Army JADC2 image

WASHINGTON: Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley has tasked each of the services to develop a specific piece of the overarching concept for future Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO), which envisions seamlessly lethal coordination across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. The services are already swapping liaison officers with the others to form multi-service teams to thrash out the new ideas.

Gen. David Goldfein

“Each of the services have has been given a line of effort that we were responsible for leading. Ours is Joint All-Domain Command and Control,” outgoing Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said yesterday in a webinar sponsored by John Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS). “The Navy is looking at global and joint fires; the Army is looking at logistics and how we do logistics under attack.”

A fourth piece of the puzzle is how US forces achieve “information advantage” over high-tech adversaries in future wars; while this hasn’t been publicly specified, it’s likely the lead on this line of effort is the Marine Corps.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper last year tasked the Joint Staff and the services with coming up with the Joint Warfighting Concept for All-Domain Operations by December. Each service is leading one of the “functional concepts” to flesh out that overarching concept, said the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations (Section G-3/5/7), Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn.

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Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn

“Below that joint warfighting concept, there are four functional concepts that are being written,” Flynn told an AUSA webinar today. “One is on C2; one is on fires; one is on information advantage, and another is on contested logistics.”

“The joint concept for contested logistics….the lead for that concept work is the Army,” Flynn said. Within the Army’s Pentagon staff, the lead is Flynn’s counterpart for logistics (Section G-4), Lt. Gen. Duane Gamble, but much of the work is being done at Army Futures Command, which develops new equipment, organizations, and tactics, with support from Army Materiel Command, which oversees supply and sustainment.

There’s a certain logic to this division of labor among the services. The Air Force already runs the closest thing to a real-time command-and-control system, its regional Air Operations Centers (AOCs), and it’s investing and experimenting extensively in new C2 technology under its Advanced Battle Management System. (That said, the Air Force surveillance and communications satellites central to all-domain ops are now being hived off to the nascent Space Force). The Navy has seemed unenthused about the all-domain idea but still has extensive experience coordinating both defensive and offensive missile fires across its far-flung fleet, with the AEGIS Weapon System (AWS) coordinating anti-aircraft and missile defense. And the Army, while eager to take a larger role in long-range fires, has historically provided the unglamorous and under-appreciated logistical underpinnings that allow the whole force to function — an especially challenging problem when enemy hackers, saboteurs, submarines, and long-range missiles are targeting supply lines.

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Multi-Domain Operations, or All Domain Operations, envisions a new collaboration across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace (Army graphic)

The process of fleshing out how each of these missions will be accomplished in an all-domain fight is just beginning, with each service now setting up joint teams tasked with the effort, Goldfein said.

“We’re in the process right now — and I’m pretty excited about this — of executing our ‘prisoner exchange.'” Goldfein said with a chuckle. “I’m going to give colonels, my best colonels — I’m going to give one to the Army, one of the Navy, one to the Marine Corps, and they’re going to work on that chief’s team, and that Commandant’s team, to be able to ensure that we drive forward on joint solutions.”

As Breaking D readers are well aware, the Milley and Esper have put a high priority on figuring out a new American way of war, where service assets and capabilities in air, land, sea, space and cyberspace are seamlessly interwoven; long-range network links and artificial intelligence algorithms enable commanders to make decisions in near-real time; and the force responds to threats and opportunities at machine speed.

From this, the Combatant Commanders and the services will determine new requirements, an effort being led by Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John Hyten, and acquire new technologies necessary to enable warfighters with the new capabilities.

Indeed, Hyten has launched an effort to reform the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) to ensure that Combatant Commanders are driving requirements to the services instead of the other way around — in part to address needs relating to JADC2, which is the digital nervous system for all-domain ops that will link all sensors to all shooters.

Goldfein has been vocal on the importance of all-domain ops and especially JADC2 — and his successor, Gen. Charles Brown, is expected to continue to prioritize ABMS.

“I will tell you, I’m excited because I feel like as Joint Chiefs, we all have the right picture. We all agree this is essential to our future,” Goldfein said.