Maj. Gen. Dawn Dunlop
WASHINGTON: Open software architectures for all new development programs will be the new requirement from the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) as it lays the foundation for Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) for the US military.
JROC will not simply instruct the individual services to employ non-proprietary software; it will provide a prescribed set of standards to ensure cross-service and cross-domain compatibility, Maj. Gen. Dawn Dunlop, Air Force director of operational capabilities, said today. The idea is to ensure that as new subsystems like radar or fuzes for warheads come on line, they can all be linked through common software interfaces.
As Breaking D readers know, the JROC — led by Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten — is working on a set of requirements to underpin the Joint Warfighting Concept (due by the end of next month) that will define All-Domain Operations. Specifically, the JROC is detailing what capabilities and systems will be needed to enable the four subcomponents of the concept — JADC2, contested logistics, joint fires, and information advantage.
Dunlop stressed that industry partners have been invited to help JROC hone the software architecture requirements so they are based on state of the art technology and practices, she said at AIAA’s first ASCEND space conference today.
“It’s not a simple problem set. We used to say, ‘here’s a system built on open architecture;’ we give it a big green checkmark; and we move on. But what we’ve understood is that there are multiple open architectures, and what we need to do is pick a handful of the best within the Department — and make them understandable within the Department, and then cross the services and with our industry partners,” she said.
That said, Dunlop explained that goal is not to impose one single new software system on all the services. Instead, it’s to ensure the new open architecture is “tailorable” to each service’s needs — echoing Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown, who likens JADC2 to a smart phone and each of the service’s C2 networks as the apps that run on it.
The Army has learned over the past four years testing its IBCS network to link Army radars and weapons exactly how hard it is to connect legacy systems, Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, told the webinar.
“It is very hard when you get down to the component hardware level and the software level to open that stuff up to an open architecture to allow multiple command nodes and sensor feeds, launcher platforms, missile platforms — you have it — to be able to talk to each other,” he said. “A lot of the legacy platforms are built with proprietary software; they were built without an open architecture in mind. So we had to do a lot of work, going back, on those old platforms to open those up to be able to be responsive to the requirements of IBCS. We’re gonna have the same challenges in JADC2 and ABMS, etc.”
Karbler noted that the Army sees IBCS, which is a horrid nested acronym for IAMD (Integrated Air & Missile Defense) Battle Command System, as a “pathfinder” for JADC2. Army Chief Gen. James McConville and Brown on Oct. 2 signed a memorandum of agreement to work on common standards and merge the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) “On-Ramp” demonstrations with the Army’s Project Convergence exercises based around IBCS.
Karbler added that, “every single combat developer, every single requirements person out there,” should be held accountable for ensuring new systems are built on open architectures and be “able to contribute to a JADC2 environment.”
Dunlop said that in addition to the new open architecture requirement, the JROC is working on setting up a testing “campaign plan” that is less “ad-hoc” and technology driven than the ABMS On Ramps, but is focused instead on the top priorities of warfighters for JADC2. This is because JADC2 “will fundamentally change how we fight as a as a nation, and will change how we organize, train and equip,” she said.
“It’s a 60-page aggregation of all the testing opportunities that we’ve got across the services to try and figure it out, in the sense of: How do we prioritize, where do we test?” she said.
Lt. Gen. ‘Salty’ Saltzman, Space Force deputy chief of space operations, told the ASCEND conference that joint training is key to making sure than JADC2 and all-domain operations work in the real world. He chided the services for not necessarily putting the time into joint training.
“The services bring culture, they bring unique perspectives, they bring expertise in domains to bear on the joint fight, and we should never forget that that’s a powerful additive, that’s a force multiplier,” he said. “But, you know, when we start to talk about service readiness, or service training or capabilities, taking up too much time so that we don’t have time to do joint training or joint operations, that’s a false dichotomy. And we have to get past that. Those are one and the same. It’s almost like saying you don’t have time to stop and get gas because you’re too busy driving.”
Despite being internally focused on developing its own culture, priorities and training regimes as a new service, Saltzman added, the Space Force is “all in for the joint all-domain fight, and look forward to working with teammates to be better at it in the future.” (As Breaking D readers know, Saltzman back in 2017 was charged with creating the Air Force’s forerunner to JADC2, the Multi-Domain Command and Control (MDC2) program.)
While the Air Force, Army and Space Force were all represented on the ASCEND panel, the Navy was not — perhaps not so surprising given that, as Paul reported on Monday, the Navy is late to the party and is focused almost exclusively on creating its own internal multi-domain C2 network to link Navy and Marine Corps sea, undersea, land and space assets under Project Overmatch.
In response to my question about cooperation with the Navy, Dunlop said that she expects the Navy to become more involved over time — and that Navy officials have been “in conversations” with both the Air Force and the Joint Staff.
“This past year, we’ve all been on a little bit of a different timeline and taking a slightly different approach to kind of ramping up our own service architectures and then how we interface,” she said. “We’ve had several conversations but they’re [the Navy] not as involved as they will be this coming year.”
Not only is the Navy working with the Joint Staff “very heavily” on setting out JADC2 goals, she said, but Navy officials have shown interest in participating in the Joint Integration Lab and joint data standards development that the Air Force and Army have agreed to under the McConnell-Brown MoU.
“So, again, I don’t think there’s any shortage of Navy involvement,” Dunlop said.
