At Sigma Defense, President and CEO Matt Jones has a vision for how GovCons should be working. In a word: together.
The GovCon world “is not reflecting the agile development and iterative processes required to incorporate and leverage modern technologies,” he said. Government contracts tend to be siloed and fragmented, and industry solutions end up following suit.
“Capabilities are aligned in verticals, and it’s very difficult for one vertical to work with another vertical,” he said. “We end up with sensors and systems and satellites and communication systems that are not able to talk to each other, even if they’re made by the same company.”
Collaboration offers a way forward, and Sigma Defense is bringing this idea to life in support of CJADC2, Defense Department’s vision for a new kind of interconnectedness between all the service branches, partners and allies.
“In terms of CJADC2, we have purpose-built our effort around having a communications division, a software development division, a bespoke hardware manufacturer, and more to follow, in an integrated company,” Jones said.
All these different players “are operating as one company,” he said.
“There’s a free flow of talent moving across our divisions.,” Jones added. “We’re regularly holding cross-functional meetings. The technology is shepherded across each of those capability stacks in order to come out the other side in a way that can be leveraged not just our company, but by any organization.”
Sigma Defense is well-positioned to take a leading role here, as the principal industry player supporting the Navy’s Black Pearl initiative, a secure DevSecOps platform that unifies and streamlines software development across the DOD enterprise. Black Pearl’s common DevSecOps baseline has been accredited with Authority To Operate, or ATO. by the U.S Navy, which helps accelerate the development and deployment of new software.
“We have taken companies who are developing new AI algorithms, object detection, recognition, all kinds of sophisticated processing tools that do not have an ATO, and enabled them to deploy those forward,” Jones said. “We can take their software and put that in our infrastructure. They will then get an ATO and it’s allowed to deploy forward. We see ourselves as essentially the landscape upon which capabilities will be developed and delivered for the government.”
That’s a unique approach within the GovCon landscape.
“Many companies want to develop their own thing and deploy it forward, so they don’t have to work with others,” he said. “The government might buy 20 different AI capabilities for 20 different reasons, but those 20 companies currently are all fighting with each other, instead of finding out what is their unique attribute that the government could leverage. We’re saying instead: If you do this really well, let’s not arbitrate the capabilities. Let’s find out together which ones the government and warfighters needs to get forward, and help them get that capability at speed.”
All this presents a very different vision of how government contracting might operate in support of vital mission requirements.
“We envision a place where all government contractors can work together: an ecosystem of capabilities, contracts, and contractors, who are working together to deliver an outcome,” Jones said.
Such an approach could help government overcome current challenges around where data resides, how it can be shared effectively and how systems can and should interoperate.
“Right now, those things make something like CJADC2 very difficult to implement,” Jones said. “Government will ultimately need to find the right trusted partners: big, small, even huge coming together with a shared ethos.”
By leading that vision, Jones is looking to drive not just better outcomes for government, but also continued growth for Sigma Defense.
“We are developing a solution that pulls all of this together in support of CJADC2,” Jones said. “We have a program of record, Stingray, that is a tactical relay for full motion video. We are extending it from full motion video to be Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) as well as Electronic Warfare. We are taking those capabilities, miniaturizing them, and deploying tactical-edge software enabled through DevSecOps that allows the processing to happen at the edge.”
The military has an urgent need for such a capability.
“Sensors need to talk to shooters. The Air Force has to be able to talk to the Navy, who has to be able to talk to the Army,” Jones said. Whether through CJADC2 or some future construct, “we need shared situational awareness to operate in increasingly complex environments.”
Jones takes a personal interest in the success of this effort. “I served eight years in the Navy, so having the opportunity to continue to support the Department of Defense in our country is important to me,” he said.
And as a 27-year veteran of the GovCon space, he’s excited to finally bring all the pieces together in one place.
“I’ve had three jobs in private industry,” he said. “One was on the sensor side, collecting billions and billions of nuggets of data. One was on the analysis side, processing those billions of nuggets of data. There was always supposed to be a dotted line connecting sensors and analysis to each other, but it did not exist. Now, I can finally help to connect the two.”