DISA’s JADC2 Role Bigger Than Meets the Eye

The U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency’s Thunderdome project may be the new kid on the block supporting the Defense Department’s command and control vision, but the agency’s legacy systems also could prove pivotal.

“I think there’s more to DISA’s role in JADC2 than is obvious,” says Brian Hermann, program executive officer for services development at the agency commonly known as DISA. Joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2, focuses on data to allow warfighters to make faster decisions than potential adversaries.

“We have to ubiquitously deliver that sensor data to warfighters—in region in many cases—so that they’re able to operate even when they’re maybe not connected back to the continental United States,” Hermann explains.

With the emergent Thunderdome project, the department is adopting a zero trust mentality. It uses identity credential access management, secure access service edge and software-defined wide area networking. “Thunderdome is DISA’s real transport and infrastructure play in that space, but we also play different roles for different customers across the department. One of the things that folks look for us to provide is hosting,” Hermann offers.

As the department moves to commercial cloud-like capabilities, he adds, hosting becomes more of a challenge, especially outside of the United States. DISA is helping develop an overall hosting strategy for the department. “Making sure that we have a strategy that allows us to ensure the data is available to decision makers in theaters is tremendously important. That’s where I think you’re going to get the right answers for how we should do edge computing and things like that to support warfighters that might get disconnected from the continental United States,” he says.

DISA’s legacy systems, such as the Global Command and Control System-Joint (GCCS-J) and the Joint Operational Planning and Execution System (JOPES) also will continue to play a role, along with the JOPES replacement, which has been similarly named Joint Planning and Execution Services (JPES, which is pronounced JAPES).

“Those capabilities have long been understood to be part of command and control, but they’re just some of the tools that need to be in place long term,” Hermann asserts. “We have 25 plus years of experience with this sensor data and helping fielded forces turn that into what we call tracks in the common operational picture.”

The GCCS-J system provides missile warning and common operational picture capabilities. It is being updated with cloud computing and other capabilities. The system should provide enterprise hosting and browser-based access in late 2024.

Sensors provide data about a missile launched by an enemy and indicate where it came from and where it’s headed. In some cases, missile warning data is provided automatically. In others, track managers manually intervene and analyze the data for decision makers.

“We, as part of the legacy programs, need to make sure we can share data with others that are going to have other applications. We need to be able to host that data and applications at the enterprise level and evaluate some of these nonparametric or machine learning approaches to speed decision making,” Hermann says. “If I can feed 20 years of sensor data into a machine learning algorithm, it can help us figure out if I can eliminate the manual intervention.”

The system does present a “thorny” problem for DISA, however. The GCCS-J system is located at about 50 critical sites around the world. Those sites provide the common operational picture for individual areas of responsibility, and that information is aggregated at U.S. Strategic Command. DISA currently has no way to efficiently provide updated software to those sites.

“I can produce updated software capability and then it’s their responsibility to download that software, load it and make sure they’re running with the most current capabilities we can deliver. It’s not a fast process, and I don’t have, at the enterprise level, the insight I would like to have on the cybersecurity of their enclaves.”

The solution, he suggests, is to “pull that back to the enterprise so that I can use a DevSecOps mentality to deliver capability” potentially every two weeks. New capabilities could be provided via a browser using the existing architecture.

DISA already is taking “concrete steps” to get there, he indicates. “We’ve virtualized just about everything that we have, and we’re about to go to a containerized approach even in those enclaves—that’s the first step—and provide some browser-based access for folks that don’t use the full functionality of the tool that we provide right now.”

But it’s always a challenge because personnel in the field want “to hug the box that’s close to them and be confident that it’s right there when they have a problem,” he adds.

DISA aims to provide the reliability those field personnel expect. “DISA from an infrastructure provider, can look at secondary and tertiary connectivity and other things that we can provide to make sure we can give them highly reliable, highly available capability that they don’t have to be the sysadmins for. We provide that for them so that they can focus their efforts on assessing the data and making decisions under the JADC2 concept.”

JOPES is an integrated joint command and control system used to support military operation monitoring, planning and execution. It provides senior-level decision makers and their staffs with an enhanced ability to plan and conduct joint operations. The system also provides enterprise-level hosting. JPES is a browser-based joint command and control system that should replace JOPES in the spring of 2023.

DISA also has been tapped to lead a JADC2 working group, which reflects “the reality of what DISA provides in the [command and control] space,” Hermann states. And the agency’s Defense Spectrum Office is “working to make sure we have access to the frequencies and the spectrum that we need in areas all around the world.”  

For more DISA news, read the October issue of SIGNAL Magazine, which will be available online October 1.