 Okay, we're back we're live doing one of my favorite things in the world that is the military in Hawaii and today we're talking about aloha spark and you're going to be interested to find out what they do and who they are and and how they handle things you don't really expect. So this is really an important thing so we have a pilot among us. It's an eco sonic boat tipa boat boat tipa. Yeah, I get that right. So sonic nice to see your smile and face. You know, and I was always I always felt that pilots, pilots were different, different, like top gun, you know what I mean. I mean, I mean the truth of it is we are different we're all giant nerds and piles still want to admit that but it's, it's the truth, a bunch of really nerdy dudes. It's the truth of course which is probably a good thing. And Anthony calling calling off I get that right. Okay, and tell us tell us, you both the guys are officers you're both here, station in Hawaii party of course. And tell us, tell us about aloha spark actually anything. So sonic is best suited for aloha spark we work really closely together. I'm here on behalf of tron, which is sort of like a subset of aloha spark if aloha spark is all of innovation tron really focuses on software, and how we can use that solution set to solve problems. He called himself a geek but you're more of a geek than that aren't you, you would think and then the pilots show up and start putting you to shame. Yeah, when you're to love the whole world as a geek, I tell you the truth. It's the most wonderful thing we know about this I think that right, you can imagine. Yeah. So, okay, so the Air Force, you know you start out with the notion is the Air Force like every other military service these days. There's a lot of really high caliber of people there. Not only graduates of the academies, you know, but the OCS and who knows how they got to be an officer. And, and the question is, you know, innovation we need innovation American industry and for that matter, everything in America needs innovation. You guys are the innovation mongers. So, why do you have to be separated. Shouldn't there be innovation everywhere in every command in every unit. Why do you have to be separated as a separate organization. Sonic try that one. So that's an excellent question. And I don't necessarily think that we have to be separated. Right. But what always happens is the priority is the mission first and unless you take some subset of your manpower, set them to the side and say you people focus exclusively on innovation and bring an agile mindset to our airmen to make our kill chains more flexible you people will do it unless commanders in military sense or in the private sector unless the the managers of the CEOs up at the C-suite deliberately do that. Then what happens with innovation is a lot of times it just gets brushed under the rug it is a lower priority for everyone because it's not their main job. And so what we've done at 15th wing what our my boss has done Colonel Dobbles is a really fantastic job where he has laid us off to the side said you will focus on innovation because it's a priority for us. Okay, that's all reasonable. And sometimes it's a question to me anyway about the chain of command short story when I was in the Coast Guard. There was a ship that was involved Coast Guard ship was involved in a really tragic failed rescue. I was a lawyer and me and my typewriter my in my in my suitcase. They flew me out to this Coast Guard ship was off the East Coast. And I told the Admiral I rather than the captain of the ship I told him, you have you have to go to whatever I said you're down right now for the investigation. He said well you can't tell me what to do I get my instructions from the district. You know, look at this letter. This gives me operational control of your ship guy almost felt he fainted. What this young lieutenant had operational control of my ship tells me where to go. It was incredible. But it was, you know, necessary I suppose point is that the chain of command people are pretty jealous about their command prerogatives you know you see that all the time in every service. So when you walk in to the captain of the ship or the aircraft or the base and say look we have some ideas for you. How, how does that, how does that person feel about having an outsider come in and tell him what to do. So that that is a that is a wonderful question and Jay like I mean the answer is obviously you're asking a question about like human interaction. Obviously the question is very bright. So number one about command structure. I work for the 15th wing commander, and I operated his prerogative and the military command structure even with innovation is completely intact and it's something that the military cannot operate without. On the other hand, when I feel like you're broaching the subject of how do we approach someone and ask them to develop an innovative idea. Exactly. And they that that question runs the gamut right there are there are you know many commanders out there who are extremely supportive or like and you're like hey sir you know this airman sir man from this airman had this great idea I want to let you know this is what's going on can we run with it. You know a lot of commanders out there are like absolutely 100% go for it and that's completely to be expected. Other ones have actual operational constraints that they just that that are difficult for them to still come to their mission and support innovation because what we talked about a little bit earlier right. Our manpower is a finite resource in the Air Force. And if I'm coming up to you and saying sir I really need you to give me this airman to, you know, so I can work with him for 20 hours a week to get this project done. He may have very realistic real world constraints and not be able to allow that to happen. Right. And so that the response is completely very depending on on who exactly we talked to. Well you have to have good social skills to do this work. I mean I don't know if I have good social skills. I'm sure great social skills would absolutely help. But yeah, I try and do the best I can to be friendly and like well obviously convince them to put their resources in innovation. How about Anthony over here is he have good skills. Yes. Oh, well I said I said yes beforehand anticipating a different question. I, I just wanted to throw in that most of the time when we're interacting and bringing up ideas for innovation, we don't have to do a lot of pushing. It's more of pulling us along. And the pain point exists for the organization and innovation is how do you go about solving that. It's not often that we come in and just say you got to be doing things differently. It's usually like this thing has been driving us crazy for a while but there's all these different factors at play. How do we come up with a solution and as experts in innovation who have gone through the training on that we can teach the models that we know that lead to better solutions. And J what Anthony said is such a great point right it's it's not that we walk into units and say you must do this better. Right like in order for any successful like innovation we can just talk about the products that we bring to squadrons as just being a new startup out in the out in the free market right like people have to want to buy that and people have to want to change their daily habits to align with with whatever new product we have for them in this case it may be a new software solution coming from Anthony's team or it may be a 3D printed thing or a different process coming from my team. Both those are completely fine but we have to convince them to change the way they do things now and swap over to another set and usually those problems are self identified. They're like this is really painful let's involve a low house park and Tron and see exactly what we can do to fix it. No this design this reminds me of design thinking out of Stanford, which is a whole no way of way of thinking I think it and it's like when you have the skills, we have the technology, and you walk into somebody who might be your client say whatever the context is your client. And he tells you what he wants. And then you say women women women you don't really want that let me explain what you really want, because I am trained to listen to exactly what what is at the core of your need. Design thinking helps you do that kind of interaction, so that you come up with the assignment that really gets home on it, rather than the assignment that the in this case the commander feels is necessary, you go through the kind of process. I think it's a balance that you have to walk. You want to help find a better solution than anybody could come up with independently, but you also don't want to validate the people who are experiencing the problem. And a lot of times historically, we have people working on solutions that aren't intimately familiar with what's actually happened. And so they make assumptions or they work off requirements that didn't match the service members actual needs. And then we end up with something that's kind of diverted to you walk the line of design thinking, helping people come to better solutions, as well as taking what they're saying to you at face value and working to solve that. You guys, you guys with volunteer for this unit. Or was it, or is it something women in Coast Guard we had something called a wish list. You have that in the Air Force and was this on your wish list. I will, I will tell you how I got involved in innovation, and then Anthony can talk about about his path. This is not a typical job move in the Air Force. No, it doesn't sound like that at all. Yeah, I still don't know if it's like traditionally good for your career or not. I happen to love what I do so I'm just going to stick around doing it. When you tell them that you appeared on think that kawaii career will be insured. I write up the flag I'm telling you now. I am very excited, very excited for that I can't wait to be promoted to five off the show. The aloha spark used to be a one woman show for a while. My predecessor, major Susan week, she was the only person running it and she just looked like she was drowning and I'm like, Hey, can I help out? That's how I got involved. There's literally that simple as in the right place in the right time saw her stressed out and wanted to jump on board. And then we've just been growing ever since it's been it's been pretty exciting. And yeah, I literally just asked for it. And I wasn't sent here to Hawaii specifically for this but while I was here it's like hey guys while I'm here I'd like to work on this. You've had the ability to innovate for your own selves to grow to grow the unit. Am I right Anthony? I mean, what's your story about how you got involved? Yeah, so I took the squeaky wheel approach and I have saying we could do better until I fell into this new opening. Toronto has only been around for a couple of years and while we were going through the software process we figured out we needed somebody like me as a cyber officer to sign off on some security requirements. So they heard my name, you know, my hunger to solve problems and I ended up here. I think a lot of us just see how much better we could be doing in certain areas and keep fighting for a better solution. And then we end up in organizations like this. Well, so how far do you ride, do you ride the baby so to speak in other words, you evaluate the request or the problem, whatever it might be. And you come up with some conceptual program, the idea to solve the problem. And then who actually executes the idea. I guess it depends on the case doesn't it but can you can you tell me what you know what the experience you have is I mean, did you do you write it right down to the last inch, or maybe stop at some point and let them do it. That's a phenomenal question. There is so much packed into this question number one, there is no standard stereotypical root for the way a project starts from idea to completion. Right, we intercept projects from the very beginning of an idea sometimes not even idea sometimes people just griping about issues that they have at work. Sometimes we pick up a project like halfway through completion, right, sometimes we pick up a project from another base and we're like we want to do it here. In all cases, every single project is different because there is not one path to success we don't just like bring the team in but all right let's innovate this together and like snap our fingers magic happens and the solution pops out right. We have to talk about money we have to talk about the best approach we have to talk about how many people we need involved about how many iterations we need. So really, when I when I brief this I have a kind of in diagram it has a loha spark Tron right next to it some overlap because there are lots of projects out there that involves some hardware components some CPI component along with Anthony software component. And then there are just lines popping up from an all the different pathways we have the success, whether it's through something called the server program the sitter program whether it's through instant doing hacking for defense or x fours or one of their capstone to just a CPI event to just project coaching there is just a myriad of different ways so there is not a typical answer, we will find any way to take a project from here and get it to completion and we work on it for as long as people are willing to work on. You're collaborating you're collaborating and I got it about Anthony does software but what is a loha spark to and how does loha spark collaborate with the software guys. Well, technically that technically they work for me so collaboration is very easy. I'm making notes on this. The. So a loha spark does anything not software related we and we don't develop our own software, we will work with outside companies that have software if Tron doesn't have the capacity to develop a specific amount of code for us. But we do a lot of added manufacturing we do things like virtual reality training we do CPI we do just straight up project coaching, we will take an idea, find the appropriate software company and or source Tron to help work on it with us. And then we do a lot of the outside projects like hacking for defense we will run those projects, even if there is a software base. So we do everything except a straight up coding of software. So what about what about Anthony I mean do you take it down to the last inch, or do you come up with some some kind of program and hand it off. I think our most exciting work is really down to the last inch to the ones and zeros on the code and figuring out how to make it happen. We do do a lot of other stuff as well. Things that we call accelerator projects. So we're just helping people find new ways to do what they're doing. What made us different from just a spark cell is we have developers, we have user experience designers and project managers that take really good ideas, and then turn them into working applications that the warfighter uses. And so that's what happened with our biggest application Puckport, which is a collaborative live flight scheduling software. We had an idea, we work through the authorization process, and now it's in use at over 150 squadrons. That's a great success. It's not limited to Hawaii. It's not. It's spreading out and encompassing more mission sets and diving deeper into the ones that we're already in to take on more and more of the pain points that the scheduler space. Well, you've drawn up a very, you know, expansive view of the possibility of problems and, you know, as an outsider, it strikes me that, you know, the military has a lot of problems that are at the first of all, it changes. That's the first thing. It's not like it's static in any way. So, you know, you could solve a problem today and a week later there's another one that you never, you know, have heard of until a week later. But the other thing is, you're in a kind of a pressure situation. For example, for example, I would imagine that your organization had something to do with COVID over the past year, that people came to you and said, look, we want to protect the Air Force and the airmen and women, you know, from COVID. But give us some systems that where we can make sure that it's all working correctly and that we get the maximum, you know, protection and for that matter, the maximum vaccination and whatever, whatever is necessary. Have you had projects around COVID? Yes, we have. So one of the most exciting projects that we've had goes to show how much we've grown since we first started with Puck Board. It took a year to get to production, figuring out all the different technological and bureaucratic blockers. But with Stoplight, our COVID application, we were able to deploy something a week. What Stoplight did is took people who are manning entry control points at the medical group and giving out basically flyers saying, you know, have you been in contact with anyone with COVID? Do you have any symptoms? And then once they're all good, they let them through. That's a really routine process, perfect for software. So we were able to make a simple web app that doesn't require the storing of any personal identification information and put that up in a week so that instead of a person standing there, it's just a sign. It has a QR code and you go through the checklist and you're good to go. And that goes to show that we're not just coming up with something new and sticking with it. We understand that we're always going to be coming up with something new. And how do we respond to new things quicker and more effectively? Stoplight's a great example of that. It must be very stimulating to be able to do that. To have the, you know, the freedom, the latitude to do that and to have the gratification of knowing that your ideas have worked here, done what you wanted and that they have been, you know, used by people elsewhere. That's a kick. Absolutely. You guys have mentioned the whole thing about hacking, okay? Big issue in the news today. Very important and certainly it affects the military in the sense that we really cannot afford to have hacking on our federal government or our military. Have you had projects along those lines? And, you know, what is that issue like today? How much of a priority is it? I think we're in a good position there. What has been a challenge in the past is having to factor in security and defenses against hacking while wanting to incorporate new features and respond to the ever changing world. So what we did in response to that is build out an architecture that allows us to combine modern practices of DevOps that's combining development and operations with the security that the government needs to operate at. We call it DevSecOps and we follow the Air Force's Chief Software Officers DevSecOps reference architecture with all the software we deploy. So that's just a lot of words to say that every step along the process has security baked in and it's out of it. So when we do new features, we know via our tools that it's going to be secure and we can rest easy at night. Jay, I can't… Yes, Sonic, I want to hear your thoughts on this. I can't overstate this. Like the tactical advantage and the strategic advantage that Tron brings to the battlefield is like when they write a program, yes, it sounds easy to just deploy something on the App Store. It is not that case when you're working with the military. Our cybersecurity is the bedrock of what allows us to have a competitive edge over China and the Pacific, right? And so our cybersecurity has to be tight. And so the fact that Tron Hawaii can literally put a program out in a week and update it whenever they need to under these really stringent software requirements is absolutely incredible. And it is an ability that the Air Force has never had before. And these new software factories sprouting up Tron Hawaii, obviously being my favorite and being the only operationally focused software factory in the Air Force, they are redefining the way that we are able to iterate and be agile in a 21st century fight. It is so important what they do. And like I can't overstate this to anyone who doesn't have any software development. This is a complete game, Andrew, what Tron does. Thinking about game changes, I wonder if you have a reaction to what happened with, was it the colonial pipeline hack recently? The colonial pipeline was the object, although the government didn't admit that immediately, was the object of a ransomware attack. And ransomware, according to 60 Minutes, is something that you can get on a website organized in Russia real easy. And you don't have to code one line of code, you can do it with drag and drop with this website. Anyway, so, you know, big question is how do you stop this sort of thing. And until now, I haven't heard of anything where you shrug your shoulders, but there's no way to stop it. Well, the FBI, if you saw this last week, they were able to recover about half of the Bitcoin payment. Okay, and how did they do that? It's out of a serial on TV, it's out of a cable movie, I tell you. How did they do that? Well, they worked with the people who were about to pay the ransom. And somehow they were able to track the ransom. This is out of a movie. And so they didn't get it all back. I think it was $5 million altogether, but they got half of it, because they stepped into the line of payment somehow. I don't know how. And it seems to me that, you know, with some creative juice on this sort of thing, we can even solve that problem. Good for the FBI that they figured out how to get it back. Nobody had done that up to that point, except maybe you guys, I don't know. But it just shows you that there's this opportunity for innovation, even in something that doesn't look like this opportunity for innovation. Thoughts? I've got a lot of it. Anthony, as a cyber officer, once again, go ahead brother. Well, I'll say as a cyber officer, I think that's a little outside of my scope. But, you know, drilling into the thought that you had there, there is definitely room for innovation, pretty much in every aspect of the military. I think it's something that, and the government, that we are embracing more and more, and I'm so excited to see the leadership and the workforce buy into it. And I think that it's going to produce outcomes that we never imagine. Well, that happened here. So one thing that strikes me, a couple of thoughts that I like your view of this is number one is, although you don't find this so much in the civilian community, the military community find a lot of training. You find training. You know, when I was in the service and my observation of people in the service over the years since is they do get trained. There are classes about this, that and the other thing before you know it, you have a PhD and you haven't, you had to have the PhD, because that's the way it got set up. And likewise, you know, we talked before about the changes and the new things happening. And you guys have to be at the cutting edge because you have to know more than your clients about to solve problems. You have to bring to the table, more than just, you know, an innovative spirit, you have to have, you have to have knowledge, you have to have technique, you have to have resources about how to solve problems. So, my question is, when Anthony or any of the other staff around you son, you know, goes through the daily or weekly or annual experience, you must have plenty of training for them. Because they have to be up current on everything that's available right. I mean, honestly, like, okay. Should we devote our resources to trying to make sure that every single airman knows all the latest technology and all the latest like theories on how to solve problems. I don't think so. I think that is a losing in ballgame where the net, we, you know, because of the explosion of information and the global interconnectedness is just getting wider and wider and wider. What we need, and this goes directly to what Anthony was talking about a little bit ago, is we need airmen who are comfortable innovating. We need airmen who have an agile mindset who when a problem is put forward in front of them. No big deal. We're going to sidestep around this and we're going to, and we're going to keep going right that builds flexible kill chain. That makes it so whatever effects we need on target will actually happen because our airmen are used to doing that. And there are several ways we do that. I want to highlight one of the programs that that Anthony's Anthony's team is pushing so aggressively, and it's the STI the software development immersive right you talk about this ransomware attack. That is bad. Right. And what the military needs is they need airmen and soldiers and Marines who have software fluency who have a cybersecurity fluency. Right. And so one thing the Air Force is investing heavily on which Anthony's team is is spearing is the is this in education this immersive education on software development. And we can find the airmen who have that natural neck just like you said who want to know more than everyone else who stay up late and are on, you know, think tech wise webcast you know just just watching the old episodes and have that passion. We need them to be working for the Air Force in a software capacity or an innovation capacity in order to stay ahead of the competition. The way we do this we find passionate people give them an agile mindset and then put them in a position where they can make decisions. And that's what we're trying to do here. What's an agile mindset and agile mindset to number one. So agile mindset to me. Everything's focused on the customer, and we iterate iterate iterate iterate iterate iterate until funding stops for people are done. Right. Like, we test it. It didn't work. No, okay, test it again. We test cheap and fast and it's, it's this startup mentality this lean thinking mentality. That's what I think when I, when I talked about an agile mindset. I want airmen who are faced with the problem. All right, let's try something else. Develop five minutes of a solution. If it worked good, we're going to keep building on it. And obviously that's what agile software development does. That's what Anthony's team does. That's what Thomas Edison did. That's excellent. It doesn't work. Yeah, that can be more powerful than a correct assumption because it more narrowly confines your ideas of the world. It's science, isn't it? It's what it is. Agile has a lot of basis in science and doing the scientific method, taking your assumptions and then testing them in the real world. I mean, I think it's very useful for any military command organization to have this kind of resource available to it. I was, you know, I was wondering, I asked you beforehand whether other services have adopted the same approach or not, or whether other services have alternatives that go to the same place. Is this happening? I mean, if it, if it's, if it's happening in the Air Force, it should be happening elsewhere. Every service has some sort of innovation component to it. I'm obviously biased, and I don't want to speak necessarily to specifics about what the other services do. I will just say that the Air Force doesn't the best. I'm very proud of what we do. I'm very proud of AFWORKS and the effort that they push forward. And the fact that operational units across the Air Force have their own spark cells who focus solely on innovation. The other thing that I'm proud of is Tron Hawaii, who is that right now they are expanding, right? They are the first software factory that was part of an operational wing that is out there to solve wing problems and not Air Force level problems or big problems. It is, I'm going to solve wing problems and it's this grassroots theory. And Tron Hawaii is now expanding and filling out Tron nodes across the entire DoD. The Air Force is very focused on this grassroots up, enable airmen across the Air Force from the lowest level, and let's see what happens. That's the way the Air Force is approaching it, and I'm a huge fan of it. Well, it sounds like it's not only internal, internal systems, internal problems, but also external, because you can, you know, you can take data and make something of it. And figure out solutions that have a geopolitical effect or intelligence effect. And that's, that's got to be part of it. So, Anthony, we're almost out of time here and I want to ask you one more question and that is this. This is, this is such a vitality in you guys, I'm so impressed actually. You know, is this a good job for somebody outside the Air Force to think about getting into. I mean, if I, if I have a little experience if I'm excited about software programming and what have you, problem solving, is this something where I could, I could, I could get into, I could get into Tron and have what you have. How do I do that. If you're a person who is excited about solving problems, and you want to contribute to the United States, then more than ever the military and the US government are looking at ways to incorporate your contributions and work hand in hand. In the past, we've had a hard time translating commercial victories into government victories because of the processes that we're separating us. With programs like the Small Business Innovation Resource, the SBIR, and efforts and innovations efforts in general, we're focused on both fields, private and public working together to push what the US is capable of and how we can serve the citizens in new ways. So work with companies that are working with the military or with the government and look for new ways to push them and to push us, and we'll both achieve new heights. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. All right, this is so important to me. It's, it's, it's this thing right here, the, how do people get involved. Number one, to your point, Jay, if you'd like to join the Air Force or you'd like to join an organization like Tron, and you're, you're, you're committed to the United States is a huge life decision. Yes, please do. If that's not your cup of tea, that is okay. We, the Air Force works with small businesses across the globe, across the United States on the daily basis, right? Go to lowhousepark.com, get in touch with me if you want to hear about things like the Small Business Innovation Research Grant or the STTR, which is a public-private partnership. You can have an impact in the security of the United States and working with the greatest men and women in the world, the men and women in the United States military, even if you don't want to join the military. You can help us close the, the, the gap, the technology gap between the private sector and the Department of Defense and federal government. You can help us do that and you can do it from the comfort of your own home with your own business and still have a, have a pretty healthy profit margin, right? There are business opportunities out there and we are out here to prove to the world that the United States Air Force is not anti-business and we are a great investment for people who are on the leading edge of technology and innovation to come work with us. You mentioned they could get in touch with you. How do they do that? You want to give us your lowhousepark website or some place? Absolutely, lowhousepark.com. Our contacts information on there. I love talking to people, no matter who you are, even if you just want to chat about what I believe about innovation, like just give me a call, send me an email. Yeah, go on there and I'd love to have a conversation, especially with, with companies in Hawaii. Thank you, Sonic. Thank you, Anthony. I must say one thing strikes me is I'm into public service. I believe the government is us and we are the government and we need to do public service in one way or the other and keep the country in the right place. And your unit, your work that you do is very, at least to me as an observer, stimulating and important and you represent not only the country, not only the Air Force, but you represent your clientele commands. You are giving benefit in all directions and thank you for doing that. Thanks for having us, Nick. Thank you, Anthony. Thanks for giving us this platform, Jay. I really appreciate it. Obviously, we're passionate about America and about innovation and those two things are perfect work for a lot of parking. You could have fooled me.