Project Convergence Capstone 5, hosted by the Army, is an experimentation venue for all the U.S. military services and key allies to train alongside each other and test concepts for integration. This is in line with one of the Pentagon’s top priorities called Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2, which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster. The word “combined” in the parlance of CJADC2, refers to bringing foreign partners into the mix.

This year’s event will expand upon previous iterations, taking place in two scenarios: one in March at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, focused on enabling operations at the corps and below level along with joint and international partners, and the other in April along with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to exercise at the combatant command level with all service components.

The Indo-Pacific portion will be much more expansive than what the military did as part of last year’s Project Convergence capstone event.

“Last year, I said we had fake Guam, we had a simulation built that we had something we were defending and all the things that went along with it. This year, we’re taking all that stuff we did in tents at Camp Pendleton [in California] and we’re going to the Pacific. We’ll be operating out of Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Japan and Australia,” Brig. Gen. Zachary Miller, commander of Joint Modernization Command, said in an interview. “We’ll be doing the same type of things, but it’ll be at actual operational distances across the International Date Line, using the actual live networks. We’ll have all the live intelligence data, plus the simulation wrap that we put on it to do all the key activities, defense of Guam, offensive and defensive activities, etc.”

Miller said the Pacific portion is focused on transitioning from crisis to conflict — using a familiar real-world scenario of defending of U.S. and coalition territory, a nod to China’s ambitions to take Taiwan — involving theater-level offensive activity, such as strikes on maritime targets and land targets, while forces are continuing to try to gain intelligence and information about the enemy and defend themselves from adversary volleys.

At Fort Irwin, the exercise will be focused on more tactical operations that go beyond the day-one portion of conflict at the theater level once land, air, sea and special ops forces are introduced. This could be a Pacific or European scenario, Miller noted, as the technology the military is testing will be agnostic to theater.

As part of the exercise, there will be what Miller described as “leave behind” capabilities.

“When we’re done with this … everything from cross-combatant command coordination to target effector pairing at lower echelons, they will have capabilities they will keep that they will be able to fight with on the Indo-Pacom warfighting network. That’s a big deal,” Miller said.

Those leave-behind capabilities fall into two broad categories. The first is related to the minimum viable CJADC2 product that deals with cross-combatant command coordination and collaboration. This is focused on how forces make rapid decisions and understand resources across all the combatant commands in conjunction with the Joint Staff and senior policymakers in the nation’s capital.

This coordination across combat commands is another key difference in this year’s Project Convergence. It’s not just Indo-Pacom, but there will be a total of six combatant commands that are at some point touching the exercise. Officials recognize that a war in one combatant command’s area of responsibility will likely have global implications.

Those collaboration tools span around six or seven workflows, Miller said, which include the Maven Smart System as well as asset visibility and intelligence. There are also machine learning models that are built-in to help provide coordination and situational awareness across the various geographic regions.

The capability provides “the connective tissue so that we don’t have, when something happens, four different combatant commands producing PowerPoint presentations about what their recommendations are, that then the Joint Staff or somebody else has to somehow try to put together,” Miller said. “That’s a time-consuming process and the information gets stale in a hurry.”

The second set of capabilities is focused on the ability to conduct offensive actions from across all the services and coalition partners using any sensor available.

Most importantly, this capability is looking at how to strike heavily protected formations and targets.

“We have to understand, again, what are the totality of the effects we need? Some of it is we need this types of missiles or we this types of subsurface things,” Miller said. “Another part of it is things like how do we bring an enemy out of [emissions control] so we can make sure we know where they are for sure, [and] how we fuse different forms of intelligence rapidly.”

Officials are using the actual maritime strike concept from Indo-Pacom for the scenario.

Army objectives

When it comes to testing out Army-specific objectives for Project Convergence, Miller said the entire basis for the event is built around the forthcoming Army warfighting concept. The event will be based on a much more coherent scenario for how senior leaders think the Army will fight in the 2030 to 2040 timeframe.

Miller outlined four primary warfighting notions they’ll seek to explore during Capstone 5. The first is expanded maneuver aimed at how the joint force is thinking about time and space in all domains. Second is cross-domain fires, involving how to shoot and create effects across all domains of warfare. Third is formation-based layered protection, which is the idea of how to protect units in all domains, such as the electromagnetic spectrum, dispersion of command posts and countering unmanned aerial systems. Last is command and control and counter-C2, or preventing the adversary from being able to command their forces.

To test this out, the Army is looking at a battlefield framework that goes from corps all the way down to the platoon level.

The initiative will provide a unique opportunity to test an operational concept at the corps level in ways the Army typically hasn’t before.

Corps exercises are traditionally done at the command post level and are simulated. However, Project Convergence is providing a holistic training opportunity at all echelons similar to a combat training center rotation. Those events are typically focused on brigades and are the most realistic combat scenarios the Army can create for units to train. Project Convergence will essentially be a combat training center rotation for corps and below as opposed to last year’s event, which saw independent pockets of experimentation — such as medical — separate from other operations.

The Army will also be looking at how to do maneuver in a multi-dimensional aspect, to include within the electromagnetic spectrum.

While the Army can’t replicate all these dimensions and capabilities at the National Training Center, it has built a robust simulation environment intended to overwhelm participants with what they might expect during large-scale combat against a sophisticated nation-state adversary.

“If you’re in a command post, what you’re going to have in front of you is a very, very detailed, hectic, confusing picture of what is going on in the air and on the ground for any friendly and enemy UAS systems. Everybody’s trying to jam everybody else. One-way attack munitions. All the same time we’re trying to fire rockets and cannons through that space. We’re trying to fly manned [and] unmanned rotary-wing aircraft. We’re trying to resupply. All of the stuff that has to happen to do an operation,” Miller said. “How we think about planning and operating in that space is huge. We have technologies that are brought in to help us make sense of all that. We’re very focused on making sure commanders and staffs understand what they look like in the electromagnetic spectrum and what their vulnerabilities are [and] at the same time what the enemy’s vulnerabilities are. That’s a big focus.”

They’ll also be focusing on robotics and human-robot formations, particularly for breaching, to ensure human soldiers aren’t the first forces in contact with the adversary.

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The top-down requirements process Ukraine’s military inherited from Moscow in the 1990s kept headquarters analysts employed but left 87 percent of needs unfulfilled. Today, warfighters get the final say in what gets built. Drones that once relied on GPS and luck now use automated navigation and targeting algorithms to overcome operator error and Russian jamming, raising success rates from 20 percent to 70 percent. The newest generation uses fiber-optic cable for communication to eliminate the threat of electronic interference.

The Pentagon’s approach to weapon development looks more like the one used by Soviet apparatchiks. Requirements officers in the Joint Staff and military services try to guess capability gaps and potential solutions years in advance. By the time these analyses emerge from the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) two years later, the threat has changed, technology has marched on, and a different solution is likely needed.

By definition, predictive planning systems such as JCIDS cannot work in a dynamic environment. They define performance metrics before testing a single prototype because they assume cutting-edge defense systems can only arise from dedicated government-led research and development. That approach is now obsolete thanks to the rapid advance and broad availability of militarily-relevant commercial technology.

Ukraine’s successes show how the U.S. Department of Defense could unlock the potential of private-sector innovation through collaborative experimentation between engineers and operators. Instead of funneling their needs through a multi-year staffing process, Ukrainian commanders talk with local drone pilots and data scientists to identify problems and reach out to government offices that can pay for solutions.

Under Kyiv’s innovation model, a new uncrewed system concept can reach the battlefield in months, drawing on commercial AI to quickly adapt flight paths or identify targets in thousands of video streams. For example, a volunteer-driven missile team eschewed extensive predictive analysis and prototyped a new cruise missile in a year and a half — an unthinkable timeline under Ukraine’s previous Soviet-model bureaucracy.

Real-time operator feedback is essential to this approach. It defines what is “good enough” and helps program managers cut through the competing equities that often prevent a system from reaching the field. In less than a year, Ukraine’s military created Delta, a situational awareness system like the elusive Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept that the Pentagon has chased for nearly a decade. Coders started Delta with a single battlefield map and added new modules when soldiers asked for them. Now the system ties together thousands of drones, cameras, satellite feeds, and Western cannon and rocket artillery systems.

Instead of waiting for a glacial interagency process to dictate universal interoperability requirements, Delta’s developers iteratively add new elements and test them in the real fight. During NATO interoperability exercises in 2023, Delta proved the value of this bottom-up approach by sharing data via Link 16 with F-16 jets and integrating with Poland’s TOPAZ artillery fire control software. Delta reflects genuine cross-domain synergy, born out of emergent needs and continuous iteration, not years of staff approvals.

Ukraine’s success is not simply a fluke born out of existential desperation; it’s the logical consequence of removing unnecessary processes and letting warfighters shape the pipeline. While we in the United States prioritize box-checking staffing for documents that meet formatting guidelines and have all the right system views and appendices, Ukraine lets demand drive immediate action. This shift from central planning to distributed innovation has not only kept Ukraine in the fight but also opened the door to realizing advanced integrations like real-time targeting.

The Pentagon should take Ukraine’s combat lessons to heart and fund the work to find solutions for today’s problems. Requirements officers should stop trying to predict the future and begin collecting and refining operational challenges to drive experimentation. And acquisition executives should give innovative program managers and their industry partners the decision space to quickly develop systems that deliver relevant capability, use existing components, and can respond to future enemy countermeasures.

The DOD has experimented with new acquisition pathways and innovation initiatives that have these attributes. But “Band-Aid” solutions that speed up paperwork or create more prototypes don’t address the core problem: a requirements system that prioritizes predictive planning over operational results.

The Pentagon should retire centralized requirements processes such as JCIDS. In their place, the U.S. military services should fund focused campaigns of experimentation that test multiple solutions against clear operational problems, enable rapid learning from failure, and scale what actually works in realistic conditions. Until the DOD abandons its Soviet-style faith in headquarters apparatchiks and embraces structured experimentation driven by warfighters, it will continue to fall behind adversaries who are willing to adapt and learn.

Bryan Clark is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, and an expert in naval operations, electronic warfare, autonomous systems, military competitions and wargaming. Previously, he served as special assistant to the chief of naval operations and director of the CNO’s Commander’s Action Group, led studies on the Navy headquarters staff, and was an enlisted and officer submariner in the Navy.

Dan Patt is a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, where he focuses on the role of information and innovation in national security. Patt also supports strategy at national security technology company STR and supports Thomas H. Lee Partners’ automation and technology investment practice. Previously, he co-founded and was CEO of Vecna Robotics and served as deputy director for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Strategic Technology Office.

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Unlike the conflicts in the Middle East of the last 20 years against a technologically inferior enemy, Pentagon officials anticipate contested and congested digital environments where maintaining connectivity will be difficult — a concept known as DDIL, or denied, disrupted, intermittent and limited, in Defense Department parlance.

“Because the bandwidth that’s available in these pLEO satellite connections to our ground control stations is so big, we’re talking hundreds of megabytes of bandwidth with negligible latency, it makes things possible that you couldn’t do anymore. You don’t need to be persistently connected anymore,” Col. Jason Quinter, commander of Marine Air Control Group 38, said during a webcast Monday hosted by C4ISRNET, adding that this also includes the cloud.

In the past, U.S. troops were used to constant connectivity to higher headquarters or to pass data back and forth. Now, they will have to operate somewhat disconnected at times, but these new technologies are providing more bandwidth in those scenarios.

“pLEO is a game changer … That high amount of bandwidth and that low latency really changes what’s possible on modern networks,” Quinter told DefenseScoop in an Oct. 7 interview. “Because the satellites are in low-Earth orbit, you have significantly less latency than you typically would. What that means is it makes certain things possible that wouldn’t [otherwise] be possible.”

These constellations provide orders of magnitude more bandwidth than traditional program-of-record SATCOM capabilities, where forces would have to aggregate connections together to achieve 12 megabytes. Now, troops can have up to 200 megabytes or more depending on how much officials are willing to spend, allowing unprecedented connectivity and data.

Those constellations are also more resilient given there are more smaller satellites in orbit as opposed to a lower number of exquisite, geosynchronous orbit satellite communications architectures.

“Some of our senior leaders used to refer to those [military satellite constellations] as big, juicy targets for anti-satellite ballistic missiles. With the proliferation of these smaller, flat sats in lower orbit, orders of magnitude — four, five, six — and there’s plans for there to be 10-12,000 of these satellites in lower orbit, there’s inherent survivability in that constellation, just from the sheer numbers,” Quinter said in the webcast.

Those connections, however, are easier to jam, and officials have always been careful to warn that their access must factor into what the military describes as a PACE plan — or primary, alternate, contingency and emergency — depending on the operation.

But the enhanced connectivity those constellations provide will allow forces to operate more dispersed and disconnected on the battlefield, a key tenet as observations from current conflicts indicate static units will be much more vulnerable.

“Once you have that kind of bandwidth, you don’t need to be persistently connected. You could establish a hybrid cloud network,” Quinter said.

Quinter served on the Joint Staff’s J6 team when it was developing the overarching concept for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace from all the services and key international partners could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster. The word “combined” in the parlance of CJADC2, refers to bringing foreign partners into the mix. He noted that during that process, officials used to say the critical requirement to enable that concept is cloud.

Key to realizing that goal is the DOD’s enterprise cloud contract vehicle, the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), the Pentagon’s highly anticipated $9 billion effort that replaced the aborted Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program. Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft were all awarded under the JWCC program in December 2022 and are competing for task orders. Officials in the past have indicated how important this vehicle is to the CJADC2 concept and enabling connectivity and interoperability of forces across the globe.

“We are working with companies … through their cloud environment and trying to establish that hybrid cloud architecture at the edge of the network, which could persist without a connection over pLEO. You could turn that satellite connection on and off as necessary to be more survivable,” Quinter said.

He noted that as long as units have enough processing power and storage at the edge, they don’t need to be constantly connected. They just need to be able to process the information in the field.

“I say ‘hybrid cloud’ because it needs to be both private and public, like we need to be taking advantage of the prime contractors that are on the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract,” he said. “Those will enable us to leverage [a] big data center when we are connected to the enterprise. But we also need to have the hardware at the edge of our network that can handle cloud, hybrid cloud at the edge.”

Quinter noted that the entire DOD is looking at how to get forces to operate more persistently disconnected. He likened a future scenario to submarines that are usually disconnected, but they surface when they need to, download the necessary data and dive back down to resume their patrols.

“We learned that as communicators, that we need to have a PACE plan. You hear other folks from other communities talking a lot more about that now, but I would say that with the technology that’s available right now, you could essentially operate in a no probability to detect, no probability of intercept environment, because hybrid cloud will enable you to do many, many things on the edge of a network that you typically, at least historically, have not been able to do,” Quinter said.

This notion will require a paradigm shift and change in thinking for many service members that have been used to being constantly connected.

“One thing that I have noticed over the last two years in particular, [is] that we have a lot of teaching and educating that we need to do across the force when it comes to cloud,” he said. “I think there’s not enough people that understand how that technology works in particular, which puts us at a disadvantage, because as we’re designing these circuits to install, operate, maintain them in the network in a combat environment, we need to know what’s in the realm possible. I think cloud is not something with that we’re teaching in the schoolhouse yet, but we’re getting there.”

There is a bit of a misconception among many, Quinter added, given cloud is associated with large data centers.

“When people think about cloud, they think about data centers, like back in [the continental U.S.]. In their mind, I think it’s a natural default for most people to think, ‘Well, if I’m not connected to the data center, then how am I using the cloud?’” he said. “That’s what I meant by the level of education that’s required, even across the comm community, for people to understand what is and is not possible when it comes to cloud.”

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The effort is associated with Combined Joint-All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace from all the services and key international partners could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster. The word “combined” in the parlance of CJADC2, refers to bringing foreign partners into the mix.

To date, each U.S. military service has built its own systems and capabilities — which in many cases don’t even talk to themselves within their respective service — creating integration challenges at the joint level. Ultimately, capabilities must come together at the four-star, joint combatant command level where that commander integrates each service capability to determine which is the best available to execute the mission.

While the Pentagon has been undertaking a years-long initiative that involves the patchwork effort of stitching and retrofitting old systems together, it’s looking to set data standards going forward to ensure systems at the very least are compatible and somewhat interoperable.

“I always argue that for us to have CJADC2 success, each of us in the military departments, we have to worry about ensuring that the data that is most relevant to the joint force is trusted, verifiable and accessible to the joint force,” Gabe Camarillo, undersecretary of the Army, said at NDIA’s Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition last week.

“My goal as undersecretary of the Army is I’ve got to make sure that [data] it exists within an architecture that can be tapped into, whether it’s a joint task force supporting a [combatant command] commander, or whether it’s an operational commander in the Army at the two-star level division commander who has a very specific theater-level need. And understanding how to scale access to that data is really important,” he added.

Centrally within DOD, some are looking to create more standardized architectures.

“Data is the key to JADC2 … that realization of decoupling applications from the underlying data is what will allow network scaling to occur,” John Waterston, chief engineer for the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s Advanced Command and Control Accelerator, said at the conference.

That organization, Waterston said, matured from a CJADC2 tiger team within CDAO and grew into the accelerator.

One effort underway at that office is to create an architecture for others — including government agencies — to enter their data in. It’s called Open DAGIR — short for Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories — and it seeks to provide an ecosystem to integrate tools and platforms.

“That is one of the biggest issues, is sharing data across both, again, cross-domain and across application stacks. We need to be better about that,” Garrett Berntsen, deputy chief digital and artificial intelligence officer for mission analytics in CDAO, said at the conference, noting that sometimes policy issues — not technical ones — can be the biggest hurdle.

“What we think needs to come along with that concept is an architecture where, as I said, there is not one infrastructure to rule them all, but we have the right standards across IL, impact levels, across software applications where people are using the same standards and are interoperable to share data,” Bernsten said. “The Open DAGIR concept is there to help us attack each of those pieces.”

Officials have noted that no single contractor has the answer, and thus democratizing information and capability development is important.

“No one company has all of the innovation in CJADC2,” Waterston said. “The key is, how do we make the government-owned data — we all acknowledge that warfighting data is wholly government-owned — we don’t want to be stuck in individual stovepipes and we want to maximize the value of that.”

He noted that Open DAGIR will provide an exchange for modern application programming interfaces and API-based information between systems that can help build a web of interconnections.

“What we don’t want to do is say we’ve only built one tool and that’s the only tool and no one’s allowed to use a different tool … Maybe at a data integration layer, we need to have more coordination, but we want to also incentivize democratization of capabilities,” Berntsen said. “Services have their own unique needs. Below the services, teams need access to this data. And we actually think that we’ll have better outcomes if we unlock access to this data and let them build and develop under a certain set of guidelines and standards of course.”

One of the first efforts Open DAGIR is working is building a metadata catalog for warfighting data with the vision of allowing combatant commanders to ask where they can find a particular piece of information.

Creating these standards is also important to ensure that as new systems are built in the future, interoperability isn’t sacrificed for new vendors — an issue that was prevalent in the past.

“We need the standards defined so that as new technology comes out, we’re not beholden to the same winner,” Lt. Gen. Richard Coffman, deputy commanding general of Army Futures Command, said at the conference.

This will allow the military to integrate new technology into systems they hadn’t conceived of when the system was first procured.

“We don’t care what’s in the black box. We want you to adhere to our security standards, adhere to our interface standard, much like a USB port. If I get a new sensor, I can put it on a vehicle and I will have to pay for it once,” he added. “That’s where we’re trying to go and I think we’re more than willing to pick any company that can get us there, as long as we’re not beholden to them forever.”

Hand-in-hand with standardization of data is ensuring the lessons, tactics, tools, architectures and capabilities are being shared across theaters. While other similar efforts to JADC2 have been attempted many times in the past, they were either still too siloed by service or theater. In order for the concept to work, systems and forces must be integrated across theaters — given the trans-regional threats many adversaries pose — and forces must all be operating from the same playbook.

“We have to remember that the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force are providers of capability. The common standards that you’re looking for reside in the [combatant commands] themselves. If I need to send half of a division to [Indo-Pacific Command] and half a division to Europe, those standards should be the same or else it’s going to take you a very long time to get everything safe,” Coffman said. “The combat commands are working together to understand that. Most of them are using the same software, if not all of them.”

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The FutureG office at the Pentagon has been working to expand the scale of previous efforts to research and test 5G and future-generation wireless network capabilities. As the office eyes 5G deployment, Tom Rondeau, principal director for FutureG at the Pentagon, emphasized that taking capabilities developed through research-and-development efforts and conducting live experiments is key to successful implementation.

“It’s all about the reps and the experience of getting this stuff out of the lab and into the real world, understanding the limitations, understanding the difficulties of these radio systems,” Rondeau told DefenseScoop on Wednesday during an interview at NDIA’s Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition.

The Pentagon has held a number of next-generation communications experiments in the past. In 2020, the department awarded contracts to multiple vendors to set up 5G and FutureG testbed projects at different military bases across the U.S., each of which evaluated a different way warfighters can leverage the technology, such as with smart warehouses and spectrum sharing.

The office also established open radio access network (O-RAN) technology pilots in 2023 at other installations, with the goal of working with companies to understand how to implement open networks and open software approaches to wireless communications.

By the end of this year, Rondeau said the FutureG office has plans to add 5G capabilities on force protection surveillance towers at three bases in the U.S. Africa Command located in eastern Africa. Made by defense tech company Anduril and funded by the Pentagon, the towers were built using tactical radios and don’t have inherent 5G capability, meaning they have lower data rates, resolution and frame rates, he noted.

Speaking of the collaboration, Rondeau said: “That was working with Anduril and saying, ‘This is why it’s important to go 5G because of these additional features.’”

“Over the past year, we’ve actually been funding the performers to upgrade them to where we now have high-definition video at high frame rates coming through,” he added. “This can be the difference between identifying somebody holding a baby and holding an AK-47.”

The standalone, self-powered towers provide full-peripheral coverage of the bases, and AFRICOM will also soon be deploying an unmanned aerial vehicle to extend the range of their situational awareness beyond the fixed site, Rondeau said.

The FutureG office will also be involved in a multinational 5G experiment at Camp Adazi in Latvia with NATO partners this fall, Rondeau said. One of the largest ranges in the Baltics, Adazi has already been upgraded with 5G technologies by the Latvia Mobile Telecom to test the technology for military applications, and thereby advancing the overall market for 5G, he explained.

“We’ve now got Latvia, Estonia, U.S. forces of course, Spain, Norway and Sweden — as well as the Michigan Air National Guard — that are all part of this experiment we’re going to be conducting,” Rondeau said. “Let’s take this stuff into the real world. Let’s take it into a range where there’s kinetic operations that are happening all around there. That’s going to teach us a lot about the value proposition of these technologies,”

He added that the experiment should result in “a miniature version” of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2). The Pentagon-wide initiative looks to connect data streams from across U.S. military services and international allies and partners to enable better and faster decision-making.

Although it’s not directly involved in the effort right now, the FutureG office still talks to department officials leading CJADC2 intermittently, Rondeau said.

“Working with NATO and with the Joint Staff on this, we’re showing that interoperability at the network layer is done,” he noted. “With 5G as the core network, with high-capacity and improved security features that we’ve been working on, all of that is now possible.”

The goal for forthcoming exercises will be providing interoperability at the data layer and ensuring that stakeholders are integrating with the new data layers developed by the Joint Staff and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, he added.

Updated on Aug. 22, 2024, at 3:55 PM: This story has been updated to remove a confusing reference to the FutureG office’s relationship to the Pentagon’s Chief Information Officer.

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Since becoming the Air Force’s first PEO for C3BM in 2022, Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey and his team have focused on developing a plan and associated baseline architecture that will connect the Air and Space Forces’ sensors and shooters under a single network known as the DAF Battle Network. After nearly two years of work, Cropsey said his office is now having discussions with other Air Force PEOs to understand how the service can connect its air platforms into that network based on their respective roles in operations.

“What you’re starting to see are conversations at the DAF Battle Network level that are targeting specific platforms because of the role that they play in those mission threads with specific requirements and capabilities,” Cropsey told DefenseScoop this week during a media roundtable at the Air Force Life Cycle Industry Days. “How am I going to connect to you? What is that going to look like? Where are you going to exist in that scheme of maneuver? How connected do you need to be?”

The effort is associated with the Pentagon-wide initiative known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which aims to enable rapid data transport across a distributed network of sensors and weapons from every military domain. The goal is to give military leaders the ability to quickly ingest information about incoming threats, as well as a clear set of options to defeat them.

“It’s the system of systems that C3BM as a PEO is designing and fielding,” Cropsey said. “That system of systems is designed to connect all the other parts and pieces that are inside of that battlespace together, so that we can fight as a unified whole.”

Having an operational plan in place creates a clear path to fielding what will become the DAF Battle Network — including which platforms will have to be integrated, as well as how that connection will happen and how often, Cropsey said. PEO C3BM is talking with leaders across both the Air and Space Forces to do so, he said. 

Effort is now focused on assigning communications tasks to each platform based on what missions they perform and addressing the complex engineering challenges involved with connecting them under one network. Cropsey noted that priority is being decided based on conversations he’s having with the operational community about their roles in executing the kill chain — a difficult task considering most platforms perform more than one mission.

“Who’s doing what part of those things turns into a really complicated engineering problem really fast, because in a lot of cases you’re probably doing a couple of them and you may be doing them temporarily in different places at different times,” Cropsey said.

Understanding a platform’s operational function is also shedding light on the equipment and capabilities that will need upgrades in order to connect to the DAF Battle Network. In some cases, an aircraft’s communications suite will allow it to be integrated as is. But in others, systems will need to be upgraded with new software or replaced entirely, he said.

“Once we understand what role that platform is playing in that operational plan, then we can figure out how good it has to be in terms of its connectivity and its data in order to do that role. And that’s actually putting a lot of clarity around what the engineering choices are left and right,” Cropsey said.

However, the Air Force’s budget is also influencing how quickly PEO C3BM can move. Cropsey has previously described how the department’s current budget and bureaucratic processes are inhibiting his team in deploying and scaling new C2 capabilities such as the Cloud Based Command and Control (CBC2) platform and the Tactical Operations Centers-Light (TOC-L) battle management kit.

Budget restrictions have impeded the ability of some the Air Force’s platforms to receive upgraded communications technology. Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, told lawmakers in July that his goal of equipping a quarter of the mobility fleet with new situational awareness capabilities — an effort called “25 by ’25” — would not be met before the end of his tenure in September.

Speaking to the House Armed Services Committee, Minihan said that “decades of underinvestment in mobility” during peacetime was one reason AMC would not reach the goal.

Cropsey agreed, but added that while “25 by ’25” wouldn’t pan out the way the service intended, his office was still working with AMC and other Air Force major commands to find workarounds to the system.

“There’s a bureaucratic process in place, and that creates its own set of drag in the system,” Cropsey told reporters. “Are there things that we can be doing smarter about how we’re trying to get capability? Or are there other options that are cheaper and faster that maybe your team hasn’t thought of that the nerd herd rolls in with and helps out?”

During another media roundtable at the conference, Kevin Stamey, PEO for mobility and training aircraft, emphasized that his office is closely working with Cropsey’s to ensure the mobility fleet is modernized with new communications systems. Its two priority platforms right now are the KC-46 Pegasus tanker and the C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, he said.

“It’s not something you can just slap on. It’s got to be incorporated. But we have plans across the entire mobility fleet to start putting information in the cockpits,” Stamey said. “It’s important that we’re not rushing to failure. We want to make sure that what we’re putting in the cockpit is going to work with the future DAF Battle Network.”

The PEO for mobility and training aircraft has a number of efforts underway to improve connectivity on its platforms, as Stamey noted that the mobility fleet has significantly less situational awareness than others in the Air Force. Those include the Multi-Orbit Hardware Adaptable Wideband Kit (MOHAWK) and incorporating hybrid satellite communications systems onto aircraft to enable beyond-line-of-sight communication.

The Air Force will also fly a communications prototype — known as capability release 1 — onboard a KC-46 during the Emerald Flag multi-service exercise in October, Cropsey said. He noted that the effort is still on schedule, despite needing to scale it down.

The service’s program executive office for bombers is also eyeing how it will modernize connectivity into its fleet to be a part of the DAF Battle Network, including upgrades to the legacy B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit. As the service shifts towards a two-bomber fleet — comprising modernized B-52 Stratofortress aircraft and the upcoming B-21 Raider — the Air Force is currently defining how they will serve as a long-range strike capability in future conflicts, said Brig. Gen. Erik Quigley.

“It’s all about connectivity and communication and making sure we can close what we call the long-range kill chain. We can do that with some fighters, but also bombers have a critical role with that — especially in a contested environment,” Quigley, PEO for bombers, told reporters during another roundtable.

The service’s program executive office responsible for ISR systems is also taking a hard look at how it will modernize to connect sensors to the DAF Battle Network. A critical task will be paying close attention to Cropsey’s overarching network architecture and plan, as that will be key to creating a system-of-systems sensing capability, said Col. Joshua Williams, PEO for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and special operations forces.

“A lot of our systems are platform-focused and platform-built. Now we’re learning how we take this platform and the architectures that were built specifically for a platform, and how do we apply that on a common architecture?” Williams said at a media roundtable. “So how do we take these capabilities through open systems and open interfaces, to then integrate — whether it be an ISR asset sensing [or] an E-7 Wedgetail in the future — to watch the eyes on the battlefield to produce information to decision makers and potentially operators?”

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Valiant Shield, which occurred in mid-June, is a biennial exercise focused on integration between the services in a multi-domain environment in the Pacific region. This year’s exercise, the tenth such event, involved multinational partners for the first time. It allowed American forces and foreign militaries — including participation from U.S. Space Command and U.S. Transportation Command — to focus on real-world events while testing concepts such as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace from all the services and key international partners could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster.

“Valiant Shield gave us a great opportunity for us to work as a joint force to conduct command and control of joint forces and joint capabilities from multiple axes, across multiple domains and integrating in allies and partners down to the tactical level,” Rear Adm. Joaquin J. Martinez de Pinillos, vice commander of 7th Fleet, said in an interview. “We really had a great opportunity to really work things both at the operational level and all the way down to the tactical level and work through both the communications, command and control, how do we share information, how do we all see the same battlespace? All those things across the joint force, which are not easy to do, we were able to exercise with great success during Valiant Shield.”

Martinez de Pinillos was not able to offer many specifics on the exercise, such as what was tested or the scenarios due to classification and sensitivities, but did note that broadly, they sought for higher headquarters — specifically the joint task force commander — to pass instructions, coordinate and synchronize joint effects from their level down to tactical units across all domains.

The key challenge they sought to address was getting all units across the joint force to be able to have the same battlefield picture and synchronize effects in space and time faster than the adversary. In fact, they conducted a series of tactical engagements in simulated environments and a live fire to demonstrate that they were able to clearly understand what the joint task force commander had in mind and then show him on the field what it would look like and how they can bring all those capabilities together.

“The things I think that we have to do is if you take a look at Ukraine and you see some of the things that the Houthis [are doing in the Middle East] and all of that, I think what you’re seeing is a speed of warfare that is incredibly fast. I think the thing that we’re going to continue to work on is just our ability to just rapidly plan faster than the enemy can, faster than they can react to us, so that we’re always causing dilemmas for the enemy as we go forward,” he explained. “I think that speed that we’re going to get with these systems, because it gives us an ability to communicate so effectively across the joint force, we’re going to continue to work on that.”

Command and control

At the heart of being able to act faster than the adversary is the ability to conduct command and control: being able to sense the environment and deliver the necessary effects against a target in the right domain by the right system operated by the right military service or international partner.

This is challenging currently as each service operates its own siloed systems that don’t necessarily plug into or talk to other systems from other services — or in some cases, its own service — much less international partners.

In a future fight, a four-star combatant commander in charge of conducting warfare and coordinating effects over an entire region must be able to pick the right capabilities based on the target set. In order to do that effectively and at the speed of conflict, they must have the ability to see each service’s capabilities and coordinate them efficiently, which is at the heart of CJADC2.

“What we were working on the JFN and the CJADC2 is, we want to make sure that everybody has that same operational picture of the battlefield,” Martinez de Pinillos said, describing the Joint Fires Network, a prototyping effort serving as a battle management platform and displaying real-time, fused, actionable threat information to joint and partner forces.

Valiant Shield was the first test of the initial prototype, which will allow geographically dispersed commanders to simultaneously plan and execute with a shared common understanding of the battlespace based on sensors from any platform to provide targeting guidance to any weapon systems, according to Lockheed Martin.

“Everybody understands, when I say the words ‘track 1,2,3,’ that that is track 1,2,3 and that is the exact same thing that everybody understands the track 1,2,3,” he added. “Sounds like a very simple thing, but it is actually a very complicated thing to actually do in execution. That’s an example of something we were able to do.”

To help test these concepts for command and control and interoperability, several defense contractors participated in Valiant Shield bringing their capabilities to play in the exercise.

“For us, the Joint All-Domain Command and Control, the JADC2 objective is fundamentally to integrate stovepiped legacy systems into a digital environment that provides a mission engine that allows for a comprehensive understanding of command and control across any domain, any service, any network,” Tom Keane, senior vice president of engineering at Anduril, said in an interview.

He said they provided capabilities for the joint force to detect, locate, track and engage across domains in response to a variety of different missions geographically deployed across the Indo-Pacom region. They provided software and hardware to help warfighters ingest data at scale, do correlation of data, provide a common operating picture and then do machine-to-machine tasking.

Anduril brought its Lattice capability to the exercise, it’s software fabric that serves as a command-and-control platform ingesting data that can then automate C2 functions resulting in a scalable battle network. The company also brought its Menace family of systems, a command and control as well as compute and communications capability.

Keane noted that Menace provided communications to support denied, degraded, intermittent and limited connectivity (DDIL), which U.S. forces will face increasingly against sophisticated adversaries that will seek to deny friendly forces.

“As you think about any large operating area, especially Indo-Pacom, supporting understanding and being able to operate in denied and degraded connectivity scenarios, is incredibly valuable,” he said.

Software company Palantir also contributed to the exercise. And while it was limited in what it could say, the company noted it provided capabilities to track and engage with targets.

“Palantir software was deployed in part to help deliver the end-to-end joint force capability of detecting, locating, tracking, and engaging units across domains and mission areas. More specifically, Palantir’s software served as the digital foundation for a common data picture that enabled users from all echelons to communicate on the same basis,” Shannon Clark, head of defense growth at Palantir Technologies, said in a statement to DefenseScoop.

“The Indo-Pacific is a uniquely complex operational environment where the software systems that give America its deterrent and defensive edge must be deployed in extreme conditions. These denied, disrupted, and limited environments are precisely the conditions that industry providers build for, and it is why we actively participate in exercises like Valiant Shield — both to ensure the defense community is proficient in the advanced technologies at their disposal, and to ensure that our software solutions are tailored to meet real-world mission needs,” Clark added.

Coordinating and shifting fires

Once targets are identified, command-and-control capabilities must assist in coordinating what service or platform will actually fire upon the target, another key pillar of CJADC2.

During the exercise, planners experimented shifting fires to different commanders and services, Martinez de Pinillos said.

“Sometimes the fires would be led by the Army, and sometimes it’d be led by the Navy, and sometimes they would be led by the Marine Corps, and sometimes they’d be led by the Air Force,” he said. “We demonstrated resiliency and flexibility in our ability to shift command and control around as the problem evolved and as the conditions in the environment and the battlefield drove us that way.”

This was also demonstrated across multiple domains, synchronizing fires from subsurface, surface, into the air and space, he added.

“That allows us to do some very, very complex operations, which is something that we practice at very hard because we know as a joint force, that is the only way that we’re going to engage in combat,” he said. “Having everybody inside that JFN single network on their own systems that they’re used to working with, but then being able to link in to that Joint Fires Network so that we’re all kind of dealing with the same piece of paper, in a virtual sense, and we’re all working off at the same piece — I think was a big piece of that and really helped us coordinate and synchronize as a joint force.”

For its part, Lockheed Martin provided live theater-level operational planning for Valiant Shield, it said in a release.

“The exercise showcased the seamless integration of Lockheed Martin’s advanced command and control functions, employing Operational Planning to coordinate real-time decision-making across the theater of operations, with all the Services and operational domains. This approach enhanced the agility and responsiveness of joint operations, using live real-time data, and producing joint tasking orders in an operationally relevant environment,” the company said.

Martinez de Pinillos explained that Valiant Shield demonstrated the ability of the joint force to understand what each other’s capabilities were.

“I think all that information sharing that was going on and how we were able to rapidly communicate that through tools like JFN, through tools like Maven [Smart System], those things really helped bring and synchronize that together because everybody was working off the same sheet of paper and working together as a team and really able to maximize their contribution, because it was easy to understand what the capabilities and limitations were of whatever piece of the puzzle that they brought to it,” he said. “That allowed us to very rapidly and seamlessly bring those things together so that we were able to commensurate those effects very, very rapidly.”

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Though the service declined to identify which vessels were equipped with the terminals or where they’re operating, two officials briefed DefenseScoop in a conversation over email regarding what they refer to as those “shipboard Navy Starlink efforts.” 

All associated work falls under the Navy’s program of record for Proliferated low Earth orbit (P-LEO) within Naval Information Warfare Systems Command’s program executive office for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence and PEO Digital.

The efforts are referred to as Satellite Terminal (transportable) Non-Geostationary, or STtNG, and the Sailor Edge Afloat and Ashore (SEA2) pilot.

“I’ve seen first-hand the tremendous transformational capability that STtNG has brought to the Fleet. The small footprint, high bandwidth system allows the Fleet to download cybersecurity patches, send large files across the globe, and conduct critical Navy administrative functions faster than ever using a terminal the size of a pizza box,” Capt. Kristine De Soto, program manager for NAVWAR PEO C4I PMW/A 170, said. 

While the service would not discuss recent or current on-ship deployments for security reasons, a May 2023 press release stated that in February of that year a “WiFi-enabled Starlink system was installed aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), allowing the crew that opportunity to quickly and easily communicate with their loved ones.”

Commercial satellite terminals can be quickly integrated with the Navy’s afloat, expeditionary and shore platforms, to supply satellite-internet capabilities that can enable sailors to see quicker performance improvements and connectivity.

Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has long been beaming broadband service to customers worldwide through its still-growing Starlink constellation — and in 2022, it unveiled Starshield, which is designed for use by the government and national security sector.

According to Genie Chaiken, principal assistant program manager within the Navy’s communications and GPS navigation office, Starlink capabilities provide “greater broadband internet access to sailors to increase warfighter operational readiness through shipboard systems, and use of personal devices over both military and non-military networks.” 

“Starlink satellite service is game-changing technology available now that creates operational advantage by providing persistent, secure, global access to resilient, high-speed, low-latency, higher-bandwidth, and increased resiliency at sea to enable tangible warfighting impact,” she told DefenseScoop.

For the Navy, so far, specific impact areas span recruitment and retention, mental health, cloud services, and work stoppages due to slow and inaccessible websites, Chaiken noted. She and her team have observed in real-time how Starlink can help augment existing Naval programs of record that provide the primary communication pathways for ships.

“Feedback from ships: game-changer in terms of flexibility, additional bandwidth and ease of use,” she wrote in an email — adding that it’s all part of the sea service’s aim to embrace “new concepts that ensure we can rapidly adapt to the needs of the future.”

The Navy has decades of experience transmitting communications via satellite, and now Starlink provides another tool for the fleet. 

“Simply put, PLEO is an additional transport path,” Chaiken said. 

With the proliferation of low-Earth orbit systems such as Starlink, the military now has more — and in some cases, cheaper — options to provide communications coverage and data to personnel abroad. 

They also enable greater resiliency and diversity in communications pathways, something the military has been pursuing as it expects to operate in contested environments where certain accesses might either not be available or jammed by the enemy.  

These LEO systems, which orbit at altitudes of 1,200 miles or less, require smaller terminals than geosynchronous orbit systems, which orbit at over 22,000 miles above Earth, providing the Navy with the ability to place them on all ship classes for higher throughput than ever before.

These new technologies also enable forces to operate in a more dispersed manner — something that is expected against sophisticated adversaries across vast distances in the Pacific — while still maintaining connectivity.

Navy officials said the Starlink capability will contribute to and enable its distributed maritime operations concept. 

The tech will support a global Navy presence through modernized, flexible and durable networks aligned to Joint All-Domain Command and Control priorities, the two officials said, referring to the Pentagon’s vision for how systems across the entire battlespace from all military services and key international partners could be more effectively and holistically connected to provide the right data to commanders for better and faster decision-making.

It will also provide greater broadband internet access and ubiquitous coverage to enhance joint operations with other services, allies and partners.

How the terminals are used depends on the needs of the ships where they are deployed, but they can support a wide range of maritime operations.

“STtNG demonstrated successful shipboard performance in FY22 and moved to full fielding. Both STtNG and SEA2 field Starlink based on Fleet demand for up to 200 ships based on the current design. STtNG combined with SEA2, provided users with significant performance improvements, including the ability to easily access distance learning and training courses, update social media pages, download cybersecurity patches, provide reach back for mission support contractors, and access large files stored in the cloud and medical and dental records,” Chaiken said. 

She added: “STtNG demonstrated successful shipboard performance in FY22 and moved to full fielding. Again, all systems field based upon the needs of the fleet and budgets.”

Looking to the future, Chaiken and the PEO C4I team are looking forward to multiple competing constellations on the horizon, including Amazon Kuiper, One Web, and Telesat. Such capabilities will also enable more modernized, flexible and durable network options that align to Joint All-Domain Command and Control priorities.

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The Pentagon’s JADC2 warfighting concept aims to connect sensors and shooters from across the U.S. military under a more unified network to enable faster and more effective decision-making and employment of forces, with the aid of artificial intelligence and other enabling tools. In February, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced that the “minimum viable capability” for it “is real and ready now.”

It’s already being used by Centcom, Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of Air Forces Central and Combined Forces Air Component, told reporters Wednesday during a Defense Writers Group meeting. Centcom has been battling drone swarms, missile strikes and other threats in the region from the Houthis, ISIS and other groups.

“The proliferation of unmanned technologies and missile technologies, and the combination of ballistic cruise missiles, UAVs — all these unmanned things that can come at you at different speeds in different directions — does add complexity to the overall defensive architecture for how we have dealt with that. I mean it truly is a multi-domain, multi-service response that we have to orchestrate in these instances. So there’s a number of different systems that we use in the joint world to do this. Some of them are, you know, top secret systems that pull in a bunch of different intel sources together to try to build coherent understanding. The one that is new and Centcom has really been pushing and all the components are on now is the kind of the minimum viable product of JADC2,” Grynkewich said.

“I would say it’s a common operating picture that pulls in feeds from everywhere. I almost think of … the game Hungry Hippo. It is [the] Hungry Hippo of data. And it’s going out and it’s pulling in lots of data, and then you can layer it and look at it different ways. So it’s really trying to use data centricity to build understanding. The thing that that does is that synchronizes us across the domains and components to have a coherent picture. So now … my battle cabs conversations with the [Naval Forces Central] maritime ops center, they’re looking at the same basic picture,” he added.

Commanders still have to take into account the sources of the data and assess their confidence in it, he noted.

“But when you understand all of that, you can have that common picture, and now you can make real-time decisions in seconds about — is the ship going to engage that [threat]? Is a fighter going to engage it? Do we need to call one of our partners to warn them about it? Etcetera, etcetera. So that’s a key part of it,” Grynkewich told reporters.

Task Force 99

Meanwhile, Centcom’s Task Force 99 is evaluating and experimenting with new drones to help the military field cost-effective unmanned aerial systems to improve its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

The organization was stood up about a year-and-a-half ago amid a broader push by U.S. Central Command to boost its unmanned capabilities and enabling technologies.

AFCENT wants to find alternatives to very high-end drones, Grynkewich told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters Wednesday.

“The inventory of unmanned aerial vehicles that we have right now … all come with different price points with different capabilities. And there’s a tradeoff there, you know, more expensive/more exquisite, less expensive/less exquisite. We’re trying with Task Force 99 to find a way to thread the needle where we can use commercial off-the-shelf technologies or things that we develop in-house, to develop something that has a bit more capability than you might find on a standard off-the-shelf drone but doesn’t cost nearly as much [as high-end platforms]. And the reason you don’t want the cost to be so high is so you can sustain losses when you take them or so that you can have affordable mass and bring volume to the fight,” he said.

Grynkewich added: “So, Task Force 99 is working that very hard right now. They have a couple of promising technologies. I won’t get into exactly what they are. But … the task I’ve given them is I need them to figure out a way to flood the zone with additional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance so we can identify these threats … faster, better, cheaper than we can right now. They’re getting really close.”

DefenseScoop asked Grynkewich if the task force is currently aiding U.S. military operations against the Houthis in Yemen and the Red Sea.

“Their task is to develop solutions that we can apply in Yemen or elsewhere. We have used their capabilities in the [Centcom area of responsibility] in actual combat conditions before. I won’t say where it was, but we have done that before and I intend to do it again as soon as we have the right capability to apply in the right environment,” he said.

Replicator

Another Pentagon initiative that’s intended to help the department acquire more affordable “mass” is Replicator. The stated goal of the first iteration of the effort, which Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced last year, is to deliver thousands of relatively low-cost, “attritable” unmanned systems across multiple domains in 18-to-24 months to help U.S. forces counter China’s military buildup.

The Army and Navy are said to be highly involved in the early stages of the project, but the Air Force not so much.

Grynkewich noted that U.S. enemies are using drone swarms and he’d like to turn the tables.

“You’re seeing that play out as adversaries are attempting to use mass to overwhelm our defenses. That’s really what it comes down to — it’s affordable mass to try overwhelm our defenses … I would like to turn that around and use affordable mass to try to overcome the defenses of adversaries as well. Replicator is trying to identify which of the solutions that we have that … is affordable but we haven’t quite figured out how to scale it,” he told reporters. “So I think that it’s a fantastic initiative of the low-cost technologies to get that affordable mass.”

Replicator is primarily aimed at countering China in the Indo-Pacific. But Grynkewich said those types of capabilities would be useful in any conflict in any region of the world.

However, he noted that he doesn’t see low-cost drones as a silver bullet.

“In my view, the flip side of it is, I don’t think that that means that some of the more exquisite weapon systems — whether they’re manned or unmanned, and irrespective of domain — are irrelevant at all,” Grynkewich told reporters.

The Air Force, for example, will still need next-generation drones like collaborative combat aircraft, he suggested. CCAs are expected to serve as robotic wingmen operating alongside manned fighter jets and also perform other missions on their own.

“You would need some exquisite … unmanned technology like a collaborative combat aircraft that’s able to do certain things. And then you can follow that with affordable mass or you can pair it with the affordable mass,” Grynkewich said. “If you do just one and not the other, you won’t really optimize the system from a warfighting perspective.”

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The service’s integrated program executive office for command, control, communications and battle management (C3BM) issued a sources-sought notice Monday on Sam.gov for an “artificial intelligence and machine learning toolkit” that could improve reaction times.

Specifically, the service wants to apply the so-called toolkit to its cloud-based command and control (CBC2) effort. The Air Force is casting a broad net for capabilities that could be included in the toolkit, underscoring that AI and ML technologies can be used for different applications and problems, according to the request for information.

“This effort shall be a collection of tools and technologies that improve tactical C2 software applications under development within multiple programs (e.g., Cloud-Based Command and Control) and reduce operational workflow timelines for C2,” the RFI stated.

CBC2 is a key component of the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System initiative and the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) effort. The warfighting concept aims to connect sensors and shooters from across the U.S. military and international partners under a single network, enabling faster and more effective decision-making and employment of forces.

The Air Force delivered an initial operating capability of CBC2 to the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s Eastern and Canadian air defense sector in October 2023. The service plans to continue scaling that capability to other air defense sectors throughout this year.

The platform integrates hundreds of critical air defense radar and data feeds under one cloud-based interface, then develops courses of action from which leaders can quickly make high-quality decisions. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are used to assist commanders in the decision-making process and help maintain situational awareness

Now, the RFI indicates that the Air Force is interested in incorporating other advanced and commercialized AI and ML technologies — including data collection and curation; machine-to-machine operations; large language models; and continuous and reinforced learning training models.

A full statement of objectives was not publicly available on Sam.gov because some of the information related to the notice was “controlled” access.

Responses to the RFI are due April 26.

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