Army Fleshing Out Joint All-Domain Command, Control.

• Date: 01 June 2021
• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin
• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

Facing complex battlefields in the future, the Army is hard at work developing a network of interconnected platforms that can rapidly send information to commanders and troops and link sensors and shooters.

This network--which has been billed as an "internet of things" for the military--is known as joint all-domain command and control. JADC2 has become a buzzword in the Pentagon as the armed services focus on digital bits and bytes to give them an edge in fights against advanced adversaries.

Joint all-domain command and control is intended to better connect the forces of the various services to enable them to perform more effectively. The Air Force has made strides developing its JADC2-related effort known as the Advanced Battle Management System, orABMS.

The Army is working alongside the Air Force as it pursues its JADC2 vision. Last fall, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles "CQ" Brown Jr. and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. James McConville entered into a two-year memorandum of understanding to better collaborate on the development of these capabilities. They added the word "combined" in front of it, modifying the acronym to CJADC2.

"We are converging weapon systems by ensuring our six modernization priorities and significant modernization efforts are integrated and adaptable," said McConville during remarks at the Association of the United States Army's Global Force Next Conference in March. "We are assuring our systems support combined joint all-domain command and control."

The Army is merging information by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and integrating that with data from low-Earth orbit satellites in the cloud. That will facilitate linking joint sensors and shooters to the right command-and-control node, he said.

Bolstering machine-to-machine data exchange is going to be extremely important in future fights, McConville noted during a Defense Writers Group event hosted by George Washington University's Project for Media and National Security in March.

"That's where you really get the speed," he said. "That's where we see we're going to get the overmatch."

The service is working to ensure that as it builds new systems and platforms that they will be able to tie in together, he said.

"You don't want to build a system that doesn't fit," McConville said. "We've got to keep everyone within the same box, so at the end all the systems come together the way we need them for convergence."

Brig. Gen. Jeffery Valenzia, director...