The Department of Defense’s new Joint All-Domain Command and Control strategy is short on details and long on the kind of vague top-down direction that exemplifies bureaucratic initiatives. DoD leaders hope JADC2’s universal standards and requirements will eventually allow every sensor and every shooter to connect, share data, and be employed by a commander. But the urgency of today’s threats and the opportunities emerging from new technologies demand that Pentagon leaders flip JADC2’s focus from what the US military services want to what warfighters need.
It is too early to draw conclusions about the future of war from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but one lesson is likely to be the surprising effectiveness of improvised battle networks using modern unmanned systems and precision weapons. Networks tying together Ukrainian TB2 and Switchblade drones, Javelin anti-tank weapons, cell phones, and Starlink terminals were not meticulously assembled over years by a requirements process led from the Ukraine MoD; they were cobbled together by fighters in the field to solve their operational problems.
That was the excellent Bryan Clark and Dan Patt writing at Breaking Defense. The article is based on a longer paper they released: One-Size-Fits-None: Overhauling JADC2 to Prioritize the Warfighter and Exploit Adversaries’ Weaknesses.
Clark and Patt should be commended for their clear insight and willingness to move against the misguided grain on this incredibly important topic. But they’ve also recognized that DoD’s resource allocation system is a major part of the problem which orients the bureaucrats to top-down control. Hopefully they can help the PPBE Reform commissioners understand the crucial link between resource allocation paradigms and warfighting outcomes.
Here’s a truthful quote: “The US military does not have time or money to pursue universal interoperability driven by bureaucrats in Washington.” And here’s a little more:
Three fundamental flaws will prevent a top-down and centrally managed JADC2 from delivering tactically relevant interoperability in useful timeframes. First, synchronizing the US military’s hundreds of networks through updates, gateways, or software patches is a vast undertaking. Second, defining universal standards up-front worked well for simple systems like the landline telephone network, but will not accommodate the flexibility and adaptability needed in war, or even in modern 5G networks. And third, US military forces do not train and prepare for deployment as a joint force. The first time most units operate with those from another service is when they reach a combatant commander’s theater.
In some ways, I wonder whether JADC2 is actually coming together incrementally based on smaller force packages. Clark and Patt argue that the services are focusing on their own weapons program developments, and I think that has largely been true. For example, Army IBCS is taking the IAMD missile defense system and adding a lot more requirements to integrate various sensors and shooters. But perhaps these efforts are bottom-up in a way. Army is it is also moving forward with its TITAN program that I believe is more tied to its Project Convergence effort, and then Army VICTORY standards for vehicle integration are a useful aspect of modularity, and of course there’s Army’s unified networking plan. I think the Navy and Air Force also have these multi-pronged approach. I would like to see a mapping of all these efforts in the JADC2 community.
In fact, the tech exists to coalesce all manner of DoD networks into one cohesive enterprise effort – but nobody has seen it yet. But, you will very soon.