Machine Learning, AI Needed For JADC2 Secure Comms.

• Author: Roaten, Meredith

The Pentagon-wide effort to connect sensors to shooters to gain decision dominance should prioritize secure communications, industry executives said.

The Air Force is looking at new technologies to support its contribution to the joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2, campaign, including systems that use machine learning and artificial intelligence to speed up comms. A secure communications demonstration this fall spurred the buildup of networking capability needed for the effort, officials said.

The Air Force Research Laboratory partnered with Raytheon and Starlink for a demonstration of the robust information provisioning layer program, or RIPL, Brian Holmes, program manager of AFRL advanced planning and autonomous command and control systems branch, announced in a December press release.

In September, using internet protocol encryptors, Starlink engineers demonstrated a secure link between a test facility in Oneida, New York, and the main research lab several miles away in Rome, New York.

"It's software to try and connect and establish communications networking across different legacy links in a way that supports all those links and gets the data from the suppliers to the people that need it," Jason Redi, president of Raytheon BBN, told reporters at a Raytheon event in November.

There are many different links that are created for unique purposes that are not able to talk to one another, he said. Operators don't have time to look for where the data they need is, especially if certain links are taken out by adversaries.

"That is another way we can use AI--what kinds of data should be cached and replicated throughout the whole tactical and strategic network to be able to maintain a resilient system even as these links are coming up and down," he said.

RIPL also integrated additional Air Force hardware and algorithms during the demonstration, the press release stated.

"It also aligns with the Department of Defense's joint all-domain command and control vision and approach for identifying, organizing and delivering improved Joint Force C2 capabilities and accounting for adversaries who have closed many of the capability and methodology advantages depended upon for operational success," Holmes said in the release.

"We feel this was a very good example, very successful example, of what JADC2 can show, and [we] are bringing this to some other programs as well," Redi said.

RIPL's translation capability is not as important as its...