US Army eyes MPE push into Indo-Pacific

A US Army UH-60 Black Hawk flies in formation over Yamaguchi Bay during joint exercises with the US and Japan during ‘Orient Shield'. (US Army)

Officials with the US Army's cloud computing directorate are developing a series of technology initiatives geared towards integrating the Mission Partner Environment (MPE) into tactical formations in the Indo-Pacific region.

Service leaders within the army's Enterprise Cloud Management Agency (ECMA) are leveraging lessons learned from ongoing MPE integration efforts with European partners as a way to accelerate employment of the MPE in the Indo-Pacific, according to Pushparani Jayapal, the head of EMCA's cloud enablement division.

The MPE aims to provide seamless information-sharing capabilities such as real-time online chat, email, and file sharing, along with collaborative intelligence sharing and analysis of technologies between US commanders and their coalition counterparts, such as those in NATO and other partner countries.

A majority of these integration efforts in Europe with the MPE are focused on improving data transport between the US and coalition partners, as well as increasing adoption of a hybrid cloud network infrastructure at the tactical level, Jayapal said during a 10 August briefing.

“One of the important things is a hybrid cloud infrastructure … [and] there is a lot of focus within the army enterprise cloud to integrate the cloud with tactical networks,” Jayapal said. The cloud integration effort will not just consist of “just hosting cloud solutions in the cloud space, but also creating an ecosystem where [army units] can share data seamlessly” from the operational and strategic level down to the tactical level, according to Jayapal.