This is the first in a series of stories built from an almost hour-long video interview with Preston Dunlap, the Air and Space Forces chief architect. From that position, Dunlap helps guide the complex and far-reaching work the Air and Space Forces are doing in All Domain Operations, on JADC2, and, most centrally, on the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). We’ll be running one of these stories each week through much of the holiday season.

WASHINGTON: Preston Dunlap fits perfectly in Will Roper’s Air Force acquisition world. He’s whip smart, speaks in full sentences, and displays comprehensive knowledge of a wide array of weapons and technologies. For the most part in this series, we’re going to leave it to Dunlap to convey his insights in his own language and manner.

This first story contains two news stories. The first is the one expressed in the headline.

For background, the senior leadership of the US military is expected to approve a Joint Warfighting Concept next month setting the path for the United States on its way to a new American way of war. As Breaking D readers know, because Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten told us, “it will describe the capabilities and attributes necessary to operate in this future all-domain world.” And that is expected to sustain American dominance in warfare.

Dunlap told me the Air Force hopes “to work with all the Combatant Commands, and the Joint Staff as well as the services to host the first globally integrated On Ramp or All-Domain C2 activity to be able to bring it all together” in May.

The second half of the story is that in fiscal 2021, the F-35, the F-22, “even a KC-46 tanker” and ground assets will be able to share data via an airborne software link, Dunlap says. (An earlier demo showed that the F-35 and F-22 could speak the same machine language via a software ‘translator’ on the ground.)

The demo will use the Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie drone to link directly to 5th generation fighters and test manned and unmanned teaming, as originally planned. It had to be scratched due to complications from pandemic restrictions when it was planned for the most recent ABMS On Ramp in September. 

Later in the year, the Air Force will take a KC-46 tanker, and put that same communications capability on it so forces can “move data in a much wider bandwidth to many more forces. Fifth to fifth, fifth to fourth, back to the continental United States and other sort of central locations that we want to process and move information to.”

Capitol Hill is keeping a close eye on ABMS and related All Domain efforts. The Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) chopped $93.5 million from the Air Force’s $302.3 million request for ABMS in its draft 2021 spending bill. The SAC also demanded that Roper provide an acquisition strategy certified as fully funded by the Air Force comptroller and a list of all the projects that fall under its auspices.