DoD Enjoins Congress For Flexibility To Buy JADC2 Tech Fast

WASHINGTON: The Joint Staff, DoD and Congress are exploring how to change acquisition authorities to more rapidly move Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) capabilities into the field.

“We’re working hard right now with the Hill, with CAPE, with others in the department to try to determine the best way to get after that we need to be able to incentivize JADC2 efforts,” Army Brig. Gen. Rob Parker, J6 deputy director and head of the JADC2 Joint Cross-Functional Team (CFT) said. He is shepherding development of the JADC2 strategy that now awaits signature by Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley.

Parker told the Potomac Officers Club 2021 JADC2 Forum (sponsored by Lockheed Martin) today that DoD is grateful to Congress for providing the services with more flexible acquisition mechanisms such as Other Transaction Authority (OTA) — but that at the DoD level, more is needed.

“As a department, you know, we are still stuck with the old programming planning, budgeting execution process, that was really shaped for a totally different era — the World War II, Cold War era. Deliver material solutions over a decade plus — that’s not helping us today,” he said. “What we need, as the department, is the ability to access what we would call ‘colorless’ money, multiyear money.”

The effort to shake out policy and funding challenges to JADC2 implementation is in part driven by combatant commanders, who are clamoring for real-world access to a number of data management software tools that have proven their chops in recent service and joint experiments. 

“We need to be able to accelerate modernization, at the right time in place, as identified through these experiments demonstrations and other efforts where we see the services [and] the commands partnering with industry, and really getting off to a very good start — but [where] they’re going to need some help,” he said.

Parker explained that the JADC2 CFT is trying to figure out how to transition technology commanders say is needed today from demos and experiments to acquisition programs. In particular, he mentioned the March 18-23 Global Information Dominance Exercise (GIDE) 2 exercise led by Northern Command (NORTHCOM), and STRATCOM’s Global Data Integration (GDI) effort to demonstrate a tool to fuse classified and unclassified data into a standardized missile tracking methodology (called a Common Track Report) that can be easily shared with other commands.

“Our challenge to CFT is identifying efforts like that, and bringing them in, in the right time and manner,” Parker said.

GIDE 2

“All 11 commands endorsed every capability that we looked at [in GIDE2],” NORTHCOM Commander Gen. Glenn VanHerck told reporters on March 31. “And many asked: ‘Why are we waiting, why don’t we field these right now, and kind of build the bicycle as you ride it?.”

GIDE 2 was (obviously) the second in NORTHCOM’s planned series of at least three demos to test three different but interlinked software tools.

The first was held in December, as a table-top exercise (TTX) conducted in coordination with Southern Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Transportation Command, STRATCOM and the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. GIDE 2, by contrast, was linked to NORAD’s March 20-26 Amalgam Dart 2102 exercise. NORTHCOM is planning a third, more complex demo in the summer, Col. Matt “Nomad” Strohmeyer, NORAD/USNORTHCOM J8 JADC2 development lead, told me last month. 

The three prototype tools — called Cosmos, Lattice and Gaia — use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to provide “information dominance,” a NORTHCOM spokesperson said in an email.

“While the information displayed and interface of each tool is different, data is openly shared across them. The uses of the three tools span from strategic cross-combatant command collaboration to operational global all-domain awareness for earlier interactions and warnings, to tactical machine-enabled Course of Action (COA) development for increased response options and decision space,” the spokesperson explained. (NORTHCOM has demurred from providing the names of vendors who supported development of the tools, saying only that in the end none of the new software systems would be vendor locked.)

• Cosmos is a “strategic cross-combatant command collaboration tool,” the NORTHCOM spokesman elaborated in the email. It was used “in its ‘beta’ form during GIDE #2 for successful real-time, cloud-based collaboration between the combatant commands.” The tool allowed commanders “to see how competitors were acting globally and to then rapidly collaborate on competitor courses of action (COA) development and a blue force globally integrated response. … The impact of this tool is tangible global integration between combatant commands and a significant reduction in the time required to develop response options,” the spokesperson added.
• Gaia is an “operational level global all-domain awareness tool” that “incorporates a host of data sources and AI-enabled indications and warnings,” the spokesperson said. “The prototype tool essentially provides a ‘single pane of glass’ to see not only one geographic Area of Responsibility (AOR) but the entire globe and multiple domains.” During GIDE2 it “successfully integrated real-time air, maritime, ground, and space feeds, providing global force disposition information and earlier indications and warnings of competitor movements” based on search performed by an AI system developed by Project Maven.
• Lattice is “tied to the other two tools,” the spokesperson said. Enabled by the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) and using center-designed algorithms, it “provided a real-time air domain threat tracking picture and response options” — based on radar feeds from various locations that had been processed by NORAD-NORTHCOM’s own fledgling Pathfinder system. It “significantly increased the number of response options and reduced the time and human-based calculations required for air threat pairing to defensive assets,” the spokesperson said. “The impact of this tool for the user is an increase in tactical decision space and ability to manage a far greater number and complexity of threats, and better response options.”

As a next step, Parker said, NORTHCOM and STRATCOM will brief the JADC2 CTF’s next “data summit” next month that “involves all of our senior CDOs [chief data officers] from across the department on those efforts to help us understand exactly what was accomplished, how it might be accomplished at scale … and how we can get behind that to move ahead,” he said.

The CTF held its first data summit in January, and Parker told me that the Joint Staff and DoD’s Chief Data Officer David Spirk have agreed to lead a new process to set data standards for all future military sensors and weapons to connect at machine speed — a foundation stone for JADC2.

Further, Parker said, the CTF is working with NORTHCOM and STRATCOM personnel as part of the effort to flesh out how to implement the emerging JADC2 strategy. “We already pulling in team members from those efforts … to help us write key elements for those plans of actions and milestones to accelerate efforts to get us, as a joint force, where we need to be sooner and deliver those capabilities based on requirements to those combatant commands.”

However, he stressed, in the end nothing can come to fruition “without policy adjustments, it doesn’t happen without the right resources, and that’s, that’s where we’re particularly challenged.”