The changing character of warfare will be manifested in the future multi-domain operations (MDO) battlespace where the reliance on data and data flows will become as critical as the reliance today on freedom of maneuver. Mission success and failure is already determined by the Air Force’s ability to collect, process, and exploit data in near real-time speeds and in the future paradigm of MDO, data will become the greatest tool and the most coveted weapon. Data and communications networks that underpin the functional capacity of the Air Force will need to gather, process, aggregate, analyze, fuse and disseminate immense amounts of data, information and intelligence faster than the speed of events in the battlespace.

There is already more raw data than can be transmitted by current network bandwidths. The movement towards MDO paired with the growing number of sensor platforms will only exacerbate the information burden and cognitive overload challenges unless data science and process automation can be integrally harnessed into the planning and operations processes. As multi-domain integration accelerates, attention will be refocused on network design and optimization concepts where the Air Force will need to formulate a grand strategy for the embedded application of big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).