SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. -- Ninth Air Force (Air Forces Central)’s Command Technology Data Office (CTDO) conducted a Hackathon at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, May 6-9, 2025. The event focused on emerging technologies geared toward the modern U.S. Central Command battlespace.
The CTDO comprises Airmen with specific skill sets, regardless of if that skillset is related to their primary career field in the Air Force. The format of the hackathon divides these subject matter experts into teams whose performance is evaluated by a panel of judges at the end of the week.
“We’ve got a lot of young Airmen who’ve come from all walks of life,” said Professor Graham Archer, the chief technology officer at the CTDO. “Some of them are programmers, some are logisticians -- they come from all these different backgrounds. And what they’re doing here is coming together, to work together as a collaborative innovative team.”
One section of the CTDO, known as the Battle Lab, is tasked with rapid innovation across several key competencies to meet the ever-changing landscape in the USCENTCOM area of responsibility. This third iteration of the Hackathon in 2025 focused on a “common cockpit” avionics configuration, drone mission planning, and a data sync dashboard.
“These innovative Hackathons are about really trying to challenge ourselves with a bigger question,” Archer said. “We (evaluate) during the one-week (Hackathon), and that helps set how we’re going to operate (going forward). We don’t drop it at the end of that week. We continue on. We’re using the Hackathon as an innovation and framing activity.”
The common cockpit is a cost-effective, and interoperable alternative to traditional small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS). The intent is a plug-and-play avionics system that can be used across multiple sUAS platforms.
“The advantage of the common cockpit is the ability to move from platform to platform without having to worry about proprietary components needed to fly that bird,” said Senior Airman Jacob Mackel, the non-commissioned officer in charge of innovation at CTDO. “For example, if my primary platform is inoperable for some reason, I ensure that the same components, software, training, and payload will work with the secondary platform with no modifications needed. We can also acquire and develop new platforms without program changes.”
The Hackathon further went on to address optimization in drone mission planning through the implementation of versatile software that communicates with the common cockpit, and data synchronization efforts that provide more immediacy to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities in sUAS operations. This pairs the innovation of Battle Lab with the in-theater operations of Task Force 99.
“Currently we have the ISR functionality, but users down range have to (use a manual process),” said Staff Sgt. Eric Cater, the software development NCOIC with TF99. “We’ve automated and simplified the setup, so it works out of the box … without user input.”
Roughly eight months ago with the support of AFCENT leadership, CTDO began working more closely with TF99, Archer said. By design, CTDO operating as a back office with TF99 operating in theater enabled a new level of success for both organizations.
“We’re always testing,” said Senior Airman Tyreke Butler, an F-35 Lightning II crew chief by trade working with TF99. “Anything that we make, we don’t expect it to work perfectly the first try. When we’re testing, we’re always looking for something that’s wrong that we can improve on the next iteration. Everything on the aircraft, including the aircraft itself, has the opportunity to improve.”
The CTDO operates with a four-step continuous improvement loop: Build context, discovery, integrate, and demonstrate. Ultimately, the Hackathon is not designed to come together and completely solve a problem set, Archer said. Rather, it represents a focused effort to identify the questions needing to be asked of the problem to move the totality of the effort forward.
“The kind of things we’re taking on this time are trying to build on what we did before, but also accelerate certain aspects,” Archer said. “We are trying to introduce digital interoperability across the command.”
For more information on the CTDO or any questions, feel free to contact Senior Airman Jacob Mackel at 803-717-6719