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Army Suggests Adding Five Eyes Nation Allies in JADC2

Joint All-Domain Operations C2 needs to be combined.

A Polish army officer talks with village elders in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan. U.S. Army officials are discussing the need to include international partners and allies in the Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept, which is expected to dramatically improve interoperability. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Micah E. Clare

U.S. Army leaders are considering adding “combined” to the Joint All-Domain Operations Command and Control (JADC2) concept to include international partners and allies, such as the so-called Five Eyes nations, says Army Undersecretary James McPherson.

McPherson made the comments July 14 during the virtual Army Signal Conference 2020, which is sponsored by AFCEA.

JADC2 is a concept that enables the joint force and mission partners to continuously and rapidly integrate efforts across all domains in near-real time. It is a combination of technology, new processes and new organizations to enhance situational awareness, decrease reaction time and enable continuous integration across all domains. It is expected to enable any shooter to use any sensor through any command and control node in near-real time to accomplish the mission.

He reported that the ideas were suggested earlier that morning. “When we were talking this morning about JADC2, one of the pieces that the chief brought up was that we’re going to have to add a letter to JADC2. That’s ‘combined’ and we need to start doing that, especially for the Five Eyes allies but others as well,” McPherson said. “We need to start sharing with them what our concept of this battlefield of 2040 is going to look like and how we can partner with them going forward with our data management and all things data on that future battlefield. We’re going to add ‘C’ in front of JADC2.”

McPherson also said the service’s network modernization effort likely will increase costs before lowering costs. “You can’t just turn off a legacy system and turn on a new system. There has to be a bridging between the two, and during that bridging period, you’re not going to have savings,” he explained. “We have to embrace that reality. So, although we’re always looking for savings in new platforms, new systems, new ways to work, in this particular field, we have to continue with the old legacy systems moving along.”

Those increases likely will last “the next several years” as the service continues to evaluate and test new systems. There’s going to be a period of time—the next several years probably—in which we’re going to have increased costs because we have continue to fund those legacy systems while we bring on those systems of the future to include the cloud,” McPherson added. “That’s just the reality that I don’t think we in leadership have embraced over the last couple of years. We are now embracing and realizing that as we look at the budget going forward with regard to our network capabilities.”