WASHINGTON (AFNS)-- Reemphasizing a critical joint partnership in all-domain warfare, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. met with his fellow service chiefs from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Space Force June 24 to share advancements and discuss the way forward as the services work together to continue cultivating common ground on Joint All-Domain Command and Control.
The meeting focused on the Defense Department’s progress and projections for JADC2 in order to identify opportunities for the services to align their developmental efforts and to identify the obstacles that may frustrate moving forward to achieve the objectives of JADC2 in support of the joint force.
The senior leaders shared their views on areas of common agreement as well as areas where divergence in individual service efforts is appropriate. In this discussion, each of the services identified several areas on which they must focus in order to realize the intent behind JADC2 – to create and maintain a persistent connection in order to share data across the joint force.
Additionally, after a year of baseline activities in support of the JADC2 Strategy and Implementation Plan, the chiefs discussed the need for a more developed Concept of Operations, or CONOPS, for a future joint fight against a peer competitor, which is currently fraught with challenges when forces become disconnected from global communications networks. The creation of a CONOPS for command and control of the joint force is an essential step forward in creating decision advantage.
“As the Air Force develops (Advanced Battle Management System) in our effort to achieve information and decision advantage by delivering relevant data, information and capabilities to warfighters at all echelons, we must work together with our sister services and the DoD to ensure we connect our sensors and platforms and share our data as part of a joint force,” Brown said. “Meetings like the one we held today are important to ensure we continue to stay aligned when it comes to JADC2 – where we are collectively and where we are going.”
Space is not only an all-domain warfare enabler but also an increasingly active warfighting domain. In today’s talks, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond outlined his Guardians’ most recent contributions to the effort to sense, make sense and act in space and throughout the joint battlespace.
Our ability to sense from the space domain, transport and make sense of data, and then get that data into the hands of our joint warfighting partners on land, in the air and at sea, is what the Space Force delivers to JADC2. Space capabilities underpin modern warfare.
Emphasizing the importance of JADC2 in the Marine Corps’ Stand-In Forces concept, Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David H. Berger added, “JADC2 means the ability to move data and information in support of the joint force. It means we will improve decision-making processes toward a faster, more effective kill chain and ensure our Marines can best support the joint force to win in all domains."
As Army Futures Command prepares for the third iteration of Project Convergence, their annual JADC2 experimentation and demonstration event, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville expressed his thoughts on the way ahead for sensor-to-shooter technologies to his fellow service chiefs:
“In large-scale combat operations, overmatch belongs to the side with decision dominance. Project Convergence is helping us figure out how to connect the right lethal system, the right shooter, the right arrow to get the lethal effects that we need in seconds rather than minutes or in some cases even hours. Having the joint force, allies, and partners involved helps us see ourselves – helps us remember that we never fight alone. That’s why we’re developing JADC2 as a joint force, and I always add a “C” for CJADC2, because we don’t just fight as a joint force, we fight alongside our allies and partners.”
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike M. Gilday also highlighted the importance of all the services being on the same page when it comes to all-domain battle management and command and control.
“Project Overmatch is the Navy’s contribution to JADC2, so as we develop the networks, infrastructure, data architecture, tools and analytics to enable sustained maritime dominance, it’s critical the Navy remains in sync with our joint teammates,” Gilday said. “Opportunities like this – to sit in the same room and hash things out with my fellow service chiefs – are indispensable to the progress of such high-priority initiatives.”
The gathering of the military’s top uniformed leaders to align and synchronize on all aspects of JADC2 emphasizes the high level of importance DoD’s senior leaders place on joint interoperability, timely data-sharing as well as unified and ubiquitous and command and control throughout all warfighting domains.
“We cannot afford to lose a day in this effort,” Brown said. “Speed, agility and resilience are essential to decision-making and battle management in future highly contested environments. The progress we make in JADC2 will be determinate in our success as a joint force.”