Episode 17
Supply Chain from Fuel to Forces with Scott Hume
Logistics of supply chain could be the difference in a successful mission for on the ground forces or the cyber warfighter. Scott Hume, managing director of operations in contested environments at MITRE, speaks to the importance of tactical planning and innovation to assist our troops. Carolyn and Mark discover the best ways industry can assist the warfighter.
Episode Table of Contents
- [00:47] Globally Contested Logistics Strategy
- [07:17] Supply Chain Challenges
- [13:47] Constant Intellectual Property
- [21:28] Globally Contested Supply Chain
- [30:27] Robot Dogs
Episode Links and Resources
Globally Contested Logistics Strategy
Carolyn: Today's guest, Scott Hume, is the managing director of operations in contested environments at MITRE. Scott has been with MITRE for more than 20 years. He’s responsible for shaping the company's globally contested logistics strategy, particularly for one of its sponsors, the US Air Force.
Today we're going to talk to Scott about how our government and our military enhance their capabilities in contested environments through partnerships with industry and academia. We’ll also discuss how the industry can best connect with the DOD to help safeguard our nation and support our military.
Let's start out Scott with how MITRE does a lot of work with the Department of Defense. Can you tell us what areas and with which military branches you do work with?
Scott: Let me first start out because some of the audience may not be aware of MITRE. In fact, when I came to MITRE over 20 years ago, I was disappointed that we weren't the company that made soccer balls and soccer cleats. I quickly learned that MITRE operates R&D centers for the government. One in particular is the Department of Defense, which is our National Security Engineering Center.
Particularly of the 20 years, I spent the majority working with the Air Force. But MITRE works across all branches of the Department of Defense as well as the combatant command and the joint Chief of Staff. Throughout the Air Force, I always say that I've had seven different careers. At MITRE, I've been able to work in IT, cyber, command and control, programs, as well as counter improvised explosive devices. So counter IEDs during the war on terrorism.
Remembering Pearl Harbor
Carolyn: What area of the military and the branches are you working with?
Scott: Primarily I'm working with the Air Force, leading an opportunity to develop MITRE's globally contested logistics. Let me break that apart for you. When we talk about logistics, it's really anything from fuel, water, ammunition to food. It’s getting equipment as well as our forces to the locations that they're going to have to fight in.
The contested pieces, I'll pause for a second and remember the day of December 7th, 80 years ago. So on this day today, an adversary decided to bomb Pearl Harbor and our forces there. That was the last time that we actually were in a contested environment across the globe. Where we didn't have freedom of maneuver, freedom of navigation and we're in that environment today with our pure adversaries.
We no longer have the full freedom to move our forces or supplies, like some would call the greatest generation. Perhaps we can meet that same call as we look at how to, first of all, develop the capabilities our DoD needs to deter that fight with a pure adversary. But if that pure adversary chooses to fight, we have the capabilities to win and execute that fight. If you look at the logistics piece of it, it goes all the way back to the Napoleon wars.
Napoleon once was quoted as saying, "Logistics wins the wars." MITRE is not a logistics company nor are we looking to get into that business. We're looking at how we provide our system engineering and integration expertise to this domain. If you read the 2018 national defense strategy, you don't have to read the classified version. There's an unclassified version that's out there.
Understand Logistics and Supply Chain
Scott: You quickly will understand that logistics is our underbelly. The way that the DoD has positioned itself for conflicts, it takes months. We move massive amounts of material and it's analogous to the way the Hume family goes on vacation. Whether it's two days or two weeks, our suburb is packed with everything that we might need.
That's how the logistics community is when we go to these conflicts. You saw that in some of the withdrawal of Iraq. Why did we have all of that equipment? Some of it may not have been necessary. Because we plan and go to war by doing, "What if this happens? Well, then I need that piece of device."
Mark: Is that because of the reality of geography that we're typically fighting wars across oceans and that's just challenging in its nature?
Scott: Moving equipment, fuel, water, I believe 80% of it is fuel and water, and that's a huge challenge. Also as you brought up, our conflicts over the last have been more of a way game. But we will get into this. I'll contest that there's a home game fight to this with a pure adversary, especially if we talk about cyber and other EW, electronic warfare and other things.
Carolyn: You said that the logistics are our underbelly. Do you think that's true for other adversaries or is it really unique to us?
Scott: It becomes more of a logistical challenge when you're fighting in an away game. So if you're fighting and it's a home game for you, you have more access to your supplies. That itself is a challenge.
Supply Chain Challenges
Scott: If we look at our pure adversaries, whether it's China or Russia, if we focus on China, you're looking at the tyranny of distance across water that we would have to rapidly move supplies, whether that's sealift or airlift.
And then just things we can learn from going through this past pandemic, our supply chain challenges. If we look at the cyberattack on the gas pipeline in the Southeast just recently, that starts to get you thinking about this home fight. We will fight in all domains, whether it's air, land, sea. There'll be a fight in space as well as cyber.
So if you want to cause chaos or slow our movement down, a cyberattack on our critical infrastructure in the United States would severely impact this fight. If there was a fight, they talk about war of annihilation, a war of attrition, or a war of exhaustion, I don't think we're looking at annihilation as I don't think anyone would escalate up to nuclear level kind of thing.
Attrition could happen. A conflict with a pure adversary becomes a war of exhaustion. If you can exhaust our capabilities to resupply our forces, that's crucial. Then look at using all avenues and fighting in all domains.
If you think about this logistics piece, I'll start within our own United States. How do we get, not only the defense industry base, but our manufacturing up to the speed that we would need to be able to manufacture goods and supplies? And how do you protect them from those cyber attacks? Many of our traditional logistics suppliers don't have SIPRNet. They don't even have NIPRNet. So they communicate in the open. How would we protect that?
How Do We Protect the Supply Chain
Scott: You have to get those supplies into the theater, the challenge in and of itself. Then how do you get those supplies and protect those supplies? How do you get those supplies down to the tactical edge for when they need it in a matter of days?
Carolyn: I feel like you explained what contested environments mean, but I'm not 100% sure. Figuring out how to secure the supply chain, secure the communication lines, is that what you do?
Scott: That's one aspect that MITRE's looking at, working with our DoD sponsors. There's also the contested piece. I talked about jammers. They will jam our communication so we won't be able to communicate. We mentioned a fight in space. So imagine not being able to have our satellites or have satellite communications.
Our peer adversaries have radar technology that will be able to detect our fighters, detect our Navy as well. We won't be able to just kind of roll in onto the country of one of these peer adversaries and just go deploy the Army like we did when we went to Iraq or went through Afghanistan.
Mark: You hit on so much stuff here, Scott. We could spend an entire week unpacking this. Those different domains probably are massive efforts.
Scott: When I describe that from the industry base to theater supply to the tactical edge, most people say, I'm describing one of the most complex system engineering problems that this country faces within the DoD. It's not an elephant that I'm talking about. It is a herd of elephants. How do you decompose each one of those?
Many Facets of Those Elephants
Scott: There's many facets for each one of those elephants that we have to look at. That's one of the values that MITRE brings. We try to look at these hard complex engineering problems holistically from that defense industry base or even small businesses, or academia. Look at how they could help, all the way to that warfighter at the tactical edge on an island in the Pacific.
Mark: Are you specifically working with the Air Force or is it a broader kind of audience that you're having these conversations with?
Scott: It's broader. I primarily work with the Air Force. But in this case, when we're talking about globally contested logistics, it's broader DoD. It's beyond the DoD as well because we need to look at our allies and partners. So how do we work with the state department? I talked about the home game aspect of this. It's working with the Department of Homeland Security as well.
We call it a great power competition in this competition phase. There are aspects of commerce and treasury that are involved as well, diplomacy. The military is just one aspect of this. There's all of the government that needs to be looking at this.
Mark: It feels like a multidimensional or four-dimensional arena that we're trying to manage and use to our advantage.
Carolyn: How does industry help with this? Mark and I are on the industry side. What are best practices for industry to support our military and to help with these problems?
Scott: If we break it up in certain aspects, let's talk about the supply chain aspect. How do we protect our supply chain, how do we protect our businesses from cyber attacks that are involved here?
Constant Intellectual Property
Scott: We don't have constant intellectual property being evacuated by our competitors. From that aspect, how do we look at leveraging new technologies like autonomous drones, things like that? Perhaps it's an unmanned aircraft or even sea vessel that is delivering a logistics package on that island in the Pacific. How do we look at technology from that aspect of it?
Then also looking at aspects of 3D printing, additive manufacturing. Imagine if you actually could quickly 3D print a part in the middle of the Pacific so that you could get a plane back up and running. Instead of having to wait for it to be shipped to you or flown to you. There's a lot of different technology spaces that could apply here.
Carolyn: How does the DoD prefer that industry engage? What's the best way?
Scott: There are avenues which industry can engage with the DoD. You can always look for requests for information, RFIs if they have or requests for proposals through the acquisition community. But I would say one way that industry can engage is also through MITRE.
MITRE's role is to be that bridge between industry and the DoD in this case. I'm on LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn for our folks. They can reach out and connect there. There are many aspects where industry can play here again to help from all aspects of globally contested logistics.
Mark: Thinking about the supply chain and all the challenges we seem to be having in civilian life.
Carolyn: Just getting our Christmas stuff.
Mark: So the military has TRANSCOM. Aren't they like military logistics? Isn't that their charter?
Aggregating the Supply Chain
Mark: I wonder if Secretary Buttigieg is working with the military to help them with stuff like this. It just seems like that's a perfect area where those two entities can work together to try to solve problems.
Scott: No criticism with TRANSCOM, but TRANSCOM has been used to doing logistics in permissive environments. They've had months to aggregate supplies.
Mark: Not days and weeks?
Scott: Again, not to be critical of it because there are some great things that TRANSCOM did, but disaggregating our supplies in Afghanistan was a huge challenge for them. There's a cultural aspect of how we do things differently. There are concepts of operations that need to be rethinked.
How do we analyze our data to be more predictive on our logistics front, and be more predictive on the health of our aircraft or rotary vehicles? There's a lot of aspects in the supply chain whether through the pandemic or the supply chains that we're all facing in our lives now. It's all something that we, both industry, academia and others, can really rethink about how we do our logistics differently.
Mark: Can you spend a minute or two delving a little bit into the cyber side of this to talk a little bit about this whole concept of the contested logistics, as it relates to the cyber side of it.
Scott: I see the cyber side of it will definitely be a huge play in this. So many of our industry bases have some network defense capability. But probably not the most latest or many companies don't even have a cyber framework that they're following.
The Attack Framework
Scott: MITRE has what we call the Attack Framework, which is readily available off of mitre.org. It talks about how industry can leverage different policies, procedures, or capabilities that they should be looking at protecting their business from multi-facets.
Mark: Are you talking about more of the defense industrial base or all like industry?
Scott: I would recommend all industries. In particular, our defense industry base, which they are looking at. Our financial institutions are heavily involved in cyber protection. But if you look at the supply chain where we have minerals that we must need, are those minds protecting their network? Probably not.
It hadn't occurred to them to think about those. That raw material, where it's getting manufactured, if you shut down that factory through a cyber attack, imagine the impact that could have.
Mark: Have you found or heard about industry's willingness to participate in this collaboration or do you find that industry resists this?
Scott: From a cyber protection perspective or from contested logistics?
Mark: Just working with the military.
Scott: There's been some hesitation for some of their industry-base. I would say the non-traditional defense industry base to work with the military. The military has gone on a campaign to open those doors more to small businesses and other nontraditional industry bases.
I hope to see our fellow patriots stand up and want to work with the military. From a cyber perspective, cyber has become more pervasive in our society. With all the different attacks that have happened, you're seeing the industry base really step up there.
What Contested Logistics Supply Chain Means
Scott: When we're talking about globally contested logistics, we spent five minutes just having me describe to you what contested logistics really meant. There's an awareness campaign that a lot of folks just aren't aware of. The environment or future environment in which the military would have to conduct operations.
Carolyn: MITRE facilitates this between industry and government. Can you talk about how MITRE would go about developing options to deter attacks on the supply chain, cyber, critical infrastructure? What does that look like for you? Like a day in the life of Scott.
Scott: MITRE's role is one, making sure that we can help our DoD capture what those challenges and problems are. What kind of requirements are they looking for, whether it's both operational requirements or technical requirements? The MITRE, often we would start to look at what a prototype might look like to help flush out those requirements.
That's where we can really look with, partner with industry to see if there's technology that can be integrated into those prototypes. Often, it's not just one capability or one piece of software or hardware. It's often looking at it from a systems of systems approach.
MITRE's role is looking from a system engineering perspective. It’s looking at how we integrate different capabilities to maybe solve that challenge space for the DoD.
Carolyn: When you say prototype, it’s like you're developing an architecture or a process or a plan rather than a single prototype. Am I interpreting that right?
Scott: It could go from an architecture framework. It could also be an actual no hands-on prototype, not one that MITRE produces or sustains. We're not in that business but one that could just help visualize what a system of systems could do.
The Coolest Prototype
Scott: I wouldn't even call it a .1 version. It's more of a 0.2 version. Those in the software world would know. That's something that helps the DoD then understand what the requirements are. How they could use those systems and then be able to go through the acquisition process.
Carolyn: What's the coolest prototype you've ever worked on?
Scott: One of the coolest ones I did is called Localize. The premise behind this was when I was working counter IED. So counter improvised explosive devices. The premise about Localize is it was using your phone. It was allowing Iraqi citizens to let US forces know where these IEDs were being hidden, whether it was under the ground, in a building. The premise behind it was instead of trying to find a needle in the haystack, the IED being the needle, you turn the haystack into sensors to tell you where that needle or that counter IED is.
Carolyn: What do you mean it uses your phone?
Scott: This was an app that MITRE developed, prototyped, and actually transitioned it to industry to produce it.
Carolyn: It sniffed out IEDs?
Scott: It allowed citizens to report IEDs.
Carolyn: You crowdsourced?
Scott: Yes. It was an earlier version of crowdsourcing because this was back in 2005.
Carolyn: So you're saying MITRE invented that term crowdsourcing? I'm just kidding.
Mark: MITRE invented the term raid parties.
Scott: That's a thought of how MITRE has a concept that we're thinking we're working with a DoD. They're like, "How do we get this concept?" So we build a little bit of a prototype and then see if it can be operationally used.
A Technology Transition
Scott: And then do a technology transition to an industry partner to take it further, build upon it, produce it, and maintain and sustain it. But that was one of my favorite prototypes that I worked on.
We integrated the early use of facial recognition software on it, which we were able to integrate as well. It allowed our force protection folks to be able to test out, if there was someone that was of...
