The U.S. Air Force (USAF) and U.S. Space Force have announced that the next BRAVO 1 Canary Release – part of the BRAVO hackathon series, will begin July 11-15 at three different bases.
The hackathon, which sees teams “self-form and urgently develop working prototypes that are later presented through science fair-style exhibitions to senior leaders,” will be hosted simultaneously at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia; Patrick Space Force Base in Florida, and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
In a press release, USAF stated that the BRAVO hackathon series purpose is to gather engineers, data scientists, user experience and data visualization experts, and product managers from industry, academia, government, and citizenry to build emergent capabilities with operational data.
The hackathon series is also geared to have mentorship and visibility from senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials.
“BRAVO hackathons seek to leverage these data-driven software development approaches pioneered in industry on DoD operational data to produce data-driven kill chains,” said Stuart Wagner, USAF’s chief digital transformation officer. “If you are a cleared or uncleared American citizen with technology skills looking to participate in building national security capabilities during a one-week event, we are trialing a pathway to do so now.”
Currently, the hackathon is planning for 60 percent of hackers to be government employees or DoD contractors on official government business.
BRAVO 1 follows BRAVO 0 which had 11 teams focused on challenges that include AI-assisted capabilities and jet sensor visualization and playback.
Since BRAVO 0, one project’s work was operationalized to the European theater, and half have been selected by USAF organizations for additional development, testing, and fielding.
“We agree that we must increase our digital and AI investments to operational use cases, including those identified and built at BRAVO hackathons,” said Greg Little, deputy director of Enterprise Capability at the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “We are evaluating opportunities to scale this innovation model to the DoD and federal government enterprise.”
