisions: Delivering decision advantage straight to the front line’, to learn more about the role of MDI in enhancing decision making.
Multi-Domain Integration
We're working with partners, and investing in product development, to overcome the challenges of multi-domain operations and integration. Our work will enable actionable information when it’s needed most. We call this decision advantage.