“This progress moves us closer to bi-directional, real-time data flow between the tactical edge and operational and strategic decision-makers,” CDAO officials wrote.

In response to questions about the document’s contents, a defense official confirmed on Wednesday that the office, in partnership with the joint force, recently closed out the thirteenth iteration of its Global Information Dominance Experiment (GIDE) series, which unfolded in conjunction with the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone 5 (PC-C5) event.

GIDE is rooted in the Defense Department’s aims to get new technologies and equipment into the hands of warfighters for iterative testing and refinement through distributed, digital experiments, sprints and military service-led exercises like PC-C5.

Early versions of the GIDE series launched in 2020 and were facilitated by U.S. Northern Command. But in 2022, Pentagon leadership under the Biden administration tasked the CDAO with revamping the effort to strategically enable capabilities that could help realize the U.S. military’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control warfighting construct. 

Since then, GIDE experiments have generally run approximately every 90 days.

In the CDAO document summarizing multiple takeaways from GIDE 13, officials wrote that PC-C5 “served as the first major exercise venue to demonstrate” the EDM line of effort, which the office awarded a production other transaction agreement for in fall 2024.

“EDM is a government-owned technology stack that enables tactical-level data distribution in disadvantaged, disconnected, intermittent and limited — or DDIL — communications environments through a resilient nodal architecture,” they wrote.

A defense official told DefenseScoop that the CDAO is deploying EDM nodes to tactical users and other key locations to ultimately assess the fusion of operational and tactical data and C2 capabilities.

In the EDM context, nodes essentially refer to physical points within the network that are typically near end users or information sources, where data is captured, processed, or stored. This allows for distributed, decentralized data transmission that could underpin future edge computing missions.

“Edge Data Mesh enables data integration and exchange across multiple networks and data formats, including in denied and degraded communications environments,” the defense official said.

“Core to this effort is the commitment to interoperability using Open DAGIR principles and deployed architectures. The government-owned software development kit allows rapid integration of mature and emerging systems and applications with the EDM architecture,” they added. 

Project Convergence is an Army-led experimentation venue that enables personnel from across the U.S. military services and key allies to train together and collaboratively work out various concepts for integration. Army officials have been transparent about their aims to see new capabilities stay with commands for continued use after Capstone 5. 

In the CDAO document, officials stated that the “Scenario B” portion of PC-C5 provided participants with “a critical opportunity to test and develop EDM interoperability with other mission command platforms in field conditions — which remained behind following the exercise’s completion and will continue to provide resilient tactical data transport in the [area of responsibility].”

Activities associated with that scenario were conducted in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility. They involved tech experiments with all of the service components at the combatant command level.

“We continue to demonstrate that one of the most effective ways to advance modern [command and control, or C2] capability is to exercise and experiment how we fight — on live networks, with live data, with daily users — and leaving behind capability after every exercise,” CDAO officials wrote.

Some of the other “wins” from GIDE 13 listed in the document include demonstrating the integration of third-party software into DOD’s data infrastructure, and integrating multiple third-party generative AI capabilities into existing operational contexts. 

“This significantly accelerates warfighters’ ability to process complex information, especially across maneuver, intelligence, fires, and logistics workflows, shortening decision-loops and ensuring we achieve decision advantage,” the document states.

The defense official did not answer DefenseScoop’s questions regarding the makers and use cases of those genAI assets that were tested in the GIDE 13 and PC-C5 experiments last month.

“GIDE events have incorporated GenAI capabilities supporting a variety of workflows. These capabilities are a subset of GIDE’s mission command software suite, supporting [combatant commands] outside GIDE experimentation, so operators can continue to refine how they use them without waiting for the next experiment,” the defense official said.

They confirmed that GIDE 14 will take place during the upcoming iteration of Pacific Sentry and “Joint Exercise SoCal in Indo-Pacom.”

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In separate discussions on the heels of a $13.2 million sole-source contract award underpinning the work, a Joint Staff spokesperson and two officials from the Virginia-based company briefed DefenseScoop on the near-term plans to enhance the Force Management Directorate (J-35)’s ORION Decision Support Platform, and ultimately offer a more complete, AI-enabled view of the U.S. military’s assets, missions and personnel.

“The DOD operates within a finite force pool, balancing responses to a wide range of global events — from humanitarian assistance to major military operations — often occurring simultaneously. The ORION Decision Support Platform provides a comprehensive view of force capabilities to support real-time decision-making,” a spokesperson from the Joint Staff told DefenseScoop on Tuesday.

Broadly, the J-35 directorate oversees the organizational structure, policies, and resources necessary for the U.S. military branches to collectively maintain readiness and integrate global operations, against a backdrop of complex and evolving threats.

Roots of the hub’s ORION DSP tool stem back more than a decade to the early 2010s. 

“Initially, ORION was developed as a prototype to demonstrate the feasibility of a web-based platform that could provide a common operational picture, facilitate collaboration, and support decision-making for joint planning and execution,” the spokesperson noted.

At the time, it was designed to integrate certain data from various DOD sources and produce a comprehensive view of the operational environment.

“The significance of this [latest] news is that it represents a major step forward in the development of a more integrated and collaborative planning capability for the DOD,” the Joint Staff spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

In its current form, the ORION platform consolidates authoritative data from each of the armed services, provides visualization of forces and munitions globally, conducts contingency and crisis analyses, and allows course of action experimentation to inform advice that’s compiled for combatant command planners and other tactical and strategic decision-makers.

“The Joint Staff J-35 ORION is a cloud-based, containerized software suite with web and business intelligence applications. It continues to evolve in line with enterprise [global force management, or GFM] requirements,” said Ryan Legge, BigBear.ai’s president of national security.

Legge noted that BigBear.ai’s history supporting the DOD’s global force management initiative began more than 20 years ago, while its partnership with the J-35 for this effort is about 9 years old. 

“The Department of Defense identified the lack of a standardized, integrated system for global force visibility and feasibility assessments and chartered Project ORION. The challenge was managing multiple siloed data sources that required integration to support joint planning and execution,” he told DefenseScoop. 

The ORION platform, according to Legge, “is built explicitly for the JPEC” and applies agile methodologies for the continuous integration and delivery of advanced analytics and other software services.

This new contract was awarded via DOD’s Tradewinds Marketplace. 

“ORION integrates authoritative data sources identified by the Joint Staff and services, synthesizing information into a holistic global force management perspective. It focuses on warfighting and mission-support capabilities, readiness, availability, and current employment locations — collectively known as ‘CRAE’ data,” the Joint Staff spokesperson said. 

The platform is a major component of the Joint Planning and Execution Community’s operational architecture, as it supports the community’s overarching mission to plan, coordinate, and execute joint operations.

“BigBear.ai is not permitted to disclose the specifics of the ORION platform, but notes it generally provides a comprehensive view of force condition and quality,” Tommy Clarke, the company’s director for DOD programs, told DefenseScoop.

“The ORION DSP suite has numerous analytical dashboards and advanced user interfaces that offer both high-level strategic awareness and the capability for in-depth data exploration alongside collaborative risk mitigation capabilities,” he said.

Prior to having access to the ORION DSP, the Pentagon’s force management pursuits relied heavily on what Clarke referred to as a discombobulated and time-consuming process using antiquated systems and significant manpower.

“ORION integrates disparate GFM datasets into a user-friendly application suite, enabling greater efficiency in planning, refinement, and analysis of GFM actions. As a result, senior leaders can spend more time understanding data, rather than mining it,” he said.

Still, contemporary challenges associated with data fidelity continue to hinder joint planners’ capacity to rapidly develop reliable courses of action for future operations.

“The current planning process requires that planners spend a disproportionate amount of time gathering and processing data, leaving limited time for actual planning and decision-making. However, with ORION [and forthcoming updates], planners will be able to rapidly gather and synthesize relevant data, freeing them to focus on higher-level thinking and strategy development,” the Joint Staff spokesperson said.

“This will enable senior leaders to have more decision space, allowing them to make more informed, timely, and effective decisions,” they told DefenseScoop.

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The Pentagon is planning to implement a novel mission partner environment architecture on a live network in support of a maritime mission being led by the United Kingdom in 2025. The goal is to employ zero trust and data-centric security capabilities on a federated architecture, composed of “multiple secure, collaborative data services between partners and hosted users,” a spokesperson for the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told DefenseScoop in a statement.

“This enables us to create a global information sharing capability,” the spokesperson said.

The event will leverage previous work done by the Pentagon’s Project Olympus, according to a department news release. Led by the Joint Staff’s J-6 directorate for command, control, communications and computers/cyber, the effort looks to solve challenges that prevent international allies and partners from sharing critical warfighting data by testing, developing and integrating various enabling technologies via experiments and demonstrations.

During the 2025 maritime mission, the United States, United Kingdom and Canada will utilize zero trust and data-centric security capabilities that were previously tested during Project Olympus 2024, including the Indo-Pacific Mission Network and Collaborative Partner Environment, according to the spokesperson.

Other international participants include Norway, Australia, Chile, Spain, France, India, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Oman, New Zealand and Singapore.

“As part of this activity, we will assess command and control effectiveness and performance and CJADC2 capability maturity relative to a primary line of effort within the CJADC2 Strategy, Modernize Mission Partner Information Sharing,” the spokesperson said.

CJADC2 is the department’s new warfighting concept that aims to connect disparate systems operated by the U.S. military and international partners under a single network to enable rapid data transfer between all warfighting domains.

Although the Pentagon announced earlier this year that it had developed a “minimum viable capability” for CJADC2, there are still a number of technology and policy hurdles that inhibit the department’s ability to effectively share information with allies. As a result, the U.S. is adopting new mechanisms — such as zero trust and data-centric security standards — that allow for protected information sharing.

“We’ve historically looked at security as the antithesis for information sharing,” Jim Knight, the United Kingdom’s lead for Project Olympus, said in a Pentagon news release. “The security folks come in and want to sort of clamp down. With zero trust and data centric security, they are security mechanisms, but they are enabling information sharing.”

Zero trust is a cybersecurity framework that assumes adversaries are already moving through IT networks, and therefore requires organizations to continuously monitor and validate users and their devices as they move through the network.

The strategy differs from traditional “perimeter-based” security models that assume all users and devices can be trusted once already inside a network. It requires Pentagon components to modernize their IT infrastructures, as well as adopt new governance processes.

“I think that’s a key focus point,” Knight said. “For the first time, we’re getting that balance right in terms of applying more security. And by applying more security, we’re getting greater information sharing.”

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The aim of CJADC2 is to connect the various sensors, shooters and data streams of the armed services and their international partners, under a more unified network. A number of efforts are underway to facilitate that, include the Department of the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System, the Department of the Navy’s Project Overmatch, and the Army’s Project Convergence.

A cross-functional team on the Joint Staff has been set up to provide guidance across the services.

“One of the things that we have identified in the CJADC2 CFT is the requirement for a bridging solution, right, because we need something today to close the gap or to smooth interoperability,” Rear Adm. Susan BryerJoyner, the Joint Staff’s deputy director for command, control, communications and computer/cyber systems, J-6, said during a panel at the Association of Old Crows annual symposium.

“A bridging solution is something that’s good enough today but may not be the final solution. That is not exactly aligned with the way we do business in DOD, or the way that Congress likes to … see us do business, because that could be viewed as wasteful. And so what we also do is to say, ‘Okay, for the long term, is there a specific vector that we think the bridging solution should kind of aim to bridge towards?’ And when there is, we try and marry the two. Sometimes there’s not, because the solution may still be in development and there’s nothing to bridge to,” she said.

Her team has been working with the Pentagon’s cost assessment and program evaluation office. CAPE, as the organization is known, conducts strategic portfolio reviews and program reviews, provides independent cost estimates, and offers guidance and sufficiency reviews for analyses of alternatives.

“In my, you know, monthly discussions or so with CAPE as we start to get into where do you recommend I make investments [and] what’s good enough … we’re drawing on all of the different types of analysis in the department to figure out what’s good enough for a given time horizon, and then to clearly articulate the message to Congress to say: ‘This is not duplicative. This is with deliberate … malice of forethought that we have to do this. And here are the reasons why,’” she said.

BryerJoyner also chairs the functional capabilities board, which examines joint requirements.

“I can look at all of my portfolio for requirements and I can look at all the demand signals from CJADC2 and I can start to make recommendations regarding prioritization across the joint force — not just in the capabilities, but in the doctrine and the experimentation and the exercises to make sure that we are able to deliver resilient CJADC2 as a warfighting function,” she said.

Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control isn’t just a set of technologies or “a thing” that the department will buy, she noted.

“It is a warfighting function enabled by technology and executed by trained and ready forces. And I think that’s important for everybody to recognize as we talk about modernizing the way we fight,” BryerJoyner said.

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The document — called JP 1 Volume 1, Joint Warfighting — appears to have been quietly published on Aug. 27, although it isn’t publicly available.

“We realized Joint Warfighting Concept 3.0 as Joint Publication 1 Volume 1 … This is important because it’s gone from concept to doctrine, and it marks a distinctive paradigm change. It emphasizes our proactive stance in a persistent competitive environment where military advantages aren’t set in stone. We must think expansively beyond conventional operational domains. And it is crucial for us, all of us, to understand that this isn’t a one-time endeavor. Our required joint capabilities are ever-evolving, echoing the fluidity of modern warfare, and they must be informed by the JWC’s tenets,” Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference.

“And to truly bring this doctrine online, I need this community’s help. The most consequential thinking decisions and investments we’re making for our future national defense are underway right now. We need to hear the voices of airmen and guardians in the Joint Force forums, exercises and war games. We need your expertise, your skills, your perspectives. We need you to accelerate change within the Joint Force. We must adapt to meet the demands of the future fight and we cannot get this wrong,” he added.

The new publication provides foundational doctrine on the strategic direction of the Joint Force, and the functions of the Department of Defense and its major components, according to the JCS.

DefenseScoop reached out to the Joint Staff to try to obtain a copy but is still waiting to hear back.

Joint doctrine “presents fundamental principles that guide the employment of U.S. military forces in coordinated and integrated action toward a common objective. It promotes a common perspective from which to plan, train, and conduct military operations. It represents what is taught, believed, and advocated as to what is right (i.e., what works best). It provides distilled insights and wisdom gained from employing the military instrument of national power in operations to achieve national objectives,” per the JCS.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had previously indicated that the new publication would likely come out in July.

“Doctrine is important because it will help clarify and inform all the various levels of the organization on how you plan to fight. And then there’ll be subordinate doctrines that come out of each of the services that support the joint doctrine, etc. So Joint Pub[lication] 1 will come out … and that’ll start us on a journey. It’ll probably take two years or so for all the other documents to catch up so that we clearly establish the doctrine on how to fight,” Milley said June 30 during remarks at the National Press Club.

At the AFA conference, Grady noted that Joint Warfighting Concept 3.0 focuses on information advantage, command and control, joint fires, the ability to win in contested logistics, and expanded maneuver.

To win “key battles for advantage,” U.S. military forces must “sense and make sense” of their operating environments by fusing information from sensors across multiple domains — including space, air and land — and make that information rapidly available for decision-makers. The employment of combinations of crewed and uncrewed systems will be a key component of future operations, he added.

The U.S. military is good at force employment, Grady said. However, he sees room for improvement regarding force design.

“Where I think we can do better as a Joint Force is the future force design aspect. And we have to hold ourselves accountable to the direction that we’ve been given” by the secretary of defense, the National Defense Strategy and Joint Warfighting Concept 3.0, he said, noting that the DOD needs to solve some of its key challenges in upcoming budget cycles.

“One of my major lines of effort as the vice chairman is pushing for more accountability in this process so that we can better realize the future force design imperative, bolstering deterrence, amplifying our global network of allies and partners, driving down risk and fast-tracking the development … [of] innovative capabilities and operational concepts,” he said.

A J-7 cross-functional team within the Joint Staff, led by Maj. Gen. Patrick Gaydon, has already been established to explore options for creating a new “Joint Futures” organization, the shape of which is still being fleshed out.

“That organization will help drive these [doctrinal] concepts, but also the technologies and describing the operational environment that we’re moving into, and so on,” Milley said at the National Press Club.

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That team launched under Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley toward the end of last year to puzzle out complex plans and recommend the right paths forward.

Milley has long been deliberate about helping troops “innovate more like they fight” — meaning, collaboratively — and he was a primary player in the set up of Army Futures Command in 2018 when he was Army chief of staff.

This call for a potentially new entity to unite all the services stems partly from his awareness of the evolving needs — as well as other factors, like a recent direction from the defense secretary to designate a senior advocate for the future joint warfighter.

It’s too early to tell, but if it’s fully realized, “Joint Futures” could end up being a unified command, a new agency, a fresh office within DOD — or something else.

“Every option is still on the table. We’re not predicting or presupposing any single solution other than the argument that we need a senior advocate, and we need an organization focused on the future,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Gaydon, the Joint Futures, J-7 cross-functional team lead, told DefenseScoop in an interview at the Pentagon last week.

The ‘why’

Gaydon served as a battalion commander in an Army Stryker brigade during the war in Afghanistan.

“We were at the cutting edge, I would say, of data. I was responsible for governance development across southern Afghanistan,” he explained.

An expert in geotechnology would “bring data and shape files so that we could overlay them on maps to help make decisions — we started layering information in 2009,” he noted. Most of the data and information captured were not specifically affiliated with the military — but instead was civilian, infrastructure and agricultural information, Gaydon said, “to help quickly be able to make decisions when crises were happening out there.”

“We also used Blue Force Tracker data to create heat maps showing where our combat platforms traveled over time, knowing that the Taliban were watching us. This allowed us to avoid setting patterns and not be easy targets for [improvised explosive devices],” he told DefenseScoop.

It was impactful at the time, “but we were just, like, at the edge of where I think we could go with some of this,” Gaydon said.

Three out of his last four positions in the Defense Department were associated with modernizing the Army. Now, he’s thinking through how to take some of those efforts and implement them on a larger scale across the military. The cross-functional team (CFT) he steers includes five full-time members from the military and DOD, as well as nine part-time subject matter experts.

“The Joint Force of the future has to be able to integrate seamlessly and we’ve got to be able to operate globally. This gets to the ‘why’ of a Joint Futures CFT and the effort — we have to be able to adapt to the changing character of war,” Gaydon said.

“Precision munitions, the speed of hypersonics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, biotech,” he added, “we know that everyone’s going to have access to it. So, it’s really about how do you piece all those together? And it starts with a warfighting concept.”

On that note, the general officer also pointed to “how quickly things are progressing with large language models, neural networks, computer vision, and having machines” to support human decision-making. Commander’s Critical Information Requirements, he noted, inform how military leaders determine choices in operations and potential engagement with enemies. 

“I think as we go to the future, much of that will be data-driven,” he said. 

Gaydon referenced drafts of diagrams and graphics (viewed by DefenseScoop but not yet ready for public release) during the interview to further articulate apparent “organizational disunity” across the DOD’s timelines for the commands and services, and across products, authorities, processes and forums that are threatening joint force modernization — a key priority in the National Defense Strategy.

“The Joint Warfighting Concept 3.0 has been approved, and there’ll be some more information coming out. It is focused on 2027 to 2030 timeframe,” Gaydon noted. 

The DOD’s Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) steers efforts to develop overarching joint operational and integrating concepts. “The JROC looks at requirements. So the idea is that concepts that are validated through experimentation ought to inform requirements, and the JROC validates requirements, really, for about the next 15 years,” he said.

Meanwhile, the services are planning and operating via their own distinct timelines and modernization approaches. “The Army is doing force design out to 2040” and “the Marine Corps is designing the Marine Corps of 2030,” while the “Navy and Air Force are designing out to 2045,” Gaydon noted. He’s also met with members of the Space Force, who he said are “getting all the processes built out — but the budget timelines are shorter.” 

“And I don’t know if it jumps out to you,” Gaydon said, pointing to one of the graphics his team created to show the concepts, doctrines, commands and military branches’ coverage in the years ahead through 2045. “The services are out here [with plans into the 2030s] and the Joint Force is not,” Gaydon noted. 

Much will have to be worked out, but right now he envisions that for the Joint Futures organization “concepts and experimentation would be the focus.”

Officials within it, for example, would develop next-generation concepts for flight — “and I say that in plural because there could be multiple futures that we consider in how we would fight,” he noted. 

Broadly, the current idea is that the organization could first generate concepts and conduct rigorous experimentation to prove that the concepts work for how the joint force could fight in the future. Once validated, the concept would get moved into requirements and fed into JROC. Then, “it gets integrated across all of DOTMLPF-P,” Gaydon said, referring to doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities and policy — which is DOD’s framework for considerations that must be made prior to undertaking new efforts. 

“As part of our planning, I think due diligence says that there could be joint problems that aren’t being solved. And, inherently, joint services are very good at developing lethal weapons and a whole bunch of other things — but are there other problems that you can’t hand to a service to solve? You know, resilient C4, AI, integration-type things that could call for some of this,” Gaydon said.

Further, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also recently called for a senior authoritative advocate for the future joint warfighter. 

“We think [that person] would be the leader of this organization, if we stand it up,” Gaydon said. “Part of the argument is that we need a senior leader — we won’t even say what rank that leader would be — but someone that’s solely focused on thinking about how we can do what the [National Defense Strategy] tells us in that deep timeframe.”

“[They] would be the voice for the future joint warfighter, with a seat in Pentagon decision forums. He or she would be positioned to create a ‘unity of effort,’ informing force design and future capability development across the joint force. We see the need for an enduring, unified solution for future joint force design and a permanent and constant advocate for the future joint warfighter,” he also told DefenseScoop.

His team is “digging into the authorities that exist and whether new authorities would be needed.” At this point, “we’re not sure they would,” he added.  

Throughout the interview, Gaydon emphasized repeatedly that the cross-functional team is very early in the planning cycle on this possible new role. 

“Nothing has been decided. Everything I’m giving you is hypotheticals that we’re considering and planning,” he said.

Lots of ‘ifs’

The envisioned organization would help align the Joint Staff,  combatant commands and the services on timelines, products, processes, forums and capabilities far into the future, according to Gaydon.

“It’s kind of hard, because I don’t know exactly what this [potential] organization is going to be. But I know enough to say what it probably isn’t going to be,” he explained. 

Like Army Futures Command, the organization could potentially steer the development and refining of technology experiments and operational concepts for the joint force. 

However, “the Army fully takes the concept into requirements. We don’t know if this organization would write requirements or not — but we’re working through that,” Gaydon said. He also noted that the overarching “idea is this organization would be a small, agile headquarters organization” staffed with up 500 officials, based on the present planning estimates.

If the organization is a command, the official would report to the defense secretary. If it’s “some sort of reform on the Joint Staff,” Gaydon said, “it would definitely report through the chairman.”

“If it is an agency or some other office, there would be different permutations to it,” he noted.

Right now, Gaydon’s team is in the mission analysis phase of planning. Once approved to move into the next phase, the cross-functional team would expand. From there, with approval from the defense secretary, they’d develop those courses of action. When those are then approved by DOD leadership, they would move on to puzzling out stationing decisions, manpower analysis, functional analysis, figuring out the budget — and potentially create a proposal for legislative change.

Eventually, “we will have to talk to Congress — we’ve not updated them up to this point,” Gaydon noted. 

He could not share any details about the timeline the cross-functional team is operating on.

In this very initial planning phase, they’re largely trying to build consensus and garner feedback from DOD leaders, the Joint Staff, combatant commands and other elements across the military. 

“I’ve engaged at a very high level, saying, ‘We need something like this, or we’ll be on the wrong side of history,’” Gaydon noted.

“I welcome skepticism — and I’ve gotten some of that — because it helps us relook things and put more rigor into the planning,” he said.

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The engagement marked the first of two this year that Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will steer as part of his organization’s semi-annual Strategic Seminar Series. 

“Gen. Milley had all the service chiefs go down the table and talk about their priorities for innovation — really over the next near years and far out,” Col. Dave Butler, Milley’s spokesperson, told DefenseScoop at the Pentagon.

Some elements of the conversation with Bloomberg demonstrated areas where the services and unified combatant commands might be at odds in terms of modern technology deployments.

While the Joint Chiefs must ultimately “train, man and equip” each specific military service, Butler noted, the combatant commands are responsible for carrying out all the military’s regional security operations in defense of the U.S.

“So you have the people, on one side, that are building the force — and you have people, on one side, using the force, right? And there’s an interesting friction there because the services innovate, and they harness new technology, and they build new airplanes and new things on the service timeline as approved by Congress and that long [Defense Department] procurement process. And then the combatant commanders want stuff now because they need it, right? And they need more stuff. The [combatant commander] is asking for more and new and different. And so all the money is with the services and all the execution is with the [commands] — it’s an interesting friction there,” Butler explained.

Later in the conversation with DefenseScoop, Butler noted that “’friction’ is probably a little bit of an overstatement,” when describing the exchange. 

Still, points were made that surprised him.

“The combatant commanders, they were like calling on the services like, ‘Oh, we need this stuff sooner, faster, better.’ I wasn’t really expecting that dynamic — it was interesting,” Butler said.

In the next few months, Milley’s team is getting poised to release a new joint warfighting concept that outlines how the force will fight in future combat. That in-the-works document, Butler suggested, might help address some of the challenges raised by military leaders in that recent meeting.

“When we go to war, we all are side-by-side in all of our different uniforms — interestingly, we don’t innovate enough like that,” Butler said.

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A revised version of Joint Publication 3-12 Cyberspace Operations — published in December 2022 and while unclassified, is only available to those with DoD common access cards, according to a Joint Staff spokesperson — officially provides a definition for “expeditionary cyberspace operations,” which are “[c]yberspace operations that require the deployment of cyberspace forces within the physical domains.”

DefenseScoop has seen a copy of the updated publication.

The last version was published in 2018 and was publicly available. The Joint Staff spokesman noted that five years has been the norm for updates.

The definition, recognition and discussion of such operations are indicative of not only the maturity of cyberspace and associated operations, but the need for more tactical capabilities to get at targets that the current cyber force might not be able to access.

U.S. Cyber Command owns the offensive cyber capabilities within DOD, and the services conduct offensive cyber ops through Cybercom and the cyber mission forces that each service provides to the command. Authorities to launch cyber effects have traditionally been held at the highest levels of government. In recent years, those authorities have been streamlined and delegated. However, most cyber operations are still conducted from remote locations by the cyber mission force (CMF) and primarily focused on IP-based networks.

Many of the services have begun investing in capabilities and forces for their own offensive cyber, however, that is mostly in the blended electronic warfare or radio frequency-enabled sphere at the tactical level.

The updated doctrine recognizes that these capabilities, which will still have to be coordinated centrally, could provide access to targets that remote operators might not be able to get for a variety of reasons.

“Developing access to targets in or through cyberspace follows a process that can often take significant time. In some cases, remote access is not possible or preferable, and close proximity may be required, using expeditionary [cyber operations],” the joint publication states. “Such operations are key to addressing the challenge of closed networks and other systems that are virtually isolated. Expeditionary CO are often more regionally and tactically focused and can include units of the CMF or special operations forces … If direct access to the target is unavailable or undesired, sometimes a similar or partial effect can be created by indirect access using a related target that has higher-order effects on the desired target.”

It also notes that these effects and operations should be coordinated with the intelligence community to deconflict intelligence gain/loss.

Moreover, the updated doctrine recognizes the complexity of cyberspace and how in-demand cyber capabilities might be. Thus, global cyber support might need to “reach-forward” to support multiple combatant commands simultaneously.

“Allowing them to support [combatant commands] in this way permits faster adaptation to rapidly changing needs and allows threats that initially manifest only in one [area of responsibility] to be mitigated globally in near real time. Likewise, while synchronizing CO missions related to achieving [combatant commander] objectives, some cyberspace capabilities that support this activity may need to be forward-deployed; used in multiple AORs simultaneously; or, for speed in time-critical situations, made available via reachback,” it states. “This might involve augmentation or deployment of cyberspace capabilities to forces already forward or require expeditionary CO by deployment of a fully equipped team of personnel and capabilities.”

When it comes to internalizing the new doctrine, the Air Force sees this as additional access points for operations.

“How do we leverage folks that are and forces that are at the tactical edge for access? That’s primarily how I think about the expeditionary capabilities we have … is empowering or enabling the effect they’re trying to create or using their access or position physically, to help enable some of our effects,” Lt. Gen. Kevin Kennedy, commander of 16^th Air Force/Air Forces Cyber, told DefenseScoop at the AFCEA TechNet Cyber conference.

He noted that these access-enabling capabilities could be across the services, but primarily from an Air Force perspective, “I’m looking at looking within the Air Force, from aerial platforms down to ground-based airmen, as well about how we would do that,” he said.

Officials have described how the services are seeking to build their own forces separate from Cybercom.

“There was a lot of language that came out the [National Defense Authorization Act] that talked about force design in general. All the services to one degree or another are really — I’m not going to say rethinking — but evaluating what their contribution to the joint force is, as well as what their own … service-retained cyber teams are,” Chris Cleary, principal cyber advisor for the Department of Navy, told DefenseScoop at the AFCEA conference.

Last year’s NDAA directed the Pentagon to develop a strategy for converged cyber and electronic warfare conducted by deployed military and intelligence assets, specifically for service-retained assets.

As electronic warfare and cyber capabilities are expected to be a big part of the battlefield in 2030 — a key waypoint the Army has been building toward — it recognizes those capabilities can’t be held from remote sanctuary, Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, commander of the Army Cyber Center of Excellence, told DefenseScoop in an interview on the sidelines of the AFCEA conference.

In fact, the Army’s principal cyber adviser has tasked the Cyber Center of Excellence with clarifying certain authorities and capabilities.

“How do you execute electronic attack to achieve effects? How do you differentiate a cyber-delivered capability that benefits from proximity based on owning the land, owning the ground?Because that’s what the Army does. The principal cyber advisor, Dr. [Michael] Sulmeyer is tasking me with conducting a study to clearly define and delineate where those lines are,” Stanton said. “This study is going to help us be able to clearly define that. I expect to be tasked to kick that off here in the very near future with about 90 days to complete.”

When it comes to service-retained forces and capabilities, the Army has built the 11^th Cyber Battalion, formerly the 915^th Cyber Warfare Battalion, which provides tactical, on-the-ground cyber operations — mostly through radio-frequency effects — electronic warfare and information ops. The unit will help plan tactical operations for commanders and conduct missions in coordination with deployed forces. It consists of several expeditionary cyber and electromagnetic activities (CEMA) teams that are scalable and will maneuver with units and conduct operations on the ground for commanders.

The Navy, meanwhile, is building what it’s calling non-kinetic effects teams, which will augment afloat forces with critical information warfare capabilities. Cleary has previously noted that the service is still working through what cyber ops at sea will look like.

“As we continue to professionalize this, [information warfare commanders within carrier strike groups] will become more and more important as it fully combines all aspects of the information warfare space, the electromagnetic spectrum, command and control of networks, eventually potentially offensive cyber being delivered from sea, information operations campaigns,” Cleary said.

“That job will mature over time, and then the trick is to get the Navy and the Marine Corps to work together because we are back to our roots of being an expeditionary force. Even the Marines through [Commandant] Gen. [David] Berger’s new force design is really about getting the Marines back to being what the Marines were designed to be, which is an expeditionary fighting force that goes to sea with the Navy. We work together to achieve our objectives as a team, and we’re getting back to our blocking [and] tackling them.”

For the Marine Corps’ part, officials have been building Marine Expeditionary Force Information Groups (MIGs), which were created in 2017 and support each MEF within the Corps, integrate electronic warfare with intelligence, communications, military information support operations, space, cyber and communication strategy — all to provide MEF commanders with an information advantage.

The service has also recently established Marine Corps Information Command (MCIC), which was designed to more tightly link the service’s information forces — including cyber, intelligence and space — in theater with the broader joint force across the globe.

Mission elements the Marines have created and sent forward with Marine expeditionary units are “right in line with [Joint Publication] 3-12,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Matos, deputy commander of Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command, told DefenseScoop at the AFCEA conference.

“How do we take what we do at the fort, or back at Fort Meade [where Cybercom is headquartered], and be able to extend that out to the services? That’s what we’re in the process of doing right now … We started about two years ago doing that. That capability is starting to mature pretty well,” he said. “It’s to extend Cyber Command out to those forward units.”

Matos said the recently created MCIC will act as the integrator for a lot of these capabilities throughout the force, acting as a bridge of sorts.

The organization will help tactical forces understand the authorities and capabilities that cyber can provide to help them conduct their missions.

“You kind of hit a glass ceiling of the capability [of] the lower elements being able to reach out and do cyberspace operations,” Matos said of the process prior to establishing that entity. “We’re able to say, OK, here’s a team, trained, capable,’ understand the capabilities that we can bring, give them to the deployed forces to say, ‘OK, you want to do cyber operations, here’s how we can help you do that.’ We know who to talk to, the authorities and so on so forth, and we can do that. I think it’s right in line with what the [Joint Publication] 3-12 is trying to do.”

That command essentially acts as the glue between the high-end cyber forces and the tactical elements, bridging the gap between Cybercom forces and the deployed forces.

“The genesis of the Marine Corps Information Command to tie all these elements together is to address that concern, is to be that integration point between the forces below the tactical edge who have these requirements to operate in a rapidly changing environment. But also tie that to the Marine Corps Information Command knows who to talk to at Cyber Command, or at NSA, or at Space Command. To be able to be that touchpoint between the two organizations so you don’t have to have an infantry battalion going all the way to” a combatant command, Matos said during a presentation at the AFCEA conference.

“I think as we operate in this rapidly changing cyberspace world, that Marine Corps Information Command’s going to be a tremendous benefit to the [Marine Air Ground Task Force], but also to the joint world and the intelligence and cyber world,” he added.

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The document, which was not publicly released by DOD but was posted online by a third party, was published in February by the Joint Staff and titled “Joint Concept for Competing.” A Joint Staff spokesperson confirmed the document’s authenticity to DefenseScoop.

The concept signifies a paradigm shift. Adversaries have viewed conflict on a continuum while the U.S. has traditionally viewed it as a binary state of either war or peace.

“Simply put, U.S. adversaries intend to ‘win without fighting.’ In this context, U.S. challengers intend to pursue their objectives while avoiding armed conflict-rendering traditional Joint Force deterrence less effective,” Milley writes in the document’s forward. “Facing this dilemma, more of the same is not enough. By ignoring the threat of strategic competition, the United States risks ceding strategic influence, advantage, and leverage while preparing for a war that never occurs. The United States must remain fully prepared and poised for war, but this alone will be insufficient to secure its strategic objectives and protect its freedoms. If the United States does not compete effectively against adversaries, it could ‘lose without fighting.’”

For the last few years, DOD officials have discussed this new state of competition, emphasizing the importance of countering competitors on a daily basis. The document now formally recognizes this conflict continuum and “advances an intellectual paradigm shift to enable the Joint Force, in conjunction with interagency, multinational, and other interorganizational partners, to engage successfully in strategic competition.”

Adversaries have observed how U.S. forces have fought dating back to Operation Desert Strom in the early 1990s and “responded by seeking to circumvent U.S. deterrent posture through competitive activity below the threshold of armed conflict with the United States,” the document says.

“Adversaries are employing cohesive combinations of military and civil power to expand the competitive space. Adversaries aim to achieve their strategic objectives through a myriad of ways and means, including statecraft and economic power as well as subversion, coercion, disinformation, and deception. They are investing in key technologies designed to offset U.S. strategic and conventional military capabilities (e.g., nuclear weapons, anti-access and area denial systems, offensive cyberspace, artificial intelligence, hypersonic delivery systems, electromagnetic spectrum),” it notes.

International competitors have engaged in election meddling, stolen intellectual property through cyber means, probed networks and critical infrastructure through cyberspace and, most recently, engaged in provocative forms of surveillance with platforms such as high-altitude balloons.

The new Joint Staff document stems from the limited ability of combatant commanders to compete successfully in strategic competition. In June of 2020, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed the development of the joint concept.

The document notes that strategic competition is enduring and not a “problem to be solved.”

“This central idea of the JCC requires that the Joint Force expand its competitive mindset and its competitive approaches. A Joint Force with a competitive mindset will view strategic competition as a complex set of interactions in which the Joint Force contributes to broader [U.S. government] efforts to gain influence, advantage, and leverage over other actors and ultimately to achieve favorable strategic outcomes,” it states.

Several U.S. military entities have recognized this and are seeking to beat back adversaries’ efforts.

According to a Joint Staff spokesperson, the optimal outcome of the concept is to increase the effectiveness of the joint force given it has identified its ability to engage in strategic competition as an emerging challenge.

The concept is already being used to inform doctrine, they told DefenseScoop, noting it will go through a period of wargaming and experimentation to validate it. It will also be used to inform force design and development.

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Information has become a more prominent aspect in modern military ops. Adversaries have sought to exploit the information environment on a daily basis short of actual conflict, in what many experts refer to as the “gray zone.”

As such, the Defense Department has sought to play catch up as many aspects of its information warfare prowess atrophied after the Cold War and during the 20-plus years of counterinsurgency operations against technologically inferior and less resourced enemies.

At the top level, the Joint Staff published a revision to its information doctrine, Joint Publication 3-04, Information in Joint Operations, which wasn’t publicly released. However, DefenseScoop learned that the document builds upon previous doctrine while introducing new concepts.

The National Defense Strategy, released in October, also takes stock of information ops, recognizing their importance in the strategic environment.

“Deterrence depends in part on competitors’ understanding of U.S. intent and capabilities. The Department must seek to avoid unknowingly driving competition to aggression. To strengthen deterrence while managing escalation risks, the Department will enhance its ability to operate in the information domain — for example, by working to ensure that messages are conveyed effectively. We will work in collaboration with other U.S. Federal departments and agencies along with Allies and partners,” the document said in a section about the role of information in deterrence.

The strategy also notes that tailored information ops can be used to support — and maybe even lead — the DOD’s response to adversaries’ coercion attempts.

Additionally, the Pentagon is still working on an update to its 2016 strategy for operations in the information environment as well as working to designate a joint force trainer and a joint force provider for information operations, much how U.S. Cyber Command is the joint force trainer and provider for cyber.

All these elements are mandated in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act — and DOD is working to meet them.

“In the short term, we have made significant progress on two tasks: conducting an informational operational posture review and updating the strategy for operations in the information environment,” Maj. Gen. Matthew Easley, deputy principal information operations advisor, said at a conference hosted by NDIA in November. “The capabilities, gaps and strategies outlined in these two documents will be critical to ensuring the joint force can dominate [in the] information environment.”

Officials expect to publish the forthcoming strategy in early 2023, according to Easley.

When it comes to the services, the Marine Corps enshrined operations in the information environment into doctrine with the June publication of Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication-8, Information. That document aims to describe the purpose and mechanics of using information as a warfighting tool for the entire service — highlighting the new strategic context that Marines and the rest of the joint force find themselves in.

For its part, the Air Force published its blueprint earlier this year for how it will compete in this realm. The Operations in the Information Environment Strategic Plan identifies key activities and milestones to transform how the Air Force operates in this space to achieve a vision where information is foundational to all military activities. However, the document wasn’t publicly released.

The Army, meanwhile, plans to release its updated doctrine for information advantage in late 2023.

Within the Navy, a top official highlighted the high demand for information warfare personnel in the fleet.

“The competition is so keen now that my warfighting peers are approaching me and in a good way want me to do my job. They want to invest in actually having information warfare experts as part of their team because the environment is so complex now,” Vice Adm. Kelly Aeschbach, commander of Naval Information Forces, said in October.

However, despite the raft of new strategies and progress the Defense Department has apparently made, some in Congress are not satisfied with the pace of change.

The fiscal 2023 NDAA, which was signed into law last week, included several provisions that seek to limit funds if the DOD does not meet Congress’ requests.

The first provision will limit funds for travel for personnel in the Office of the Secretary of Defense if the Pentagon does not submit joint lexicon for terms related to information operations as required by the fiscal 2020 policy bill.

Each of the services has organized slightly differently around and has varying definitions for information warfare, which encompasses some level of cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence and/or information ops. While they were charged to come up with a common lexicon, that hasn’t been done yet. An aide from the House Armed Services Committee told reporters earlier this year that the threat to restrict funding was intended to provide a “nudge” to the department.

A second provision restricts funding until the DOD submits its information operations strategy and posture review — including the designation of joint force providers and joint force trainers.

A third provision requires a briefing to Congress on how the Pentagon plans to deter and counter adversaries in the information environment.

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