We Are All Submariners Now: Tactical Edge Computing & The Forward Deployed Data Center
- Tony Grayson
- Dec 8
- 10 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
By Tony Grayson, Tech Executive (ex-SVP Oracle, AWS, Meta) & Former Nuclear Submarine Commander
For decades, the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Force has operated under a unique, unforgiving doctrine: Total Self-Sufficiency.
When a submarine slips beneath the waves, it severs the umbilical cord to the world. There is no "reach back" to a data center in Virginia. There is no calling tech support. Every calorie of food, every watt of power, every spare part, and every byte of intelligence and computing power needed to fight and win must be onboard before the hatch shuts.
As I’ve written in my reflections on daily life on a nuclear submarine, surviving in isolation isn't just about grit; it's about the math of self-reliance.
In the age of hyper-warfare and massive electronic jamming, this is no longer just a rule for the "Silent Service." It is the new operational requirement for every Army Company, Air Force Squadron, and Marine Expeditionary Unit.
To survive the next conflict, we must stop treating our forward units like remote terminals for a central cloud. We must embrace Tactical Edge Computing and turn every unit into an autonomous predator.
The Surface World is Gone
For the last 20 years, Western forces have become addicted to the "Surface World," a permissive environment where high-bandwidth satellite links, GPS, and cloud connectivity were guaranteed. We built a war machine that treats the battlefield like a connected office building, assuming that we could always offload heavy processing to a safe server farm thousands of miles away.
That era is over. Whether you are an Army Commander executing Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) or an Air Force Wing utilizing Agile Combat Employment (ACE), the moment the shooting starts, the "cloud" disappears.
The Threat: The "Electromagnetic Shield"
The assumption that Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations like Starlink will be our savior is a dangerous gamble. While LEO networks are robust, they are not invincible.
Recent simulations by Chinese defense researchers have outlined plans to deploy thousands of autonomous drones into the stratosphere to form a "chessboard" grid, acting as jammers to create an "Electromagnetic Shield" over contested zones.
The result? This shield is designed to sever the link between ground units and satellites. In this scenario, a unit relying on the cloud for target processing is deaf, dumb, and blind in a GPS-denied environment. The "Reach Back" capability you depended on for your Fire Control solution is gone.
The Proof is in Ukraine: The "Digital Silence"
The war in Ukraine has shattered the illusion of connectivity, providing critical lessons that validate the need for robust Tactical Edge Computing:
The Death of "Reach Back": In the opening hours of the invasion, a targeted Russian cyberattack on the Viasat KA-SAT network bricked thousands of satellite modems. Army units attempting to access centralized logistics or intelligence data went dark. Only those with local maps and local command authority could function.
The Rise of "Edge Autonomy": Ukraine found that human-piloted drones dependent on real-time video links were failing due to jamming. The shift was to AI-enabled drones with onboard compute that could execute attacks autonomously.
The Parallel: This is exactly how a modern torpedo works. It is launched, the wire is cut, and the weapon's onboard brain finishes the job. Every forward unit must now operate with this level of autonomy.
The Mandate – Tactical Edge Computing is the Only Option
If you accept that every forward unit is now effectively a submarine (isolated and hunted), the technological requirements change instantly. You cannot rely on streaming data; you must own the data. This is the operational foundation of the DoD's Replicator Initiative: massed, autonomous systems that function without continuous human control.
1. The "Onboard" Fire Control Solution
A submarine doesn't ask a shore station if a sonar contact is hostile; it processes the data locally.
Army Application: A HIMARS battery cannot wait for targeting solutions from a distant headquarters. It needs ruggedized Tactical Edge Computing nodes (Cloudlets) on the truck itself to fuse local drone feeds and generate a fire solution instantly.
Air Force Application: For ACE, a squadron landing at a remote island airfield cannot depend on a fiber link to the Air Operations Center (AOC). They need a deployable Mission Planning Cell (racks of servers in a box) that contains the full theater intelligence picture and can run new flight paths locally.
2. Radical Independence (Zero Reach Back)
This alignment with PACE (Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency) communications doctrine is critical. When Primary and Alternate links (fiber and satellite) are denied, Contingency has to be local compute.
This enables CJADC2 at the edge: the local unit, powered by its own AI situational awareness, retains Command by Negation authority. Waiting for permission from a headquarters you can't talk to is a death sentence.
The operational imperative is simple: You must bring your data, compute, and power with you.
The Engineering Gap – Why Standard Hardware Fails
The philosophy is sound, but the physics are hard. As I discussed in The Kemper Trap, ignoring the laws of thermodynamics in infrastructure deployment isn't a strategy, it's a gamble. You cannot simply strap a standard data center rack to a truck or drop a steel box on a jungle island.
The Constraints:
Mobility: Steel ISO containers are too heavy for many tactical transport aircraft and require heavy cranes to move, violating ACE principles of agility.
Corrosion: In the Pacific, salt spray rots steel containers in months, not years.
Heat: Running GPU-accelerated Agentic AI workloads generates immense heat. Standard air cooling fails in sealed environments or high-temperature zones.
The Joint Force needs a solution that bridges the gap between the need for massive compute and the reality of austere environments. This is where Northstar Enterprise & Defense is building to the requirement.
The Composite Revolution: Lighter, Stronger, Invisible
We cannot fight a modern war with heavy, rusting steel boxes. Northstar utilizes Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composite building systems to solve the physical constraints of Tactical Edge Computing, specifically.
1. Mobility for the Army and Air Force (ACE) Northstar’s units are significantly lighter than traditional steel structures.
Air Transportable: A lightweight composite "AI Factory" or SCIF can be loaded onto a C-130 or carried by helicopter, enabling "Jump TOCs" (Tactical Operations Centers) that can move as fast as the front line.
Flat-Pack Deployment: These units can be assembled in austere locations without heavy lift cranes—solving a massive logistics bottleneck for ACE and MDO operations.
2. Corrosion Immunity for the Marines and Navy. For a Marine Littoral Regiment (MLR) island-hopping in the Pacific, or a Navy ship needing deck-mounted compute, corrosion is the enemy. Unlike steel, Northstar’s FRP modules are impervious to salt. They can be mechanically fastened to a deck or deployed on a beach and survive for decades without degrading.
3. The "AI Factory" Anywhere (Zero Trust Enabled). To run Agentic AI at the edge, you need power efficiency and security.
GPU Acceleration: Northstar designs enable high-density GPU racks (e.g., NVIDIA H100s) to be cooled efficiently in the field, targeting a PUE as low as 1.1, versus legacy edge shelters that often exceed 2.0.
Zero Trust Architecture: By bringing compute on-premises, Northstar units support truly air-gapped, Zero Trust–style architectures where data sovereignty is enforced physically and logically, immune to external network penetration.
Dive, Dive
The lesson from the deep—and from the drone-saturated skies of the Pacific—is clear: Dependency is vulnerability. As we've seen with commercial outages, resilient architecture is often just operational theater if the underlying dependencies aren't secure.
If your ability to fight depends on a fiber optic cable connected to Ashburn, Virginia, you have already lost. The only way to survive the coming silence is to adopt the submarine mindset.
We must design, build, and deploy every unit with the conviction that it will be alone, unsupported, and cut off. We must bring the compute, the data, and the decision-making power with us.
We must bring it all.
Frequently Asked Questions: Tactical Edge Computing
What is Tactical Edge Computing?
Tactical Edge Computing refers to the deployment of high-performance data processing and storage capabilities directly to forward operating environments—the "edge" of the network—such as battlefield vehicles, ships, or remote bases. This allows military units to process data locally in real time, completely disconnected from the cloud, without relying on distant data centers. As Defense One reports, it puts decision-making power directly in the hands of the warfighter, wherever they are, even in the most isolated locations. The DoD is prioritizing AI-driven computing at the tactical edge where speed, reliability, and ruggedization are paramount.
What is the "Submarine Mindset" in modern warfare?
The "Submarine Mindset" is the operational doctrine of total self-sufficiency that nuclear submarines operate under. When a submarine slips beneath the waves, it severs the umbilical cord to the world—there is no "reach back" to a data center, no calling tech support. Every calorie of food, every watt of power, every spare part, and every byte of intelligence and computing power needed to fight and win must be onboard before the hatch shuts. This doctrine now applies to every forward-deployed military unit: Army Companies, Air Force Squadrons, and Marine Expeditionary Units must all embrace computational self-sufficiency to survive GPS-denied, communications-denied environments.
What is the DoD Replicator Initiative?
The Replicator Initiative, announced in August 2023, is a Department of Defense program led by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to field thousands of low-cost, autonomous uncrewed systems across air, land, and sea domains. According to Congressional Research Service, the program aims to counter China's military buildup in the Indo-Pacific by mass-producing "attritable" autonomous systems—comparatively low-cost platforms the DoD tolerates greater risk of losing. Selected systems include AeroVironment's Switchblade 600, Anduril's Altius-600 and Ghost-X, and Performance Drone Works' C-100. These autonomous swarms require massive tactical edge computing power to process data locally and function without continuous human control.
What is CJADC2 and why does it matter for edge computing?
CJADC2—Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control—is the DoD's concept to connect sensors and shooters across all military services and allied partners into a single network powered by artificial intelligence. CJADC2 enables joint forces to share and use data to perform command and control operations more quickly. For tactical edge computing, CJADC2 at the edge means local units can retain "Command by Negation" authority—the ability to act without waiting for permission from headquarters you can't communicate with. Each service has its own initiative: Army's Project Convergence, Navy's Project Overmatch, and Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS).
Why is GPS-denied warfare a critical concern?
America's adversaries invested heavily in capabilities to deny U.S. military GPS access. According to defense industry analysis, GPS jamming and spoofing have surged 220% since 2024, with potential daily economic losses exceeding $1 billion. The Army War College warns that in any future conflict with a near-peer adversary, the U.S. military can expect to operate in GPS-denied environments. The Army is fielding MAPS Gen II to provide GPS anti-spoofing and anti-jamming capability. But tactical edge computing enables forces to host map data, threat libraries, and AI inference models locally—allowing commanders to navigate, target, and fight even when GPS and satellite links are jammed or destroyed.
What happened to Ukraine's satellite communications in 2022?
In the opening hours of Russia's 2022 invasion, a targeted Russian cyberattack on the Viasat KA-SAT network bricked thousands of satellite modems across Ukraine and Europe. Army units attempting to access centralized logistics or intelligence data went dark instantly. Only units with local maps and local command authority could function. This attack proved the "Death of Reach Back"—the concept that forward units could always rely on connections to rear-area data centers. The Viasat attack demonstrated why tactical edge computing and computational self-sufficiency are survival requirements for modern warfare.
What is a DDIL environment?
DDIL stands for Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited-bandwidth environments. As FedTech Magazine explains, these are operational conditions where warfighters cannot rely on continuous network connectivity. Adversaries at the tactical edge may actively deny or disrupt communications, soldiers may lack access to telecom infrastructure, or bandwidth may be severely constrained. Tactical edge computing is essential for DDIL environments because it enables local processing without reliance on distant data centers, reducing latency and supporting operations when centralized cloud access is unavailable.
Why is PUE important for tactical edge computing?
PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) measures energy efficiency—the ratio of total facility power to IT equipment power. In a tactical zone, fuel is a vulnerability and a logistics burden. Fuel convoys are targets. Every gallon of fuel that must be transported forward increases risk. Legacy edge shelters often exceed PUE of 2.0, meaning they waste half their power on cooling and overhead. Modern tactical edge systems target PUE as low as 1.1, meaning they use significantly less fuel to power the same amount of AI computing. This reduced fuel requirement dramatically shrinks the logistics footprint and makes forward units more survivable.
What is Agile Combat Employment (ACE)?
Agile Combat Employment (ACE) is the Air Force's operational concept for dispersing forces across multiple locations to complicate adversary targeting while maintaining combat capability. Under ACE, squadrons must operate from remote island airfields, highway strips, or austere locations without established infrastructure. They cannot depend on fiber links to Air Operations Centers. ACE requires deployable "Mission Planning Cells" that contain the full theater intelligence picture and can run new flight paths locally. Tactical edge computing enables ACE by providing the computational self-sufficiency squadrons need at dispersed locations.
How do AI-enabled autonomous drones relate to edge computing?
The war in Ukraine demonstrated that human-piloted drones dependent on real-time video links were failing due to jamming. The solution was AI-enabled drones with onboard compute that could execute attacks autonomously—like a modern torpedo that is launched, the wire is cut, and the weapon's onboard brain finishes the job. The Replicator Initiative's autonomous swarms require tactical edge computing to process sensor data, identify targets, and make decisions locally without waiting for instructions from distant command centers. As one defense expert noted, "Data is the five-five-six round of the next war."
What are the challenges of deploying edge computing in tactical environments?
Tactical environments impose severe constraints that standard data center hardware cannot meet. Mobility is critical—steel ISO containers are too heavy for many tactical transport aircraft. Corrosion is devastating—salt spray in the Pacific rots steel containers in months. Heat is a major challenge—GPU-accelerated AI workloads generate immense heat, and standard air cooling fails in sealed environments. Size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints are paramount—many military systems have embedded GPS receivers smaller than a quarter. Solutions require composite materials such as Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) that are lighter, corrosion-resistant, and can be flat-packed for rapid assembly without cranes.
What is Zero Trust Architecture in military edge computing?
Zero Trust Architecture is a security model that assumes no user, device, or network should be automatically trusted—verification is required for every access request. For tactical edge computing, Zero Trust means bringing compute on-premises to support truly air-gapped architectures where data sovereignty is enforced both physically and logically, immune to external network penetration. When you host map data, threat libraries, and AI inference models on air-gapped servers, even if satellite communications are severed, the unit retains full operational capability.
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Tony Grayson is a recognized Top 10 Data Center Influencer, a successful entrepreneur, and the President & General Manager of Northstar Enterprise + Defense.
A former U.S. Navy Submarine Commander and recipient of the prestigious VADM Stockdale Award, Tony is a leading authority on the convergence of nuclear energy, AI infrastructure, and national defense. His career is defined by building at scale: he led global infrastructure strategy as a Senior Vice President for AWS, Meta, and Oracle before founding and selling a top-10 modular data center company.
Today, he leads strategy and execution for critical defense programs and AI infrastructure, building AI factories and cloud regions that survive contact with reality.
Read more at: tonygraysonvet.com