Jadc2 & abms

Why JADC2 and ABMS?

Since 2016, Air Force Chief of Staff, General Goldfein, focused the Department on joint warfare, a term of art that foresaw future warfare as systems and people that were not only integrated but interdependent across all domains and at all levels - an ‘internet of things’ that could be controlled or autonomous as needed in the fight. Complicating this new approach was the fact that the military would need capabilities that must work even when cut off in highly contested environments. Today in the Department of Defense, independent offices and organizations are taking on the challenge of integrated system-of-systems design and development yet still lack the resources and organizational agility to understand, integrate, and scale these efforts to produce the pace of change needed.

Background

Initially, the USAF established an enterprise-wide cross-functional team called Multi-Domain Command and Control (MDC2) which primarily focused on the Air Force’s C2 node - the Air Operations Center (AOC) - and its core missions of air, space and cyber. As concepts like DARPA’s Mosaic Warfare and all-domain operations matured through new organizations like AFWIC (AF Warfighting Integration Center), the Air Force’s term of art transitioned to Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2). While JADC2 gained momentum in theory, it failed to do the hard work of changing acquisition programs and development efforts, like the Airborne Battle Management System (i.e., JSTARS and AWACS). In 2019, the traditional “Airborne” Battle Management System was replaced with “Advanced” Battle Management System with development shaped by the newly formed JADC2 Cross Functional Team under AFWIC. Simultaneously, recognizing a gap in acquisitions to support new horizontal efforts, the Air Force’s Senior Acquisition Executive established the Chief Architect Office (CAO) responsible for managing tradeoffs and guiding experimentation efforts in partnership with AFWIC.

Challenge and Opportunity

Neither the Air Force or joint services have yet to organize for agile, enterprise-wide transformation efforts - but they are trying. Additionally, there are thousands of on-going operational programs that compete with these new efforts but are still retained within their separate (vertical) program offices with independent management thus hard to influence or integrate (horizontally). Cross functional teams are spreading across the Department of Defense with acquisition efforts working to develop horizontally. As these efforts experiment, there are few ‘solutioneers’ capable of understanding and bringing a scalable digital transformation to both legacy and emerging capabilities. Horizontal digital transformation is proving difficult for the government to manage and companies that are trusted in one area while bringing integrated solutions and services to help stitch the framework together will be of high value.