Army Cyber Center of Excellence announces Cyber Quest 2018

By Loren Blinde July 7, 2017

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On July 6, the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence released details about this year’s Cyber Quest 2018. A Cyber Quest Industry Day will be held on August 11; Cyber Quest candidate packages are due by 5:00pm Eastern Time on August 31.

Background:

HQDA EXORD 057-14 established the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence (CCoE) and designated the CCoE CG responsible for the Force Modernization Proponent for Cyberspace Operations, Signal Communications Networks and Information Services (Signal), and Electronic Warfare (EW), and established the Signal and Cyber Schools. The EXORD further directed the CCoE to partner with the Intelligence Center of Excellence (ICoE) for institutional intelligence support to Cyberspace Operations. To that end, the CG directed the establishment of an annual Prototyping Experiment to seek innovative solutions to specifically close critical capability gaps within Army Warfighting Challenge # 7:

Conduct Space and Cyber Electromagnetic Operations and Maintain Communications – How to assure uninterrupted access to critical communications and information links (satellite communications [SATCOM], positioning, navigation, and timing [PNT], and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance [ISR]) across a multi-domain architecture when operating in a contested, congested, and competitive operating environment.

Intent:

In 2018, the CCoE will partner with the ICoE to conduct the third annual Cyberspace Operations, Intelligence, Signal, and EW Army Live Prototyping Assessment (ALPA) called Cyber Quest. The ICoE will release a separate Request For Information (RFI) in order to simplify the separate contractual and legal considerations between the two centers participating in this event. The two centers will use this combined event to assess emerging technologies against associated Army required capabilities in order to inform current capability development and doctrine writing efforts, validate concepts, and better understand doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel facilities and policy (DOTmLPF-P) impacts for those concepts under evaluation. Cyber Quest will also serve as a risk mitigation event that Army acquisition and capability development proponents can leverage to validate selected candidate’s solutions for participation in Army/Joint exercises and experiments (i.e. Joint Warfighting Assessments (JWA), the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment (AEWE), the Joint Users Interoperability Communications Exercise (JUICE) and Network Integration Experiment (NIE).

Cyber Quest 2018:

The CCoE and ICoE will be looking to government, industry, and academia to present Cyberspace Operations, Intelligence, Signal, and/or EW solutions for consideration during Cyber Quest 2018 (CQ ’18). CQ ’18 will present an operational scenario with opportunities to highlight innovative potential solutions within a live, virtual or constructed (LVC) environment.

The challenges facing our warfighters are too complex to make concept and acquisition decisions based upon a static display (demonstration) of capability. Therefore, the intent of this event will be to discourage inert demonstrations of solutions in a stovepiped, pristine manner. Instead, solutions will be integrated with existing systems, and live,virtual, and constructive data feeds will drive outcomes and concepts toward wartime realism.

CQ ’18 is meant to encourage collaboration between industry, government, and academic partners to drive results oriented, positive outcomes, and innovative solutions. Furthermore, this event will allow solution providers to integrate components into existing Army capabilities within an operationally relevant environment, realistic scenarios, and substantive data injects. Yet, the scenarios are not the primary focus of the event, nor is the desired endstate capturing of a specific scenario objective. The scenario is simply the backdrop to enable an operational evalution of concepts and learning demands in real-time. Therefore, the intent is to establish operational realism but maintain a “No Fear of Failure” environment for these early and innovative solutions.

CQ ‘18 will be executed leveraging an Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) or Division or Corps Tactical Command Post (CP). This CP will be placed into a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) wartime scenario overlay to drive at Joint and Coalition contextual learning demands. IBCT, CJTF, Joint and Coalition staff role players will be incorporated to establish operational realism. This will enable scenarios to use live, virtual, and constructive injects to drive capability learning impacts with as much realism as possible.