Joint Force Coordination for Full Scale Operations

Our adversaries are waging a new kind of war with sophisticated capabilities that threaten our freedom of action and erode our historical overmatch in every operating domain. To counter this threat, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is transforming how it protects vital national interests with its Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept. JADC2 aims to connect sensors, weapons, C2 systems, and intelligence data from all military services into an integrated network to enable faster, better decisions and more effective engagement against adversary threats. It will enable the joint force to converge effects from all five domains—land, sea, air, space, and cyber—and even operate in concert with partners and allies.

As DOD moves to synchronize the joint force across domains to dominate the digital battlespace, it is crucial that it reinvents C2 systems. Today’s C2 systems were built by each branch separately, with unique and often proprietary data architectures and application programming interfaces. With data locked in silos, warfighters cannot quickly access information across classification levels and service platforms to create a common operating picture or link sensors and effectors for rapid action. This, in turn, prevents joint forces from powerfully executing multidomain engagements at scale in a coordinated, integrated way.

As the services build new C2 systems and networks while modernizing existing ones to connect with JADC2, it is crucial that new capabilities be developed and fielded—but not the way they’ve been built in the past. A new approach is needed. True joint operations at the scale and resiliency needed to combat peer adversaries require C2 capabilities built with a data-centric approach to connect systems across domains and enable coordinated theater-wide battles. 

New C2 capabilities are critical to empowering the joint force to meet the asymmetric threat of modern conflict with an asymmetric response of its own. The United States, its partners, and its allies need to be able to fight as a network to create a web of effects to deter and defeat adversaries in both the conventional and gray zone battlespace. Modern C2 systems fuse data and intelligence from legacy systems in novel ways to support military decision-making and enable interoperability and integration.

For example, in a conventional force-on-force battle, the engagement response is joint, requiring the on-demand orchestration of myriad sensors, platforms, and systems. Air Force sensors identify and confirm a target for an Army long-range precision fires weapon. But the airspace in between is congested with aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, and munitions from multiple service branches, each with sensors of their own.

C2 systems with next-generation data fusion capabilities provide commanders with a continuously updated, real-time view of the battlespace, including friendly force and adversary locations and activities. They also provide access to effects producers from other domains, such as the ability to use non-kinetic effects in conjunction with the joint and combined kinetic options. This orchestrated response increases the complexity of what the adversary must deal with, achieving joint force overmatch.

To further increase the challenge for adversaries, tactical C2 capabilities are dispersed across the battlespace yet connected through redundant independent communications paths, which enhances resilience. A cloud-native common data fabric provides the backbone for connecting disparate C2 systems, data platforms, and tactical networks. Open architectures and secure connections ensure data from diverse sources is shared, protected, and secured. And AI and ML techniques inform decisive action faster than possible with human analysis.