Kristen Smith
Google Public Sector and General Dynamics Information Technology partnered with the U.S. Air Force to demonstrate a ruggedized, air-gapped “cloud-in-a-box” offering during Mobility Guardian 2025, the service’s premier military exercise in the Indo-Pacific region.
During the event, the Google Distributed Cloud appliance delivered secure collaboration, artificial intelligence-driven insights and edge data processing critical for accelerating mission decisions in denied, degraded, intermittent and limited-bandwidth environments, Google Cloud said Tuesday.
Cloud Power at the Tactical Edge
The air-gapped GDC appliance, integrated with GDIT’s Luna AI, allowed airmen to run workloads up to the secret classification level in disconnected environments. During the exercise, the system supported multiple mission scenarios, including:
- Resilient communications: A containerized version of MatterMost enabled secure, disconnected collaboration. Google’s generative AI models performed real-time transcription, translation and summarization to support interoperability with allied partners.
- Situational awareness: Luna AI processed unified air defense data to generate a low-latency operating picture for real-time flight path tracking and counter-unmanned aerial system triggers.
- AI-enabled maintenance: Hundreds of technical manuals were ingested into a generative AI knowledge base, while computer vision flagged maintenance abnormalities and equipment status in real time.
- Edge development: A Jupyter notebook environment allowed engineers to code and refine applications directly in the field.
The demonstration validated a full workflow, operating independently at the tactical edge before syncing back to the core network once connectivity was restored.
“Our partnership with GDIT demonstrates the power of bringing our secure, scalable technology–including our ‘cloud-in-a-box’ offering–to advance U.S. innovation and mission readiness across agencies,” said Jim Kelly, vice president of federal sales at Google Public Sector and a Wash100 Award recipient. “We know firsthand the importance of empowering our service members with real-time insights and the secure collaboration needed to make faster, more informed decisions in challenging environments.”
With the demonstration completed, Google stated that the GDC air-gapped appliance can now perform “deeper integrations with mission applications and connectivity with Google’s Global Network to create a secure high performance link from the edge back to the cloud.”
