Combat Air Force (CAF) Distributed Mission Operation (DMO) has the mission to train pilots, weapon system officers, and Command, Control, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C2ISR) crew stations for the U.S. Air Force. To support this mission, the DMO Network (DMON) connects geographically separate mission training center simulators located throughout the world to conduct day-to-day team training events. The continued success and growth of the CAF DMO program over the past nine years has facilitated the introduction of a needed capability to allow participants in different security domains to train together.

Over the past two years the CAF DMO Operations and Integration contractor has been fielding and testing a DMON Cross Domain Solution (CDS) to enable warfighters from different simulation security domains to train together on a common network infrastructure. After successful completion of testing and certification requirements, the DMON CDS received an authorization to operate. Many technical and non-technical challenges were addressed during the transition. Transition elements in the areas of testing, deployment, accreditation, training, and event operations were anticipated. Other elements such as operational security concerns, expanded scope of coordination efforts, and the extent and complexity of configuration management presented significant challenges. This paper presents several of the challenges experienced during the transition from the DMON CDS concept and test environment into the CAF DMON CDS day-to-day operational training environment. This paper describes lessons learned from the experience.