The Importance of JADC2 (Joint-All-Domain Command and Control)

Rapid changes in the global security environment are presenting new challenges to the U.S. military and ability of the Joint Force to maintain and guard our informational and decision-making advantage over our adversaries. 

In this blog, you'll learn why JADC2 is critical in empowering the modern warfighter to detect, interpret, and act at all phases of war across all domains of the battlespace.

What is JADC2?

JADC2, or Joint-All-Domain Command and Control, is the Department of Defense's (DoD) multibillion-dollar initiative to revitalize the military’s current command and control (C2) infrastructure and establish a tactical network of integrated technology and service members from each brach of the military. 

The goal of JADC2 is to enable collective, real-time decision making by improving situational awareness across the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force, or across sea, land, air, space, and other warfighting domains, and creating a common operating picture (COP) of assets across the battlespace. 

Why is JADC2 important?

Changes in the global security environment, including rising malign action against the United States and wide-ranging advances in information technology, present urgent challenges and opportunities for the U.S. military and Joint Force in seizing, maintaining, and protecting our information and decision-making advantage over our adversaries. 

(The Joint Force refers to significant elements of two or more military departments operating under a single joint force commander.) 

Additionally, we must consider the possibility that future military operations will be conducted in degraded and contested electromagnetic spectrum environments.

These challenges necessitate a coherent, focused effort to modernize how the DoD develops, implements, and manages C2 capabilities to succeed in all operational domains and with mission partners. 

JADC2 provides a coherent approach for shaping future Joint Force C2 capabilities and is intended to protect the warfighter's capability to sense, make sense, and act at all phases and levels of war, across all domains, and with partners to deliver information advantage at the speed of relevance. 

On the whole, JADC2 transcends any single capability, platform, or system, and it provides an opportunity to accelerate the implementation of needed technological advancement and doctrinal change in the way the Joint Force conducts command and control. 

JADC2 will enable the Joint Force to use increasing volumes of data, employ automation and artificial intelligence (AI), rely upon a secure and resilient infrastructure, and act inside an adversary's decision cycle. 

These capabilities will vastly improve a commander's ability to gain and maintain an informational and decision-making advantage directly. 

What does successful implementation of JADC2 look like?

According to the Department of Defense, military personnel must put forth a focused commitment to articulate the three guiding command and control functions--"sense," "make sense," and "act"--in order to successfully implement JADC2. 

In addition, five lines of effort (LOE) must be executed to guide actions to deliver material and non-material JADC2 capabilities: data enterprise, human enterprise, technology enterprise, integrating nuclear C2 and C3, and modernizing mission partner information sharing. 

Establishing the data enterprise

Data enterprise involves five key steps: 

1. Establishing minimum metadata tagging criteria
2. Adoption and use of standardized data interfaces 
3. Implementation of common data availability and access practices
4. Incorporation of data security best practices 
5. Establishment of JADC2 conformant information technology standards, and continued application of data strategic objectives: visible, accessible, linked, trustworthy, interoperable, and secure

Establishing the human enterprise 

This LOE focuses specifically on human performance in C2 capabilities and addresses the use of innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools. 

These innovations will drive the need to produce predetermined, pre-approved, event-driven, bundled authorities that enable rapid, relevant decision-making from the strategic level to the tactical edge. 

This may require reforming, realigning, or creating organizations with the structure, agility, and resources to more effectively blend physical and informational power of the Joint Force and its mission partners such that they can exercise effective control of Joint Information Advantage (JIA) operations.

Establishing the tactical enterprise

This addresses enhanced shared situational awareness, synchronous and asynchronous global collaboration, strategic and operational joint planning, real-time force visualization and management, predictive force readiness and logistics, real-time synchronization and integration of kinetic and non-kinetic joint and long-range precision fires, and enhanced abilities to assess Joint Force and mission partner performance. 

Integrating NC2/NC3

Where appropriate, JADC2 will collaborate and integrate with Nuclear Command and Control (C2) and Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (C3).

Modernizing mission partner information sharing

The Joint Force Commander continuously strives to establish and maintain a common understanding of the operational environment through shared situational awareness with mission partners. 

Ideal mission partner system integration is realized when data from each partner's C2 systems can be accessed, viewed, and acted upon by every other approved partner.

However, emerging missions, large coalitions, and evolving technologies present ongoing obstacles to achieving this goal. 

Ultimately, JADC2 system interoperability is foundational for conducting combined and partnered operations with speed, precision, relevance, and security. This LOE strives to broaden and improve the Joint Force's ability to exchange information and coordinate actions and effects in all types of combined operations.

JADC2 and Trenton Systems 

Within the JADC2 ecosystem, our high-performance computers process, analyze, and encrypt massive amounts of data and deliver immediate, actionable insights in real-time to help enhance decision-making capabilities and, as a result, shorten response times. 

Our systems serve four primary purposes: to enhance 5G technology, integration of systems and networks, balancing communications, and research and development (R&D). 

Enhancing 5G Technology

Our hardware provides computing power, storage capacity, and network bandwidth at the edge to manage the huge amounts of data 5G is going to generate from an increasing number of sensors and devices. 

With regular computing, data is usually sent from a device to a centralized data center for processing and is then sent back to the device.

Edge computing speeds up the process by bringing server and data-center capabilities into computing devices. Additionally, processing data closer to the source makes threat detection much easier. 

For military and commercial purposes, bringing these capabilities to the edge means customizing ruggedized, SWaP-C optimized computing solutions to comply with a myriad of technical, performance, and environmental specifications in order to ensure reliable performance in the harshest of environments.

Other capabilities include:

1. Integration of systems and networks: We use the power of artificial intelligence to combine systems and networks not traditionally designed to interoperate. 
2. Balancing communication capabilities in a degraded environment: Our systems help to enhance throughput, reduce latency, and increase resiliency to ensure effective operation in communications-denied and contested environments. 
3. Research and development: We aim to create a Fully Networked Command, Control, and Communications (FNC3) to acquire, process, and distribute information across force elements. 

Ultimately, JADC2 provides an enterprise-wide, holistic approach for implementing command and control capabilities to ensure the Joint Force Commander's ability to gain and maintain information and decision advantage against global adversaries throughout the competition continuum.

• Department of Defense: Summary of JADC2 Strategy