Each year, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) participates in the Joint Innovation Battle Lab (JIBL), a two-week gathering focused on the integration of operations, intelligence and technology. Earlier this year, this Navy exercise, held at the Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story for the last fifteen years, featured best practices, the identification, testing and evaluation of innovative technologies, and the improvement of operations and intelligence across Special Operations Forces (SOF), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Intelligence Community, federal law enforcement, private sector, and academia.

DIA’s Office of Advanced Technologies Intelligence within the Directorate for Science and Technology leads the technology portion of JIBL, where it collaborates with field operators using agency-developed technology and other equipment.

“Our technology is cutting-edge and we’re excited to showcase it,” said Matt Avery, JIBL technology line of effort director in an article published by the DIA. “One of the exercise goals is to integrate with our interagency partners to increase speed, accuracy and lethality. Testing out our tech with end-users gives us immediate feedback so we can not only meet this goal, but also show how agile and expeditionary DIA operates.”

The article goes on to say that this annual exercise gives DIA an opportunity to “push systems and concepts to failure in a controlled environment” by “experimenting with current and emerging technologies in scenarios that combine maritime, air, ground and individual platforms provide solutions to tactical, operational and strategic challenges, while addressing shortcomings and gaps.”

“As technology experts, DIA must identify innovative technologies to meet intelligence and operational requirements for warfighters,” added Avery. “Our success in this area helps enable collaboration to improve tactics, techniques and procedures, and achieve decision dominance for leaders on the battlefield during a great-power competition.”

The DIA demonstrated and tested more than a dozen technologies, including equipment aboard the U.S. Navy’s M80 Stiletto and telecommunications technologies that securely transmit data to a trusted location. Rapidly integrating these technologies is an ongoing goal of DIA and all partners involved.

“The technology readiness level is something we talk about a lot here,” said Stacy Mullinix, DIA’s project lead at JIBL. “Projects come into the exercise near completion, but also in prototype form… Our goal is to get them field tested and moved up to a higher level here, which will expedite getting them into the hands of operators who can collect various forms of intelligence.”

Representatives from the DIA say it places high value on JIBL participation. The Agency contributes components from various divisions, including science and technology, operations, finance and acquisition, logistics, facilities and information technology.

Dispersive Networks, a provider of ultra-secure networking for mission-critical solutions, was invited to demonstrate Virtual Network multi-path solution in the JIBL.

“It’s an honor for us to have been chosen as a Tier 1 resource for the Joint Innovation Battle Lab. We’re extremely proud of our military-grade technology, and after three years of being evaluated at the event, it’s a huge milestone for us,” said Ed Wood, President, and CEO at Dispersive Networks. “Our DVN solution was built to support mission-critical scenarios in the harshest environments. We value the Joint Innovation Battle Lab as it not only allows us to experiment in real-world scenarios but also experiment with collaboration and integration with other participants.”

Inspired by battlefield-proven wireless techniques, DVN is a multi-path software-defined networking overlay solution. It sends packets via multiple streams to deliver new levels of security, reliability, and performance. By splitting and encrypting the individual streams, the network becomes immune to man-in-the-middle attacks as interceptors can’t see what is being shared.

“We look forward to the Joint Innovation Battle Lab every year. It’s a great opportunity for us to test our solution,” said Chris Swan, Chief Revenue Officer, Dispersive Networks. “Our technology was inspired by spread spectrum and frequency hopping techniques utilized by the military, so supporting MilGov operations is something we’ve been dedicated to since the company launched. We’re proud to have been recognized in this space and will continue to evolve our solution to support new and dynamic mission-critical scenarios as they arise.”