Command And Control: Air Force Laying Foundations for Its Version of JADC2.

• Author: Easley, Mikayla

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland -- After years of experimentation and planning, the Air Force and industry are taking the first concrete steps to turn the Defense Department's concept of connecting battlefield sensors and shooters from across all domains into a reality.

The service is honing in on efforts to take the Advanced Battle Management System beyond conceptual phases, from creating new leadership roles focused on technology integration to making investments in capabilities that will mature the system to operational success, said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall during his keynote address at the Air and Space Forces Association's annual conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

The Advanced Battle Management System is the Air Force's version of joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2.

At the same time, industry is making key developments they believe could one day enable ABMS, company leaders said.

The Pentagon-wide goal is to employ advanced networking and communication capabilities that connect platforms across all domains under one battle management system. At the same time, artificial intelligence and machine learning will process information gathered from those platforms. The result will be quicker and more accurate decisions on the battlefield, according to the Air Force.

Each of the services is pursuing and funding its own JADC2 program. The Navy calls it Project Overmatch, while the Army's is Project Convergence. To connect previously stovepiped systems into one joint battle management network, a range of next-generation capabilities are under development, according to the services and industry executives.

Some of the JADC2 technologies both industry and the service leaders have expressed interest in are data handling and storage mechanisms, software that can create information out of that data, computer processors with high levels of security to process that information and methods to connect platforms so they can "talk" to one another and send information to the right users.

"This has got to be about balanced operational success out on the battlefield against our pacing adversary," said Brig. Gen. Jeffery D. Valenzia, Advance Battle Management System cross functional team lead at the Department of the Air Force.

"We need a disciplined, describable and defensible way that we're going to build combined arms in a data-centric world," he said during a panel discussion at the conference.

ABMS is one of Kendall's seven operational...