Warfighters at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., are briefed on the capabilities of the Advanced Battle Management System at the Shadow Operations Center-Nellis, Feb. 26, 2021. The ShOC-N has been tasked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to become the Air Force’s Joint All-Domain battle laboratory for information gathering and dissemination and application testing and development in order to further enable the Air Force’s ABMS mission

Warfighters at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., are briefed on the capabilities of the Advanced Battle Management System at the Shadow Operations Center-Nellis, Feb. 26, 2021. (Photo by 1st Lt. Nicolle Mathison)

WASHINGTON — The Air Force has picked five companies to help build digital infrastructure and set future requirements for the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), the service’s contribution to the Pentagon’s sprawling Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) effort.

SAIC, L3 Harris, Leidos, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman each announced they were selected to be part of the ABMS Digital Infrastructure Consortium, led by the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office.

“The Department of the Air Force established the ABMS Digital Infrastructure Consortium with industry partners to design, develop and deploy advanced data-centric capabilities for the Air Force and Space Force,” an Air Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

Vinnie DiFronzo, SAIC’s senior vice president of operations, told Breaking Defense today in an interview the company is working through an initial “game plan” for its role and the solutions it’ll provide in the consortium.

“The purpose behind this is really to lay in the digital infrastructure to improve decision making and accelerate kill chains, kill webs…against a near-peer threat,” DiFronzo said. “So it really comes down to decision superiority as an initial objective.”

Raytheon, in a press release today, said it had been selected as one of the five companies to perform systems engineering and that the consortium “will advance the architecture standards and digital infrastructure requirements for the Department of the Air Force’s digital backbone to manage, secure, and deliver data across multiple domains in highly contested environments.” 

Gerry Fasano, Leidos defense group president, said in a statement today that establishing the consortium is a “significant milestone in realizing the DoD’s JADC2 efforts.” Ross Niebergall, L3Harris vice president and chief technical officer, said in a Sept. 16 press release interoperability is the “priority outcome” for the consortium.

“The consortium will address the secure processing, resilient communications, data management and open-architecture design criteria that lays the foundation for enabling the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System,” according to the press release. 

In its press release, Northrop Grumman said it will support the Air Force “in building the technical and business roadmaps to deploy digital infrastructure to the warfighter on accelerated timelines.” The consortium will focus on four areas, the company said: secure processing, connectivity resilience, data management and creating an open architecture.

The Pentagon’s JADC2 effort is aimed at connecting “sensor to shooters” more quickly and effectively in an increasingly information-heavy battlefield. It’s also been a difficult concept for officials to explain, as recent comments suggest.

RELATED: Pentagon’s JADC2 strategy: More questions than answers

Meanwhile, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced today the service has created a new office in charge of overseeing acquisition for ABMS. Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey will lead the new integrated program office for Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management (C3BM) and have.

Oversight of ABMS will now be split into three areas, with Cropsey in charge of procurement of new technology. He will report to Andrew Hunter and Frank Calvelli, top acquisition officials for the Air Force and Space Force.