Jerry McGinn and I joined Vago Muradian on the Defense & Aerospace report to discuss our recent paper on Execution Flexibility and Bridging the Valley of Death. Here’s just a slice, where Vago asks about the relative success of the JADC2 effort:
Maybe I’m a little bit more dovish. I think that the Department is doing a reasonably good job. Dr. Bill LaPlante, at our recent conference, mentioned that the services are working quite well together on JADC2, Joint All-Domain Command and Control. I tend to be a believer that if you want to field something that works within the the timeframe for 2027, you’re not going to be able to stop everybody and get them all onto a single set of standards that creates this interoperability.
It’s going to have to be a more federated approach where you target specific mission threads and build those out using certain tools like STITCHES that Dan Patt helped build over there in DARPA. Do more targeted efforts, field those quickly. I think the federated approach can work, will work, and potentially is working better than we see in the public on the outside through headline news. Of course, that’s a more empirical question.
But I would say with JADC2, going back to our issue with the budget, it breaks all the paradigms. The budget was set up for stovepiped weapon systems, fully integrated by a lead-systems prime integrator. JADC2 is not about a single stovepipe. It crosses programs for interoperability. It also crosses all services. It is software defined, so it bridges the “colors of money” of RDT&E, Procurement, and O&M. It’s definitely a challenge. The Department has done what it can within the framework given to it. It’s going to have to be an incremental approach.
People talk about Army Project Convergence, Navy Project Overmatch, and Air Force Advanced Battle Management System as the services’ disjointed JADC2 efforts. Critics deridingly call it “SADC2” for service all domain command and control. There’s a new integration office in OSD that’s supposed to take a more hands on role with data integration than the J6’s Cross-Functional Team. One of the quotes was that someone needs to “push them to where they need to go.”
I think levels of joint working groups and task forces are the right means to accomplish integration. CDAO as technical lead and the J6 as warfighting lead can manage the services by exception. Fill in the joint gaps discovered through working group discussions and evaluation of exercises.
The services have a lot of JADC2 efforts going on, not just in their headline efforts but across a wide number of programs. Air Force ABMS is reportedly leveraging efforts from 30 programs. The Army’s IBCS, Titan, and other efforts are incorporating sensor feeds and shooters, even if it isn’t one single system to control them all.
Check out Travis Sharp’s recent article on allowing for a federated approach to JADC2. I’d like to see something like a map of JADC2 activities as part of a big project history. Something deep and qualitative, more than a collection of key words in budget j-docs.
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