Bringing Computation and Actionable Data to Battlefield Edge Environments

Created March 2022

The Department of Defense (DoD) increasingly leverages mobile devices and cloud-based software applications to perform mission tasks in hostile, constrained, stressful, and less secure “tactical edge” environments. Tactical cloudlets provide secure, reliable, and timely access to cloud resources to enable the rapid analysis of streaming data, networking for disadvantaged networks, and other benefits to carry out mission tasks at the tactical edge.

The Power—and Challenges—of Tactical Cloud Computing

The Department of Defense (DoD) and emergency response agencies need to perform tasks that support their missions, including object detection and recognition, language translation, and situational awareness in computing environments characterized by

limited computing resources
rapidly changing mission requirements
high levels of stress
unstable connectivity
limited battery power
limited technical skills in the field
security vulnerabilities due to limited infrastructure and hostile action (e.g., cyber- attacks)

Providing secure, reliable, and flexible computing resources in these environments means that there is a need to “carve out” a piece of the cloud to make it accessible at the tactical edge in a secure, reliable, and timely manner.

Bringing Computation and Actionable Data to Battlefield Edge Environments

How Tactical Cloudlets Support Missions

The SEI has developed “tactical cloudlets,” which are forward-deployed, discoverable computing nodes that can be hosted on vehicles or other platforms to support missions by providing

extended computing power. Computation-intensive applications and large data sets that exceed computation and storage capability on mobile devices can be hosted on nearby cloudlets.
forward data staging. Data sets needed for a mission can be pre-loaded on cloudlets to support disconnected operations (i.e., cloudlets disconnected from the enterprise).
data filtering and formatting. Cloudlets can remove unnecessary data from streams intended for dismounted warfighters to deal with reduced bandwidth and human attention or reformat data to address physical limitations of mobile devices such as reduced screen size.
data staging. Cloudlets can serve as collection points for data collected in the field from sensors and human input. Data is then uploaded to enterprise repositories as connectivity and bandwidth become available.
secure credential generation and exchange. Stable connectivity to a centralized credential validation capability in the cloud is not needed to ensure that only authorized personnel have access to cloudlets deployed in the field.

While connected to the cloud, cloudlets are loaded with the capabilities that are needed for a mission. After deployment in the field, users can securely connect to the cloudlet to access those capabilities without the need to be connected to the cloud. For some capabilities, the cloudlet may need to reach back to the cloud when connectivity becomes available, particularly for data synchronization.

Software and Tools

KD-Cloudlet

August 11, 2015

Cloudlets are discoverable, generic, stateless servers located in single-hop proximity of mobile devices that can operate in disconnected mode and are virtual-machine based.

Learn More

Looking Ahead

Our work to refine tactical cloudlets continues as technologies change.

Because tactical cloudlets are meant to be reusable, they need to have authority to operate (ATO) every time they are reprovisioned. One focus area for future efforts is to automate the cloudlet provisioning process and make cloudlets ready for ATO to reduce operational time and effort.

Our future efforts also involve

including network configuration for the cloudlet in the process so that it is mission ready and ATO ready
exploring solutions to improve establishing trusted identities in disconnected environments
integrating solutions for opportunistic data synchronization with the cloud

We are seeking collaborators to extend this work. We also want to hear about users’ experiences with tactical cloudlets. If interested, please contact us.