Lt. Gen. John Shaw
WASHINGTON: While discussions of DoD’s emerging Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) strategy are mostly focused on the rapid sharing of multi-sensor data to land-, sea- and air-based ‘shooters,’ the needs of space operators should not be overlooked, cautions Lt. Gen. John Shaw, Space Command deputy.
In particular, threats to US satellites from other domains must be planned for, SPACECOM Commander Gen. James Dickinson. The US will need to be able to respond just as rapidly as any ground commander, he told the National Security Space Association (NSSA) today.
“JADC2 often, and rightfully so, is usually focused on a terrestrial domain or a terrestrial fight and bringing things into that fight. And, again, that is the likely to be the primary focus in any future fight,” Shaw acknowledged.”But space needs to have all-domain integration, too, to support General Dickinson’s operations within the space area of responsibility.”
That area of responsibility, or AOR, begins at around 100 kilometers above the Earth and extends to as far out as human space activities themselves range. Further, as Shaw obliquely alluded in his remarks, SPACECOM is designated as a ‘geographic’ command, which means it has the power, and the responsibility, to call in support of other US Combatant Commands if assets in its AOR are under attack.
“If there is a space electronic warfare jammer on a maritime vessel, an adversary maritime vessel somewhere, that is affecting the space domain, Gen. Dickinson needs to know about it,” Shaw stressed. “If there is a mobile, ground directed-energy weapon somewhere that might represent a threat, Gen. Dickinson needs to know about it, and so do our operational commanders. If there is an aircraft capable of launching an air-launched anti satellite weapon operating in the air domain, we need to know about it.”
Given that the nature of warfare is changing rapidly toward an information-centric, computerized endeavor that will involve operations all around, and above, the globe, Shaw explained that the US military’s “20th century” way of waging war will not be good enough in the future.
“In its most basic essence, JADC2 is about making sure that all operations and all domains can rapidly share information with one another; be part of some sort of common picture,” he said. “We typically have not done a very good job of that. There are many instances where we’ve had certain weapon systems that can’t talk to other weapon systems, or they can’t both link into the same common operational picture and have an understanding of what’s going on. …We can’t do that in the 21st Century, it’s all got to work together.”
Space Force — which is responsible for providing SPACECOM and the other Combatant Commands with the equipment, training and personnel to undertake space operations — also will play a central role in implementing JADC2, says Lt. Gen. Salty Saltzman, Space Force deputy chief for operations, cyber and nuclear.
“The Space Force as a service is going to be in every joint fight from here on out. So when you say ‘joint’ and ‘all domain,’ it universally, if I can use that metaphor, includes the Space Force,” he told the Brookings Institution.
“We are going to command and control our Space Forces using the same models and methods for decision superiority that every service is using when they describe their joint, all-domain command and control,” he said Friday. “And as we practice this together, and use common terminology and discover common operational problems, we will advance that concept as a joint team — not individually from service to service, but collectively, as we move forward. We’re going to be partners tied at the hip on this because it’s so important that space information, space capabilities and space decision-makers are wrapped up into the all-domain solutions.”
Saltzman, one of the fathers of JADC2, noted that the Space Force is already pursuing some of the critical capabilities needed to implement the inter-connectivity the military will need in future fights with tech-savvy adversaries such as Russia and China.
“Think about cloud-based data structures, think about common standards and interfaces,” he said.
One specific example is the Unified Data Library (UDL) of space situational awareness data, which now is being expanded by the Space Force to include info from a wide array of military and commercial sensors. The UDL also is being integrated into the Air Force’s dataONE library, developed by the Advance Battle Management System (ABMS) program that, in turn, is the service’s overarching effort to support JADC2.
The Space Force awarded Colorado Springs-based startup Bluestaq a $280 million contract extension on Tuesday for development and data integration into the UDL. Bluestaq initially helped Air Force Space Command conceptualize the UDL in 2018; it won a follow-up award to start building the data library in 2019.
The extension of the Advanced Command and Control Enterprise Systems and Software (ACCESS) contract, a company press release says, “will continue to build a secure, modern data management platform from a wide range of sources spanning commercial, Department of Defense (DoD), and the United States Intelligence Community (IC).”
UDL now “consumes, processes, and distributes millions of unique data products daily originating from dozens of commercial, academic, and government organizations worldwide to a diverse user base spanning 25 countries and over 3,500 individual users,” the release added.
