Photon: An Advanced Collaboration Platform for Software Developers

This is a proposal to integrate Photon--an established, USAF-sponsored collaboration platform--into the F-35. Photon is a cross-device, cross-network software-hardware hybrid. It delivers truly seamless, many-to-many collaboration and situational awareness to every screen, in every application, at any scale: single-user workstations, conference rooms, theater-scale operations centers, and mobile devices held by on-the-ground operators. It works by turning all of an enterprise’s electronic displays—video walls, desktop monitors, and handheld devices—into a single, unified collaboration workspace. Users have access to any visual asset in their environment, including images, videos, virtual machines, and more. Photon users share content with each other by dragging individual assets from their own device’s display and drop them onto the displays of their teammates using a web-based enterprise map. Multiple sites can be included in the environment, allowing remote teammates to share a live view of information as though they were colocated. This “I can see what you see, and you can see what I see” experience dramatically accelerates the decision loop for tactical operations. It is a far simpler approach to collaboration, data integration, and information sharing than the traditional methods. It is more cost-effective. And our users love it.