Fighter pilot, academic, aerospace engineer, military planner, strategy leader, risk analyst, methodology, model developer, author, speaker, and cyber survivability pioneer—the survivability community is fortunate to include each of these titles among its membership rolls. Rarely, however, do they all belong to the same person. But then there’s Dr. William Bryant. For more than 3 decades, Dr. Bryant—who is better known as “Data,” his former call-sign—has been supporting U.S. combat aviation mission effectiveness and weapon system survivability efforts with a unique toolset of operational experience, analytical acumen, innovative thinking, and collaborative information-sharing that has helped both planners and technologists better understand, prepare for, and excel in the ever-changing modern battlespace.
Most notably, in his current position as a Technical Fellow with Modern Technology Solutions Inc. (MTSI), Data’s been at the forefront of the survivability discipline’s expansion into the uncharted skies of cyber warfare and full-spectrum system survivability. Thus, the Joint Aircraft Survivability Program Office (JASPO) is pleased to recognize Dr. Bryant for his ongoing Excellence in Survivability.
Laying a Strong Foundation for Survivability
Born in Escondido, CA, Data began his aviation career with more than 25 years of active-duty service in the U.S. Air Force. After he graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1993 with a degree in aeronautical engineering, his first “office” was the cockpit of an F-16 Viper. As a pilot, he gained invaluable first-hand experience with advanced combat aircraft technologies, tactics, and operations in the skies over Japan, South Korea, Iraq, and multiple U.S. Air Force bases. He would also add the title of flight instructor and evaluator, squadron commander, national-level operations planner and strategist, and senior cyber leader to his long list of operational assignments. Collectively, these assignments would lay a strong foundation for his eventual, holistic understanding of the battlespace, air operations, and the many threat types that challenge modern mission assurance.
Additionally, during his tenure at the Pentagon as the Deputy Director of the Air Force’s Task Force Cyber Secure, Data led efforts to identify and close cyber vulnerabilities across operational technology (OT) and weapons systems. Recognizing the lack of centralized cyber defense for these critical assets, Data successfully advocated for and helped stand up the Air Force Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) office, which has become central to the Air Force’s cyber strategy and implementation. Then, as the Air Force’s Deputy CISO, Data also developed a strategic risk management framework tailored to cyber-physical systems, implemented new processes to enable secure agile development, and championed the integration of cybersecurity into weapons system acquisition life cycles. Under his leadership, the Air Force deployed numerous new active defenses for OT systems, ultimately preventing multiple real-world cyber attacks that could’ve degraded mission readiness.
Establishing a New Disclipine: Cyber Combat Survivability
As his career progressed, Data also began to recognize a gap between traditional survivability models—focused largely on kinetic threats—and the emerging spectrum of nonkinetic threats, including software-driven threats that exploit vulnerabilities in networks, code, and digital infrastructure. Thus, he joined forces with aircraft survivability pioneer and long-time educator Dr. Robert Ball to co-develop the Aircraft Cyber Combat Survivability (ACCS) framework. The framework leverages the familiar, established Aircraft Combat Survivability (ACS) constructs of susceptibility, vulnerability, and recoverability but expands and adapts them to the cyber domain, offering a structured approach to assess and improve a system’s ability to survive in a contested cyberspace environment. This groundbreaking work has been instrumental in helping to usher the survivability community into the full-spectrum survivability era.
Notably, Data has also worked to ensure that ACCS is not just a theoretical construct but can be used as a practical tool to inform design and testing decisions for current and future air platforms. As detailed in the influential four-part series that Data and Dr. Ball authored for the Aircraft Survivability journal in 2020 and 2021, the ACCS’s mapping of cyber risk to mission impact gives program managers and engineers actionable insights during the requirements generation, architecture selection, and verification planning processes. Accordingly, the framework continues to be widely discussed and adopted across the survivability engineering enterprise.
Quantifying Risk and Integrating Full-Spectrum Assessment
Another framework that Data envisioned and created was the Unified Risk Assessment and Measurement System (URAMS). URAMS brings scientific rigor to the challenge of cyber risk assessment in complex cyber-physical systems using multiple analytical and risk measurement tools. It combines probabilistic modeling, model-based systems engineering, and scenario-based simulation to evaluate cyber risk at the mission level. Extending beyond just compliance checklists, the system enables program offices, testers, and acquisition decision-makers to understand not just whether a system meets security controls but how those controls affect mission effectiveness in the face of cyber threats. To do this, it incorporates probabilistic attack trees, mission-level simulation, and data-driven scoring to quantify risk exposure, giving stakeholders a defensible basis for engineering trade-offs and mitigation investments.
What makes Data’s survivability- and cyber-related contributions especially remarkable is the extent of their scope and integration. Rather than siloing cyber survivability as a niche function, he has consistently argued—and demonstrated—that true survivability requires a full-spectrum view, considering not just physical destruction but also digital degradation, electromagnetic interference, supply chain attacks, and insider threats. To that end, he’s been heavily involved in the development and maturation of full-spectrum survivability analysis, a unified approach that considers the interplay of current and emerging kinetic and nonkinetic threats across all domains. This unification helps ensure that no critical mission vulnerabilities are missed by traditional “stovepiped” security disciplines.
Data has also long emphasized that systems must be designed, tested, and fielded with survivability in mind, not added later as an afterthought—an emphasis that, incidentally, mirrors that of the early pioneers of the survivability discipline itself. He has thus also worked closely with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD R&E) and the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) to develop numerous policies, roadmaps, and test and evaluation strategies that reflect this important view of survivability.
Gaining and Sharing Knowledge
Not surprisingly, Data’s record of academic accomplishments is just as long and impressive as that of his professional ones. In addition to his previously mentioned bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Air Force Academy, he was a distinguished graduate of the Squadron Officer School, he earned five master’s degrees from five different schools (in the areas of military studies, organizational management, space systems, airpower art and science, and strategic studies), and he completed a doctorate in military strategy from the Air University’s School of Advanced Air & Space Studies. In addition, he holds multiple professional certifications, including CISSP, C|EH, and Security+.
That said, Data has also recognized the importance of not only acquiring knowledge and expertise but also sharing that knowledge and expertise with others. He’s thus been a prolific writer and speaker, authoring more than 20 peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, and book chapters, as well as serving as a frequent contributor in technical journals such as Aircraft Survivability, ITEA Journal of Test and Evaluation, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Joint Forces Quarterly, and the Air & Space Power Journal. Moreover, his book International Conflict and Cyberspace Superiority remains a ground-breaking text in the field of cyber superiority.
In addition, Data serves as a regular presenter at survivability conferences, as a guest lecturer at defense graduate schools, as a coach and mentor for acquisition professionals looking to better understand cyber risk and defense, and as a consultant to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.
Finally, though Data says he doesn’t really have any “hobbies” outside of work—and it doesn’t sound as if he has time for any—he does enjoy spending time with his wife of 32+ years and their three children, especially hiking and exploring various national, state, and local parks.
Congratulations, Data, on this well-deserved award and thank you for your past and present contributions and leadership to the aircraft survivability community and the U.S. Warfighter!
Note: ChatGPT was used to assist in the development of this article.
