Connecting The Joint Force: CJADC2

In any potential “Great Power” conflict, the advantage will go to those military forces that can share information and operate together proactively and in real time across all domains. Observing, orienting, deciding, and acting faster with greater precision, effectiveness, and speed than adversaries is the next-generation technological edge for the Joint Force. The name for that edge is called Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), involving all branches of the U.S. military.

In this Q&A, we discuss the threat environment, CJADC2 enabling technologies, and digital capabilities with Northrop Grumman’s Richard Sullivan, vice president, Program Management, and Roshan Roeder, vice president, Communications, Airborne Sensors, and Networks Division, Northrop Grumman.

Breaking Defense: How is the company working with the DoD to embrace the philosophy of digital design, development, manufacturing, and sustainment?

Sullivan: Working with our customers, Northrop Grumman is taking pathfinder technologies and harnessing digital transformation to prototype new CJADC2 technologies. We are working to connect the joint force as one by being truly innovative and responsive to this emerging and dynamic environment by bringing forward and leveraging both internal and commercial capabilities to make our legacy platforms better. The goal is to provide the minimum viable products of JADC2, and walk up to the desired outcome as quickly as possible with as low a risk as possible, while leveraging modeling and simulation, operations analysis, and understanding the steps that you can take with what’s already out there.

It’s the bird-in-hand concept. If you have something that’s already operational we can make their missions more effective by integrating data from space, air, and sea assets to better optimize their mission and provide a better outcome. A good example of that is taking a radar that is already flying at 50,000 feet and giving it the ability to pass data to everybody that needs it.

On the AI front, our goal is to bring a level of trust to our customers by having our algorithms trusted. That’s a key part of our go-forward plan; don’t just build algorithms, build trusted algorithms. Make sure that the things we’re doing stay within a set of objectives and constraints so that there’s always trust in what a vehicle could do from an AI perspective.

Roeder: Looking at the new near-peer threat and where we are in relation to it, it’s important to continue to outpace the increasingly sophisticated threats from adversaries. That makes digital transformation an imperative, and we’re changing our paradigm of the system capabilities to provide rapid and incremental communications and networking capabilities to warfighters to help ensure they maintain a strategic advantage in the age of data-driven warfare.

More specifically, the digital thread applies to the full life cycle and we are integrating digital technologies as quickly as possible into our advanced manufacturing and production capabilities.

We are upgrading and accelerating new communications and networking capabilities by testing them out in different environments and examining the number of nodes in a large network that could exist and be interconnected across air, land, space, and maritime domains. Early simulation and gaining an understanding of what the right solutions are for different mission-engineering environments are the crux of what we do from systems engineering to manufacturing.

Breaking Defense: Describe the threat environment that all-domain, Joint Force capabilities will address, and how it fits into the DoD’s strategy for potential Great Powers conflict?

Roeder: With the technically sophisticated adversaries that we’re facing, joint forces need information and data at much faster speeds. Dr. Will Roper (Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics [ATL]) and Preston Dunlap (Chief Architect, Air Force ATL) have talked about connecting sensors and decision makers with the right data at the right time across multiple or all domains. Whether it’s land, air, sea, space, or cyber—integration and securely moving mission data at unprecedented speeds will be imperative for the future of DoD strategy. It can be considered almost an urgent operational need as we look at emerging mission requirements needed to deter new threats.

An example of Northrop Grumman’s ability to agilely respond to a similar urgent need is our Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) gateway system. This is a capability that already provides an open and integrated communication network that permits warfighters and disparate platforms to talk across different terrains and merges data links to create that larger situational awareness picture—enhancing mission effectiveness and improving warfighter safety.

Northrop Grumman’s BACN offering can be seen as one of the first battle-tested gateway systems that enables warfighters and platforms to effectively communicate and securely share data across all branches of the Department of Defense. The system has been used for missions such as airdrop, convoy, humanitarian assistance, close air support, and theater air control systems operations.

To meet urgent mission demands, Northrop Grumman accelerated development of the company’s BACN gateway system onto both manned and unmanned aircraft and delivered the first article of this critical capability to the U.S. Air Force in only nine months.

When I look at CJADC2 and the current threat environment, we need to quickly create and deploy a new open and integrated communications network that pulls together the disparate links that we have across the DoD into one larger picture that also includes advanced processing capabilities and creates a comprehensive, but easy to understand, picture of the data overall.

Sullivan: In the past, we used technology to our advantage to put us years ahead of our adversaries. That gap has been decreasing and some senior DoD officials have said that we may have a negative gap in certain areas.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we have to recapitalize everything. We can improve the large force we have to address present-day adversaries and threats through incremental improvements such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. That can give our legacy platforms multiples of computing power to provide actionable sensor data to warfighting domains much faster than the years that it would take to recapitalize.

Autonomy, for example, fills some of the DoD’s capability gaps without complete recapitalization. I think that we have a technological advantage that can be implemented, and in the future we need to make smart investments to leverage some of the commercial technologies being introduced today.

We hold what we call ‘Autonomy Pitch Days’ where companies developing exciting, new technologies can brief us on what they’re doing. We believe that partnerships that leverage what these companies are doing with what Northrop Grumman is developing in-house will help us end up with better products that are affordable and can be introduced to the force faster.

Breaking Defense: What are the enabling technologies necessary to achieve the goals of CJADC2?

Roeder: As we have discussed, one of the major challenges that exists today is the need to create an interconnected and unified network that has the ability to incorporate and securely transmit the data from all platforms and domains. A range of Northrop Grumman’s advanced communications and network capabilities have the ability to help the DoD move to this interconnected network. This includes offerings such as our family of gateway systems, Freedom Radio product line, and data fusion and processing offerings that are already starting to move the needle. This interconnected network is one of the critical capabilities to be addressed by JADC2 and even more recently under the new term known as CJADC2. (NOTE: In September, the Army and Air Force signed a two-year collaboration agreement in the development of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2. It combines the Army’s Project Convergence with the Air Force’s Advanced Battlefield Management System). CJADC2 will create an interconnected network or more jointness between the individual forces within both the Department of Defense and our allied military forces.

This all starts with making sure we have the data with the sensing capabilities. Once that exists, it’s making sure that we have the right, secure communications and networking capabilities in place to be able to take information and quickly pass it to the right command-and-control networks, end users, and operating bases.

Ultimately, this all comes down to having a resilient, secure, open, integrated communications network. Today, Northrop Grumman is helping the DoD and our allies connect the battlespace through: leading communications, navigation, and identification (CNI) systems; resilient, secure, software-defined, all-domain networking terminals; data fusion and processing technologies; advanced waveform offerings; and emerging communications, artificial intelligence, and networking capabilities. Northrop Grumman’s communications and advanced networking systems, along with those from industry partners, are designed with the functionality needed to bring forward this integrated network that will help the U.S. and its allies maintain a strategic advantage in the age of data-driven warfare.

Sullivan: Northrop Grumman is at the forefront of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control. Our systems are already connecting the joint force. In the future, the technologies that we see being developed for CJADC2 are the advancing capabilities we’re seeing in communications and networking architectures. For example, imagine five dots that identify five unmanned systems over the Pacific Ocean. The dots are running out of gas, so they have to leave to either tank with a tanker or go back to base and be refueled. So you have this network that’s constantly changing. It’s akin to the cellphone network where you’re driving down the freeway and the phone call signal is transferred from tower to tower. That network is constantly changing like a mesh network.

Now let’s say that the five platforms are instructed to put their sensors on a particular square on the ground to inform me if anything goes in or comes out of that square. I’m not going to tell the platforms how to apply their sensors or which sensors to use. Can we get to the point where we just give the system an objective, and then let the system optimize itself based on the vehicle’s position, the sensor’s pointing angle, what the sensors and vehicles are already doing, and then having the platforms, within its own limitations, like running low on fuel, handoff its mission to another platform?

Addressing that constant change and those dynamics is the point in the future where instead of having five pilots and five mission or sensor operators working in concert with one another we can let the computer solve for that in real or near real time by managing the sensors to be where they need to be to collect the actionable intelligence, and having the mission commander managing the mission objectives. There are technologies available that can enable that today.

Breaking Defense: What specific programs and capabilities is NGC presently engaged in that gives it experience in addressing the requirements for all-domain operations?

Roeder: For 60 years, Northrop Grumman has been leading in the design, development, and delivery of end-to-end communications and advanced networking capabilities, inclusive of the U.S. but also for allied forces. We already mentioned our BACN gateway offering that has many of the capabilities that CJADC2 can centralize around for theater operations.

Over time we’re enhancing gateway offerings with improved data rates and processing as we introduce new automation, software, fusion technologies, and streamlined communications capabilities. We’ll be reducing the SWaP of those gateway systems and also adding open architecture and software-defined radios, and the ability to move data from fifth-generation fighters to fourth gen and vice versa—and even to sixth-generation platforms when the time comes.

There is also our history with the F-35 CNI system that has approximately 27 integrated functions that can be dynamically programmed to arm the F-35 pilot with multiple-mission capabilities engineered for seamless transition from one mission phase to the next. Merging the capabilities of our gateway offerings, CNI systems, and Freedom product line networking terminals will help provide the DoD with the functionality needed to move to network-centric operations and connect the joint force as one.

Earlier this year, Northrop Grumman was also awarded a contract to develop and demonstrate a Software Programmable Open Mission Systems (OMS) Compliant (SPOC) radio terminal for the Air Force. This development defines the Air Force’s next-generation radio approach. The SPOC open architecture networking terminal offers numerous benefits to the Air Force, including opening our CNI system to third-party developers, sharing of ISR information over a common data link, and beyond line-of-sight capability through the Mobile User Objective System in orbit.

Sullivan: First and foremost the need is to get the systems to provide the multi-domain information that is typically not wired in from the beginning. Our HALE (high altitude, long endurance) platforms, manned platforms, and other tactical platforms have specific data links that give our country a significant capability that leverages sensors from space, air, surface, and subsurface vehicles. They have the capability to share data across systems, whether you’re talking about the Advanced Battle Management Systems in the Air Force, the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) in the Army, or distributed maritime operations in the Navy.

AI and ML will be key here in the sharing of data between Global Hawks, Tritons, Fire Scouts, B-2s, E-2s and Joint Stars. For example, we’re working on a capability where a Triton flying a mission over the ocean transfers relevant data to another vehicle that’s in the same area of regard. It’s like my Google phone using AI to tell me the news that it thinks is most important for me to see.