Charles Lyons-Burt
Paul Sartorius is currently leading Cubic’s defense software arm, Cubic Digital Intelligence, as vice president and general manager, informed by a robust three-decade career in defense tech and national security. He is well-versed in soldier enablement, helping to engineer everything from command centers to the tactical edge at organizations like BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and, most recently, Leidos.
At CDI, Sartorius has oversight of strategy, products and engagement with clientele across the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence community. The company’s portfolio has only strengthened and diversified since Sartorius has taken the helm; notable tools include TAKTICS, Unified Video and Tethys, a recently debuted data management platform.
The executive spoke with us in depth about the unique offerings of these products and how they work seamlessly and interoperably in the latest Spotlight interview.
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ExecutiveBiz: CDI has made significant strides in geospatial intelligence and full-motion video in recent years. How is the organization evolving to meet the needs of today’s defense and intelligence community?
Sartorius: At Cubic Digital Intelligence, we continue to prioritize our mission to deliver data in context—not just delivering data faster, but delivering the right data to the right people, exactly when and where it’s needed. With platforms like TAKTICS and Unified Video, we’re streamlining geospatial intelligence and FMV workflows from the enterprise to the tactical edge. These solutions are designed for both connected and disconnected or degraded environments, supporting real-time operations with minimal infrastructure and maximum impact. Our newly released Tethys platform further enhances this mission, enabling scalable, AI-powered intelligence across multi-domain operations.
EBiz: Can you share what differentiates CDI from others in the defense software space?
Sartorius: What truly sets us apart is our mission-focused agility and our ability to operate across domains and environments — cloud, on-premises and tactical edge. Our software is lightweight, interoperable and scalable. Because all the capabilities we deliver have that as their foundation, we can iterate quickly and partner directly with users to evolve our capabilities in step with operational needs. From portable, self-powered map servers to multi-domain integration with STRIKE SUITE, we’re constantly building tools that support real-time decision-making in the most demanding conditions. And at every level, we champion open platforms and data democratization to provide accessible, user-driven innovation.
EBiz: CDI supports a wide range of missions, from special operations to joint force collaboration. How are your tools enabling success across different user types?
Sartorius: We design with the end-user in mind. Whether it’s an analyst at an operations center or a dismounted operator in the field. Tools like TAKTICS and Unified Video are modular, interoperable and built to simplify access to data, not complicate it. In fast-moving, dynamic environments, users don’t have time to become tool experts. CDI focuses on intuitive solutions that deliver the right data in seconds — whether for targeting, planning, or logistics — while still supporting power users who need advanced integration with their preferred systems. Our new AI-enabled Tethys platform further optimizes analyst workflows, accelerating insight generation while reducing cognitive burden.
EBiz: How does CDI approach innovation within such a mission-driven space?
Sartorius: Innovation at CDI starts by listening. We’re in constant dialogue with our users, partners, and the broader defense ecosystem to identify real capability gaps and evolving mission needs. From there, we apply user-informed engineering to create software that is powerful, adaptable and easy to field.
We’re mission-driven because we understand the mission—many of us have been analysts or operators ourselves. We know what it means to depend on technology in high-stakes environments, which is why we build tools that deliver precision, clarity, and reliability at the tactical edge—where it matters most.
To accelerate innovation, we actively leverage AI and machine learning across key areas such as workflow automation, usage pattern recognition and AI-assisted development. These technologies help us better understand how our tools perform in real-world environments, identify opportunities for improvement and drive rapid, intelligent product evolution.
Our geospatial suite of tools and Unified Video are the result of that approach—platforms purpose-built to solve today’s toughest challenges and scale seamlessly for tomorrow’s needs. With the addition of Tethys, we’re now addressing the growing burden of data overload by enabling multi-model orchestration and AI-driven processing, helping analysts focus on insight over input.
EBiz: CDI has a growing portfolio of software products, from TAKTICS to Tethys. Can you share how these tools work together as a unified ecosystem?
Sartorius: Absolutely. What we’ve built is a modular, standards-based, open architecture ecosystem of mission-focused tools that work together or independently to support everything from enterprise GEOINT management to tactical FMV access.
For example, our geospatial engine serves as the high-performance map server backbone for foundation data products, while TAKTICS enables rapid dissemination of that data directly to TAK users worldwide. Disconnected solutions like KiOSK extend that same enterprise capability to the tactical edge, offering a complete, connected picture even in disadvantaged environments.
Additionally, Unified Video leverages our geospatial tools to provide additional context as a base layer behind full-motion video, allowing users to view and interpret FMV feeds with precision and clarity in the broader operational environment.
And with the addition of Tethys, we’re enabling real-time AI-powered processing across this ecosystem — streamlining dataflows and amplifying analyst efficiency.
It’s all designed to empower faster, more informed decision-making across the battlespace.
EBiz: TAKTICS is gaining attention for its TAK integration and vector tile delivery. What makes it a standout solution for GEOINT delivery?
Sartorius: TAKTICS is truly a game-changer in the GEOINT dissemination space. Developed in close collaboration with NGA, the TAK Program Office, and SOF stakeholders, it was purpose-built to meet the operational demands of GEOINT professionals and tactical users alike.
What sets TAKTICS apart is the speed and flexibility with which we can ingest, process and deliver new data. The platform supports a broad range of content types, from satellite imagery and elevation models to vector data, and enables users to quickly extract and disseminate subsets of that data based on their mission needs.
Because we deeply understand the underlying structure and context of the data, we can deliver only the pixels that matter, reducing bandwidth requirements while maximizing relevance and responsiveness.
TAKTICS delivers vector tile overlays directly to TAK users without burning them into raster, which preserves flexibility and performance. While vector tiles are still somewhat limited compared to raw vectors in terms of interactivity, our ability to transform a global vector tile cache into tailored, mission-ready products — optimized for TAK devices — is a significant differentiator.
With seamless TAK integration, pixel-only updates and deployment options across GovCloud, enterprise, or edge environments, TAKTICS remains the most advanced and agile GEOINT delivery platform in the TAK ecosystem.
EBiz: You’ve mentioned full-motion video, or FMV. How does CDI address the growing demand for real-time video intelligence?
Sartorius: FMV is central to how missions unfold in real time. Our Unified Video platform delivers scalable, secure FMV ingest, indexing and playback, whether live or archived. With built-in DVR capabilities, 3D map visualization, multi-sensor data layer integration and upcoming AI enhancements, UV+ enables analysts to monitor, rewind and exploit video with speed and clarity. Paired with JET, our low-latency encoding and enhancement engine, we offer a complete FMV solution that supports everything from ISR feeds to tactical review and AI-powered analysis.
EBiz: CDI recently launched Tethys, a platform for AI/ML data management. How does that fit into your product strategy?
Sartorius: Tethys is built to solve one of the most pressing challenges in modern defense and intelligence operations: making sense of overwhelming volumes of data, fast.
As an AI/ML-ready orchestration and open data management platform, Tethys automates the routing, transformation, and federation of diverse data types, including ELINT, SIGINT, OSINT and more, so users can spend less time wrangling data and more time acting on it.
Here’s how it works: Tethys intelligently routes incoming data to the right analytic pipelines or models based on content, priority and mission needs. Whether deploying AI/ML models at the edge or scaling them across enterprise cloud environments, Tethys enables the right resources to be applied to the right data, automatically. This drastically reduces latency between data collection and insight delivery, giving operators and analysts a critical time advantage.
It’s also topology and language agnostic, enabling seamless data ingestion, processing and transfer across platforms like Unified Video, TAKTICS and third-party systems without requiring complex integration or customization.
In short, Tethys turns fragmented, complex data environments into a streamlined, mission-ready intelligence, helping users not only keep pace with the mission, but stay ahead of it.
