Air Warfare, Land Warfare, Networks / Cyber
How To Build JADC2 To Make It Truly Joint
A rara avis. That is what you are reading. This opinion piece by three active duty Air Force officers deals with perhaps the service’s most important program start since the Cold War, the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), which most industry and military experts believe will be the key to All Domain Operations. The Air Force has just begun work on this global network of sensors, computers, and communications devices designed so any target around the world can be spotted and prosecuted by any US service or even an ally. But here we have these three brave souls stepping forward to proffer a prescription for the best path ahead for this crucial effort that involves not just their service, but also the Army, Navy, Marines and, most certainly, the Space Force. Read on! The Editor.
Great ideas, according to Steven Johnson’s history of innovation, rarely ship direct from the factory. They are, instead, cobbled together over time and, like victory, have many fathers.
The Defense Department is working on an idea for how best to connect and direct joint force operations during peer conflict. One construct on how to do that is called Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). Its fundamental premise is to evolve from today’s highly centralized and outdated command and control architecture to a more distributed system that connects every sensor to every shooter and blends artificial Intelligence (AI) with human judgment to accelerate decision making. The Air Force offered its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) as the architecture that would form the foundation of JADC2. Army leaders, however, recently responded by saying that ABMS is not — and cannot be — the single solution for making JADC2 a reality. The services have begun to debate how many fathers JADC2 should have and how they should piece the system together.
This dialogue could be the start of a productive, albeit sometimes abrasive, process that leads to a truly joint command and control solution. Or, it could be the first public shot in a destructive, bureaucratic turf war, one likely to end with siloed innovation that misses the mark on both effectiveness and ‘jointness.’ We believe that the second scenario is avoidable—provided the Pentagon builds JADC2 in the right way. Specifically, the designers involved should build it bottom-up, from the tactical level, and away from D.C. politics.
Why Bottom-Up Leads to Joint Cooperation
Jointness is not the default state of the U.S. military services. It is easier to find at the tactical level where the imperative is, simply, to survive and to win. The higher one moves up the military hierarchy, however, protection of individual services’ equities begins to dominate discussion and D.C.’s budget battles loom larger than any adversary. As our previous research has highlighted, in a zero-sum budgeting game, the services must compete with each other in their efforts to take care of those whom they are charged under the laws of the United States to organize, train, and equip. Such battles create a disincentive for inter-service cooperation.
The tension between these two imperatives—survival at the tactical level versus budgetary battles at the Pentagon’s strategic echelon—creates a bias toward control. In D.C., the prevailing idea is to maintain control—especially over successful, new programs—because this translates into budgetary power. At the tactical level, the preference is to cede control to whomever is best situated to solve the most pressing problem.
In order for JADC2 to work, the tactical-level attitude must become the norm. A central concept of JADC2 is that any sensor should be able to link to any shooter and any command and control node. This linkage is meant to provide the commander in the best position the ability to rapidly act against adversary forces. An Army command-and-control node with timely data on a target, for example, should be able to task fighter aircraft or maritime vessels to attack, if those are best situated to do so. Of course, for this concept to work, the services would need to adopt new paradigms toward asset control. Today, the services might use their assets to support each other, but they do not relinquish control of those assets. Taking a bottom-up approach may make a new paradigm toward optimal command and control more likely.
Further, the bottom-up approach is more likely to lead to distributed decision authority, which is central to the goal of making decisions faster. Also, because it would be more distributed, a bottom-up approach would likely lead to a more survivable system. Finally, building up from the tactical level is more likely to generate relevant, service-agnostic feedback on the quality of the system, since operators at this level have the benefit of realistic simulations.
There are, of course, drawbacks to a bottom-up approach. For example, tactical operators might be so preoccupied with ongoing operations that they cannot afford the time to experiment for future conflicts. Also, a strictly bottom-up approach, lacking insight into operational objectives and commander priorities, would make for an inefficient—if not counterproductive—effort to achieve desired strategic effects. Tactical proficiency must be aligned with strategic and operational goals.
Accordingly, the correct approach must be a mix of bottom-up and top-down. Given the preponderance of organizational power favoring the top-down approach, however, it may be preferable to err on the side of bottom-up.
How to Build Bottom-Up
Innovation will occur wherever iterative experimentation meets clear, objectively-measurable problems. The problem in this case is fairly clear and measurable: connect every sensor to every shooter and communications node, in a degraded or contested environment, and speed decision making. The question is where to invest in iterative experimentation.
Building bottom-up means resourcing experimental sandboxes at the tactical level. Tactical operators should pair with contractors who are working on the technological architecture of JADC2. Together, they should work to iteratively solve problems. Furthermore, these sandboxes should take advantage of inter-service nodes that already exist.
An early contention of Army leaders is that the sheer scale differences between the Army and Air Force do not allow for a single command and control architecture. Joint nodes at the tactical level, however, are already working to overcome these differences of scale. For example, the Tactical Air Control Party (TACP), a team of Air Force operators responsible for tactical command and control, provide a capability meant to integrate operating pictures from Blue Force Tracker, Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System, and Link 16 into a single command and control system overlaying ground and air. Nesting these common operating pictures into the architecture of ABMS is an example of what we mean by filling it in from the bottom up. As three TACP airmen we admit some self-interest here, but it is important to note that we are merely acting on the imperatives mentioned above. At our level, surviving and winning requires knowledge of, and communication with, both the Air Force and Army at all times.
The future of command and control must capitalize on these imperatives. One service can provide the overarching system architecture for JADC2, but fleshing out that architecture will require a wide-ranging, multi-service-inclusive, and comprehensive effort. If senior leaders want to ensure JADC2 is truly joint, they need to build it up from joint experimentation at the tactical level.
Paul Birch, a colonel, is the commander of the 93rd Air Ground Operations Wing, which contains the preponderance of forces responsible for providing the Army and Air Force with tactical-level command and control. He holds a PhD in Military Strategy from Air University. LinkedIn.
Ray Reeves, a captain, is a tactical air control party officer and joint terminal attack controller at the 13th Air Support Operations Squadron on Fort Carson, Colo. He is a doctoral student in organizational leadership at Indiana Wesleyan University. LinkedIn.
Brad DeWees, a major, is a tactical air control party officer and joint terminal attack controller at the 13th Air Support Operations Squadron at Fort Carson. He holds a PhD in decision science from Harvard University. LinkedIn.
These are the authors’ views alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. government or any part thereof.