Digital Transformation: NORTHCOM Confronts Cultural Barriers To Innovation.

• Author: Heckmann, Laura

SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Distance has long been one of the best weapons the Pentagon has to protect the homeland, but new threats are emerging that chip away at the notion that the United States can see an attack coming in plenty of time.

But generational barriers are preventing the adoption of new technologies at Northern Command, its leaders say.

Increasingly sophisticated longrange missiles in the hands of Russia and China, including hypersonic weapons and fractional orbital bombardment systems, have shattered the notion of the homeland as a sanctuary, said Brig. Gen. Paul Murray, North American Aerospace Defense Command's (NORAD) deputy director of operations.

"[The threat] is not one that we thought of, and it's not one that our nation has had to deal with for a very long time," Murray said at the National Defense Industrial Association's Science and Engineering Technology conference in May. Both Russia and China have "very quiet, very sophisticated stuff," capable of firing into the homeland "relatively close" from both sea and air, he added.

Northern Command and NORAD's strategic approaches to these advanced threats range from restructured deterrence models down to the digital realm, where a campaign of experimentation and transformation has been launched with one simple objective: move faster.

The challenge is overcoming cultural inertia, officials say. Meeting objectives requires addressing generational tensions, policy barriers, the legacy acquisitions bureaucracy and the growing volume and complexity of data.

NORAD and NORTHCOM Commander Gen. Glen VanHerck recently testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces that the greatest risk for the United States "stems from our inability to change at the pace required by the changing strategic environment."

Keeping up with that pace is not a thinking or innovation problem, said James Rizzo, chief data officer for the commands. It's a transition problem.

"From the digital transformation perspective, the goal of our program really is not wrapped around technology," Rizzo said. "It's more about generating an environment of innovation within the headquarters."

Trying "four or five, maybe six different ways" to get at innovation has revealed more through failures than successes, Rizzo said.

One source of failure was the infamous "Valley of Death," which Rizzo preferred to call the "trough of disillusionment"--a phenomenon that swallows innovative technology in...