WASHINGTON (Realist English). The Pentagon is pushing to create a secure digital environment that would allow classified information to be shared seamlessly with allies and partners, but outdated policies and the fluid nature of military diplomacy remain major obstacles.
“We’ve done a fairly good job rolling out cloud capabilities to Impact Level 4 and 5 [unclassified] environments, and to IL 6 [classified],” said John Hale, head of product management and development at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), during Defense One’s Cloud Workshop on Thursday. “But where we missed the ball is in that coalition space—at IL 6. We’re now putting a lot of focus on how to solve cloud capability specifically for coalition mission partners at the classified level.”
The Defense Department has been working to streamline the numerous networks used by U.S. forces and combatant commands to communicate with partners in the Indo-Pacific region through its cloud-based Mission Partner Environment (MPE). The challenge lies in balancing secure access with the realities of shifting partnerships, where nations may cooperate with the U.S. militarily without being treaty allies.
“It’s not just our Five Eyes partners anymore,” Hale noted. “A lot of these coalition networks are with what we’d call non-traditional mission partners. They may be our ally now, but not six months from now. We need to manage that data accordingly.”
The Indo-Pacific Command remains the primary testing ground for the MPE, but officials see broader applications if the model proves successful. “INDOPACOM was the primary use case that started all this,” Hale said. “If it delivers what we expect, we’ll roll it out to other theaters.”
Still, cultural differences and rigid, decades-old rules complicate expansion. “We’re fighting policies written 20 years ago, when networks were nowhere near what they are today,” Hale explained. “We joke that the only secure computer is the one that’s unplugged. But in the real world, we can’t do that. So we have to secure data and systems as much as possible without sacrificing function.”
