C4ISR: –
After the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) release, the Joint Staff endeavored to modernize and enhance the U.S. global integrated defense posture and joint capabilities and concepts. The NDS recognized the emerging Great Power Competition (GPC) and refocused the Department of Defense’s (DoD) priorities. The Combatant Commands (CCMD), who report directly to the Secretary of Defense (SecDef), maintain theater-specific defense partnerships and force postures to respond to threats in their areas of responsibility. However, the strategic environment described in the NDS demanded transregional approaches and joint, All-Domain capabilities. Over the last four years, the resultant modernization efforts within the Services and the Joint Staff’s concept development for warfighting concepts to support the CCMDs intersected. The Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept emerged as the framework to connect the people, systems, and warfighting concepts.
Despite considerable progress in initializing and organizing JADC2 efforts, implementation is impeded by the slow institutionalization of JADC2. The evolution of JADC2 as an integrating framework for the DoD is complex because it originated in multiple places. Each Service, CCMD, and acquisition agency assessed that the interconnected and data-driven decision-making environment demanded new ways and capabilities to win decisively against increasingly capable adversaries doing the same. In this way, JADC2 is a grassroots effort with top-down integration and standardization within the DoD. The Command and Control (C2), Communication, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) industry is adapting to support the new JADC2 market demands.
This report summarizes these efforts and how the defense industry is responding to support JADC2 efforts. It assesses the current JADC2 framework as an integrating effort for the new joint concepts. It provides an overview of the C4ISR industry supporting the JADC2 framework. It analyzes the Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) public and private innovation centers' response to support JADC2 development. It concludes with recommendations for the DoD senior leaders and Joint Staff to implement and support JADC2 institutionalization. It also offers advice for future engagement with industry and innovation centers on JADC2 requirements and market participation.
The Industry Study found four common themes throughout the field studies. (1) There are multiple nuanced interpretations of the direction and vision of JADC2. (2) Industry and innovation centers are engaged and supporting JADC2 efforts. (3) Policy and organizational obstacles are impeding action. (4) JADC2’s bottom-up approach is best, but it requires top-down coordination. The group offers recommendations to focus and engage the traditional and non-traditional defense industry partners to achieve the JADC2 purpose. These recommendations are centered around the JADC2 Lines of Effort (LOE). There are actions that both the DoD and the industry partners must take together to make meaningful and timely progress.
The C4ISR IS team focused on industry’s response to JADC2 implementation and its understanding of the JADC2 framework through targeted engagements with C4ISR-supporting firms, education centers, and laboratories. The field studies confirmed that industry and innovation centers are responding rapidly to meet the new JADC2 demand signals. Across the DoD, DIB, innovation hubs, and educational institutions, leaders and innovators seek to advance the objectives of JADC2; however, they do not fully understand to what end. The C4ISR team offers insights into industry and DoD’s efforts to make progress. The team’s findings and industry inputs confirmed that implementation efforts thus far have robust, innovative approaches but have uncertain results due to a lack of JADC2 institutionalization across Services and CCMDs. The lack of institutionalization slows industry’s progress in advancing concepts into production. It also risks missing opportunities to bridge potential solutions across the acquisition system’s valley of death.
The five key areas of common impediments hindering industry’s support for JADC2 are (1) limitations within the DIB operational environment and ecosystem; (2) the development of reference architecture and standards for JADC2 implementation; (3) common misunderstandings of JWC’s and JADC2’s concepts and approaches; (4) challenges with communication and culture; and (5) policies and organizational design supporting a unified JADC2 effort. The Joint Staff leaders guiding the JADC2 efforts have significant opportunities to curate the current progress gained by innovation centers and industry by institutionalizing JADC2 standards, policies, and culture and synchronizing JADC2 efforts across CCMDs and Services.
JADC2 is not just a framework, integrating activity, or concept. It is not just a platform or a component resourced in a program of record. It is all these things but also a cultural mindset that accounts for a sense, make sense, and act strategy in every resourcing and warfighting decision. The JADC2-supporting market is postured to rapidly respond to the institutionalization of the concept. The firms and innovation centers in this market can provide the necessary technological solutions for the JADC2 framework to enable Joint Forces to win decisively in any environment.
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