This year’s Operation Talisman Sabre stands as a testament to the evolving complexity and scale of modern military exercises. Bringing together more than 30,000 personnel from 19 nations, the exercise spans land, air, sea, space and cyber domains, reinforcing the importance of interoperability and rapid decision-making in contemporary defence operations. As the logistics and operational complexity of Talisman Sabre reach unprecedented levels, the need for unified, real-time information has never been more critical.

The challenge: complexity in multi-domain operations
Talisman Sabre 2025 is more than a training exercise; it is a proving ground for the future of coalition warfare. In high-stakes, multi-domain exercises such as Sabre, milliseconds matter. But traditional intelligence and network management approaches often struggle to keep pace with the speed and unpredictability of modern conflict environments. The result is a pressing requirement for accurate, real-time insights into network and application performance, ensuring that mission-critical communications and systems remain operational and secure at all times. Enter Riverbed.
Riverbed: preparing to fight and win in the digital age
For more than two decades, Riverbed has partnered with global Defence customers to optimise distributed network environments, accelerate application performance and unify data. The mission: to provide actionable insights that drive improved user experiences and mission outcomes.
- Data: Capture full-fidelity telemetry across the IT ecosystem, avoiding the blind spots created by sampling.
- Insights: Deliver context-rich, filtered and prioritised insights from all domains, ensuring that decision-makers receive the information that matters most.
- Actions: Replicate and automate IT best practices, empowering personnel to act decisively and consistently.

Unleashing the power of Unified Observability
At the heart of Riverbed’s offering is the concept of Unified Observability. Modern military operations rely on networks as their digital backbone, with Command and Control depending on the seamless convergence of data, insights and actions. Riverbed’s Unified Observability solution portfolio cuts through IT complexity, delivering valuable intelligence that accelerates decision-making across hybrid environments, such as those in the 2025 multi-domain Sabre exercise.
One united platform
- Network Monitoring
- System and Network Management
- AIOps for Observability
- Application Performance Monitoring
- IT Service Management
Riverbed’s real-time monitoring and analytics ensure that mission-critical communications and applications remain available, even under extreme operational stress. The platform’s ability to visualise and optimise network performance – from the enterprise core to the tactical edge – helps defence organisations maintain command and control, mitigate risk and drive mission assurance.
Riverbed in action with the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)
USSOCOM needed a robust network monitoring solution to support the SOF Information Enterprise (SIE) network. The continued growth and maturity of the USSOCOM SIE created the need for world-class monitoring and alerting that is fast, accurate and actionable.
USSOCOM needed to expand its ability to utilise cutting-edge advancements in monitoring and alerting to provide analytics on inventory, topology, device metrics, faults and flow and packet analysis that are both comprehensive and scalable for traditional, mobile, cloud and software-defined networks in a consolidated, logical view. Partnering with Riverbed for a suite of Riverbed’s Unified Observability portfolio helps USSOCOM improve digital performance across the organisation, accelerating decision-making and providing:
- Comprehensive operational view of performance for mission-critical applications and an understanding of how they are consumed by end users.
- Granular perspective of application inter-dependencies to allow for dashboard customisation for various stakeholders (HQ J6 Command, TSOCS, Execs, etc.)
- Alerting and mitigation on NIPR and SIPR enclaves for blue-screen of death (BSOD) issues.
- Root-cause-analysis around poor performance across O365, DMDC, Oracle and other applications.
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ANZ Defence | One Defence, One Platform | Riverbed Focus on mission-critical outcomes. For 20+ years, Riverbed has partnered with Defence customers to optimise distributed network environments, speed applications, unify data and gain actionable insights from disparate IT ecosystems. |
Unified insights for unmatched defence
As Talisman Sabre 2025 unfolds, the operational landscape will continue to evolve, demanding bold and decisive action from all participants. Riverbed’s technology empowers defence professionals to meet these demands by delivering unified observability at scale. The result is a force that is not only better connected but also better informed and more capable of achieving mission success.
In a world where the speed and clarity of information can mean the difference between victory and defeat, Riverbed stands as a trusted partner – arming defence organisations with the tools needed to unify data, generate actionable insights and take decisive action, anywhere, anytime, for any mission.












