Digital Air Combat Operations with Col Garrett "Nails" Hogan

Lauren Bedula 00:00 Welcome to the digital warfighting series with CENTCOM. I'm Lauren Bedula With Hondo Geurts. And we're the co-host of Building the Base and launching this really exciting series with US Central Command focus on bringing technology and innovation to the warfighter. Today's guest is Colonel Garrett Hogan, who goes by “Nails”. We're so excited to have you here and to dig into what you do every day….what drives you in terms of mission and some examples of real technology adoption in the field? So, “Nails” thanks so much for joining us. Col Garret Hogan 00:31 Yeah, no problem. Happy to be here today and share whatever I can to move the mission forward. Hondo Geurts 00:35 Yeah, that's awesome. Now, so as we get going here, and maybe just the set context a little bit, why don't you give our listeners a little bit of sense of your background, how you how you got in the Air Force, what you're doing in support of the CENTCOM mission now? Col Garret Hogan 00:50 Yeah, no problem, sir. That it's easy. I can do that. So, I actually entered the Air Force in 2001 As a graduate of Embry Riddle Air Force ROTC program and then became an electronic warfare officer on the RC 135 Rivet Joint. My first deployment out here to CENTCOM was actually in January of 2004. So, I'm celebrating my 20-year anniversary in theater this last month, so pretty good. So, 24 years electronic warfare officer I've worked surface air aggressor, I've worked theater ballistic missile defense, I worked for NATO for three years, and I got a chance to be a professor at a school giving back to what brought me into the Air Force The Reserve Officer Training Corps. Today I find myself in a unique situation of electronic warfare officer, I'm the director of combat operations for the 609th Air Operation Center, where I'm responsible for organizing and executing the CFAC’s will or at least the arm of CENTCOM expression of how we're going to engage in theater. Lauren Bedula 01:49 Fantastic. Well, thank you again, for joining us. And just for our listeners who maybe don't have a military background, we've got a lot of tech entrepreneurs, policy wonks, folks on the nonprofit side who join, can you tell those that aren't really familiar with the organizational structure of CENTCOM, specifically, what your role at AFCENT is and tell us about the Combined Air Operations Center, we try to avoid acronyms. Sometimes we're bad at that ourselves. But just get our listeners up to speed on where you sit physically. Today, I know you're joining us from Qatar, and what your organization is focused on in this really important time. Col Garret Hogan 02:26 So currently, I sit as the Combat Operations Director, which is the director of operations for the Air Component Command inside of CENTCOM. And the Air Operations Center has multiple different components with it, one of which where I sit is operations. So the Combat Operations Division, the Combat Operations Division is the very end of the targeting and planning cycle as we go through the process of the combatant command targeting so I receive an Air Tasking Order of what we're going to do from day to day from the Combat Plans Division, which runs about 24 to 48 hours before I get my hands on the plan. Day to day, minute to minute, hour to hour, I'm responsible for maintaining the Combatant Commander and the Component Commander's intent in theater with respect to air operations that are executed and then reacting to things that pop up throughout the day problems that occur throughout the day. And then reprioritizing assets and flexing requirements to make sure that those two Commander's Intents are met. At the end of the day, once the ATO is complete, we take that for initial assessment and then we push it back into the strategy cycle to inform the process as it begins a new and we take the next day and execute it. So, we are a 24 hour a day seven days a week 366 this year, days a year constantly operating division. Hondo Geurts 03:46 So “Nails” I appreciate the shout out to ROTC as a former Air Force ROTC guy too so good on you there. I'm also old enough to remember the old process of doing things which was you know, bucket loads and desk loads of paper moving each target had its own, for our listener, box of paper that flowed all around and then got checked off by a bunch of folks. Many of us have heard of Digital Falcon as kind of one of the ways you guys are trying to attack this ad digital into digital warfighting. Can you give us a sense of what Digital Falcon is? Where do you turn accomplish with that? And then how it relates to keeping tabs on 1000s of targets simultaneously, that change all the time? Col Garret Hogan 04:27 Yes, sir. Absolutely. That's actually been an enduring effort from both my predecessor and through myself as well. And it's really championed by our commander Colonel Julie Esposito. And she's amazing and driving the requirements for improving this digital warfighting as we move forward. But the original thought of Digital Falcon was how do we use new and emerging technologies to streamline the boxes of paper as you referenced them into something that's a little bit more capable. This Digital Falcon series was birthed probably sometime last year, probably about six months, eight months before I actually arrived on station here and the concept was how do we take this emerging technology that's provided to us through the Maven system to streamline target processing at the time, we weren't worried so much about actually employing it as a tool. We were concerned about what the future of warfare would look like, we get the same effects from the people without actually having the requirement to send them downrange, you distribute your operations. So why do I need an intelligence analyst in place at Al Udeid? Why can't they be at their home station, and they go home at the end of every day, and they're not deployed, but the extra cycles, the extra time that they have associated at home where maybe they have a training requirement? Or maybe they have some other mission requirements that they need to maintain currency, instead of doing it on a replicated simulated process? Why not log into this distributed intelligence system that we're developing and do target development for real so that was the impetus for Digital Falcon, how do I distribute the intelligence architectures so that I can develop targets all over the world for the region or using the assets that are available to me at home station, and that turned out to be really good. And it culminated essentially, in Digital Falcon Oasis two, and that is where we had a cross component cross domain, multi-level big CENTCOM exercise, with every component feeding into every other component, we're all working on this digital target workbench, where we're developing targets simultaneously across domains. And we achieved, I don't remember the exact number anymore, but it exceeded our 1000 targets per day. And it was very effective. So, as I'm sitting at the CAOC as the senior operations duty officer, as I'm sitting in the seat, I'm seeing targets come in from various DGS, distributed ground stations. So, intelligence nodes around the world, I'm seeing targets come in from different components, Land Component, or Maritime Component from Special Forces, all of these assets are feeding into the system. And as I see these targets being developed in the system, and working their way through the dynamic targeting process, I see various different entities jumping in and jumping out, jumping in and jumping out. And to me, the user, it's seamless, I see a puck literally just a rectangular piece of graphics information moving its way physically through the kill chain, as all these virtual players are adding more and more information to it, and me as the offensive operator who's managing, you know, what, what aircraft am I going to assign to that target? What bomb am I going to assign to that target? What's the desired effect, I'm getting fed from the entire information architecture, and it greatly changes the way that I do dynamic targeting, so that now it's not a bucket of paper, or post it notes being passed back and forth. I'm getting all of the actual ground-based users feeding their information directly into this puck, and I can read all their notes as I go, and they're sorted in a way such that it makes sense, and it allows me to pull up that puck and brief the strike authority from that point on wherever we happen to be operating, In one of the Digital Falcons, we had our target engagement authority actually back at Shaw, and we briefed him virtually on target engagement. As far as I know, that's the first time that's really been done using that system ever. And that was an exercise, it wasn’t a real world so, caveat there, but we managed to make it work and prove the concept. And today we're proving it in the real world. Because we're actually doing that right now, Lauren Bedula 08:21 I want to pull on this kind of the concept of proving it out in the real world. Because with the exercise, you've placed a lot of emphasis on developing muscle memory, which requires consistency. And it sounds like you've been running these for quite some time, and you have a busy role and increasingly busy time. So why has it been important to you and AFCENT to keep up the drumbeat of these digital exercises? And can you expand a little bit on how you balance that with your other responsibilities, particularly in a time where these are evolving from exercise to real world activity post October 7 attacks. Col Garret Hogan 08:54 So right now, we're in an actual exercise, while we're in the environment that you see in open-source media regularly about everything that's happening in the Red Sea, all of the turmoil that's occurring down there. And the way that we can keep those separate is because of the digital nature of the environment. So as I'm running the exercise on the main part of the floor, while they're also running the primary operation, I've got my dynamic targeting cell with their distributed architecture also working in parallel and the two are sync in such a way that while I'm doing the exercise and the exercise injects are coming in, I can identify a exercise different from a real world puck and they can be processed simultaneously using the same process. Now my operators know that if we get to a situation where something needs to be handled in the real world right now, they have all the authority in the world to go okay, exercise pause, we're going to focus on what we need to focus on and get that taken care of right now exercise we'll get back to you in a minute. Hondo Geurts 09:55 So that's awesome. Again, I harken back to the days of old and hearing what's possible now when you can actually transform to an all-digital world, you know, fast iteration rates, exercises and real-world operations occurring at the same time. You know, if I draw on my SOCOM days, it was always really important if we're going to act in that way to kind of close the distance, whether it's physical or relationship wise between kind of engineers, the real users work in use cases, and then operations and exercises. How do you view that need to you know, if you're going to operate at the speed? How do you view that relationship changing with engineers, folks who are providing technical support to you and your relationship with a real-world kind of operations activities? How do you view all those relationships changing as CENTCOM moves to this digital warfighting, not as a concept, but as a way of doing business? Col Garret Hogan 10:50 Sir, I think they become more important. And that is because of the velocity with which we're operating. So, I'd like to use an example from my time in Afghanistan in in 2011 and 2012, when I worked counter remote control, improvised explosive device, electronic warfare systems. So, for those in the audience that know what CREW was, I was a CREW guy with Combined Joint Task Force Paladin, and one of the things that we saw in that environment was the adversary was almost always faster than we were at employing new tactics on the battlefield. And then it would take us some time to adapt to that. And it was in that time of adaptation that we incurred additional risks. So that would be a period of time where there's something new on the battlefield that is uncovered by what we were providing. And then the privates in the in the specialists that went out there, they were the ones that really had to face that. So, what I saw in that environment was probably my first instance of a field service reps. So having Field Service Reps directly next to you and tied to your elbow. As you're getting these exploitation pieces of information, the sooner I can get that to my FSR, field service rep, to reprogram my system, the faster I could close that gap between when something new showed up on the battlefield, and when the privates and specialists were covered by their systems. So fast forward to today, 10-15 years later. And the great thing that we have right now with what we're doing specifically with the systems that are associated with Digital Falcon, and our dynamic targeting, is our engineering construct is extremely responsive to our requests. So, as we find issues and problems with the system, they are right there to take those lines of code. And in some, in some cases, they have manually reprogrammed it, they're on the floor that night between the exercise rotations. And then the next day we have whatever it was that we wanted, I can think of one example recently where I was talking to, to our representatives after one of the exercises that I don't have the ability to actually feed aircraft into the SIM so I can't get to the weapon pairing and targeting portion of the kill chain the way I want to, I have to use a fake track that's available in the environment. So, I pair it to like a defensive counter air sortie that doesn't have bombs on it, or I pair it to whatever track just happens to show up in the environment. Sometimes it's like Qatar Airways flight 247. Yeah, they're not going to be dropping a standoff weapon from Qatar Airways. But it's the only track I have available in the system. What would be awesome is if you guys would let me build a sim track in the system. The next morning, they had a rudimentary simulation system built in the system that didn't exist before. So, I could put in an F 16 that's loaded with the type of weapons so my guys could practice the weapon pairing, targeting and engagement criteria, I can put in the appropriate speeds and distances to target. So, when somebody paired something to a platform, they're like, that's too far away, that's not going to work. And that gives the kind of the old family feud big red X sound back to the operator, which is good feedback that what you're doing is bad. Don't do that, do the right thing, not the wrong thing. And that time and space is super important when we talk about simulation. So that was the beginning of building a process that ingests an air tasking order and then simulates tracks back out based off of that which provides more realism which engineers only get if they talk to the operators and are there on the floor with us to see what we are and aren't doing what we do and don't need and how they can make the simulation more immersive. To get better training across. Lauren Bedula 14:24 Everything we talk a lot about on our show Building the Base is how to bring an idea when really a great idea in this sense to fruition. And we find that policies, their processes, their culture is often a barrier to executing on something like this. How in this case did a very good idea come to something that has been so consistent and successful. Col Garret Hogan 14:46 So I'm gonna borrow a term from my British counterparts, the amount of winging I hear on the floor every time we announced a new exercise is monumental. I hear it all the time, until they see how it actually works. And you let them and I'm gonna, I'm gonna use this term. And I don't mean to be to be flippant about it. But there's educational theory tied to it, you let them play in the system. Yeah. So what I've found is that if I give them access to the system, and give them all the tools and toys, and let them just go through it for the first day or two of the exercise, don't worry about the yellows, don't worry about assessments, just let them get in there, get their hands dirty, try to break it, mess around with it and figure out how it works. Then day three, and four, now you can get there after deal flows and assessments and the guys and the gals are more tied in and have more investment. The other thing about day one and two and allowing them to play with the system is you get great debrief points out of it specifically for those engineers that we just talked about. Because if I take a raw operator, and I give them the one on one of how to operate the system, and I say I need you to show me what you would do, or what you would want to do to pair a weapon to a target, and they go to weapon pairing, and they click on this and then they click on that and like oh, hey, the airplane’s right here. Oh, hey, the bombs are right here. Oh, hey, all the targets are right here. Wow, that's really intuitive. That's good feedback the same way that where do I find weapons? How come? I can't? Why are they over here, that doesn't make any sense. That should be over here. That's great feedback. And it's unvarnished feedback. So just let the let the exercise team just get the basic academics. And then you know, it's classic, but it's the crawl, walk, run. And you know, when you look at Olympic class sprinters, they didn't just become Olympic class runners overnight. At one point for them running was fun, not a profession. So, you got to let them go have fun and go play for a little bit before you can turn them into an Olympic classroom. Lauren Bedula 16:41 That's awesome. And just hearing your energy and passion for what you're doing, it seems contagious to me. So, I can see how you can be successful in an effort like that with a little bit of patience, giving them access to technology, and then encouraging others to bubble up good ideas so that their feedback is heard. I think that's really important. But also, to see how you could spread throughout the region. Pivoting you talked about just events in the region with the Red Sea. Over the past couple of months, I was wondering if you can just give an overview of how broadly speaking, the Combined Air Operations Center has changed in terms of your role, because of events in the region are dialing it back a little bit, how are things going. Col Garret Hogan 17:20 So let me take it from a perspective of people as opposed to a perspective of any kind of military assessment of the situation, because that is well beyond my capacity to provide anything accurate. And I'm sure there are plenty others that can give you much better detail on that. But let's talk about the people, my people on the ops floor are probably the most motivated I have seen in probably since peak OEF days. And that is because they are getting a chance to go out there make a difference. So that immediate feedback, that that feeling of purpose, that feeling of making a difference keeps them going. So, from a people perspective, it could not be going any better. Many of my guys are working exceptionally long shifts, especially those that are on the targeting side of the house and this kind of more kinetic side of the house. They're working very long hours, and they want to work those long hours. I say walk around the floor. I'm big fan of leadership by walking around. So, you know, you get into the offices, you see how they're doing. They look tired. I'm like, go home, they say up, they told me no, I'm like, wasn't asking, I'm telling. I appreciate your I appreciate your dedication, but you’re released here and you can go home now. And they don't want to go, like look, I need you tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that, go get some rest, go do something fun, go take a break. That right there as the director of combat Ops is probably the best problem, I could ever hope to have that I can't get people to detach and go home for good reasons. So that we're in a good place. From that perspective, the morale is exceptionally high. Everybody values what they're doing and what we're doing. And they see how it ties into the into the broader aspect of national security and, and global stability. And that's huge for them. Hondo Geurts 19:05 Now, you know, talking about motivating and you know, together we're stronger, you know, there's a number of I think tech companies and folks in the tech community who maybe five years ago or 10 years ago kind of were detached from national security and kind of thought, you know, weren't really involved one way or the other. Some of that was I think, on the DOD side not helping them get involved. Some of that was just they didn't understand how they could impact this global situation the way they do now. What's your feedback to them as kind of an end user that gets something down the road? What things enable you to do things better with a product or an algorithm or something when it gets to you and what things frustrate you when something comes to you from one of them and what feedback would you give them as they're thinking about how they might contribute to this digital warfighting concept, cooperation versus competition? Col Garret Hogan 19:55 That would probably be step number one on it. If I can get tools that work together, even if they're developed by separate entities, but they are baked in to have cooperation from the beginning, that is huge. So, interoperability specifically with our joint and coalition partners is always a challenge. But I saw it when I was in Afghanistan. Last year I was in in Baghdad at the US Embassy for a year. And I saw some of the same issues there. When we start looking at the assets that are on the ground in that environment. Interoperability is everything and the more interoperable you can be from various different sources, the stronger your position is technologically. And that is the angle we took at the embassy is that by looking at us capabilities, and US products, those are all interoperable with everybody, generally speaking, everybody and everything in the in the NATO construct. So that gives you a much larger perspective on the types of material you can get and your future. As you move to an environment that's more permissible. In that domain and future integration capabilities that you have with the partners that you want to have. I can't tell you, and this has disclosed me as the Director of Education exercises and training at the US Embassy last year, I can't tell you how many times Iraqi general officers would come up to me and complain about the Russian and Chinese stuff. And I'm like, well, I should have bought American, because the stuff either didn't work, or it didn't work with other things, because it was very central line. And that is something that the US specifically has that we have in exceptional strength. But we have a lot more capacity when it comes to developing things that are designed to work together. What frustrates me is when I get things that I know should work together, but don't cooperation versus competition in this domain from the commercial side of the house and the industrial side of the house will move us a lot forward a lot faster. Lauren Bedula 21:53 Thank you for highlighting that. And I think this theme of cooperation versus competition is so important across the ecosystem, but especially in industry as we think about digital warfighting and what the future looks like on that front. So, Colonel Hogan “Nails”, you are so busy. It's a very important time. Thank you for joining us to talk a little bit about what you do every day. But more importantly, thank you for your service and your leadership on this front. It's so interesting to hear everything you're leading over there. Col Garret Hogan 22:20 Thank you for your time. I really appreciate you inviting me to this and yeah, I'm absolutely happy to share. Hopefully something I said sparks, sparks a light of desire in somebody and motivates them. Thank you so much for your time today.