Pentagon’s CJADC2 milestone is signal to China, officials say

The Pentagon’s realization of a basic form of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control is a signal to China that the U.S. is making significant strides in military modernization, officials said.

The Defense Department this week announced it secured a so-called minimum viable capability for CJADC2 , tying together some existing software applications and data feeds to connect troops across land, air, sea, space and cyber.

While officials did not disclose exactly where it is in use, they did say it’s now being applied by combatant commands.

Such real-world application “should show that the department is making paradigm-shifting changes at a scale and at a speed that is rivaling any potential competitor that we could have. This is just one example,” Air Force Col. Matthew Strohmeyer told reporters on the sidelines of the Defense Data and AI Symposium in Washington.

Strohmeyer leads the Global Information Dominance experiments, or GIDEs, that help shape CJADC2. The exercises were rebooted by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office last year. The next GIDE is scheduled to begin in a few days.

“We went from the deputy secretary telling us six months prior, ‘I want a minimum viable capability for CJADC2,’ and the department was able to deliver on that at scale, across combatant commands and the joint staff,” Strohmeyer said. “It’s showing that we are making very tangible, rapid progress with actual capabilities in the hands of warfighters.”

The Defense Department wants to digitally link Army, Air Force and Navy units to improve information-sharing and response to foreign aggression.

By more quickly receiving, parsing and disseminating information, defense officials hope to outwit and outshoot tech-savvy adversaries of the future. Lawmakers have pushed the Defense Department to prioritize long-range networking and intelligence-relaying needs in the Indo-Pacific , where the U.S. may clash with China.

“When you begin to aggregate the data, AI aside, you can start to discover the forest from the trees a little bit in things that competitors might be doing,” Strohmeyer said. “As we bring those data sets together, we’re starting to really gain insights that we didn’t know that were there originally, without having to create any new programs, without having to invest in new things.”

The Defense Department’s multibillion-dollar connectivity campaign comes as China pursues its own version — or a countermeasure — known as Multi-Domain Precision Warfare .

The MDPW construct relies on interlinked command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to quickly coordinate firepower and expose foreign weaknesses, according to the China Military Power Report, which the Defense Department delivers to Congress. Officials in Beijing have long pursued an information-fluent force capable of dominating networks and bombarding targets from a sprawl of locations with a cocktail of weaponry.

Craig Martell, the Defense Department’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer , told reporters Thursday he took the job in part to solve complicated problems like CJADC2 and provide U.S. troops the tools they need to succeed. Martell was named CDAO in April 2022. He previously worked on machine learning at Lyft and served as an associate chairman of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Craig Martell opens the Defense Data and AI Symposium in Washington, D.C., with a keynote speech Feb. 20, 2024. (Colin Demarest/C4ISRNET)

“What is command and control in Napolean’s day? You’re a general standing on a hill, watching your troops, and you send messages to your generals. That was command and control,” he told reporters. “Now, command and control is highly digital with fast-flowing data, so commanders can make strategic decisions and get the results down to folks who can act on the decisions quickly.”

“That’s what we want to create ,” he added. “We want to be able to help.”

The Defense Department’s fiscal 2024 budget blueprint allocated $1.4 billion for CJADC2. Budget documents described the endeavor as transformative to the way fights are fought, especially alongside other militaries.

Thwarting China’s increasingly global ambitions requires collaborating with other nations, including Australia, Japan and South Korea. A key component of CJADC2 is the mission-partner environment , where data from a range of foreign sources can be collected, secured and distributed.

“We are not going to be successful without our partners and allies,” Martell said. “Anything we’ve been building, we’ve been thinking about how our partners and allies will play with us, will fight with us, will train with us, from the beginning.”

Colin Demarest was a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covered military networks, cyber and IT. Colin had previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.

官员们表示，五角大楼实现联合全域指挥控制的基本形式，向中国发出一个信号，表明美国在军事现代化方面取得了重大进展。

本周，美国国防部宣布已获得所谓的 CJADC2 最低可行能力，将一些现有的软件应用程序和数据馈送连接起来，以连接陆地、空中、海上、太空和网络空间的部队。

虽然官方没有透露具体使用地点，但他们表示，目前作战司令部正在使用这项技术。

空军上校马修·斯特罗迈尔在华盛顿举行的国防数据与人工智能研讨会间隙告诉记者：“这种实际应用应该表明，国防部正在以足以匹敌任何潜在竞争对手的规模和速度进行范式转变。这只是一个例子。”

斯特罗迈尔领导着全球信息优势实验（GIDE），这些实验有助于制定联合联合反恐与控制战略（CJADC2）。这些演习由首席数字与人工智能办公室于去年重启。下一次GIDE计划于几天后开始。

斯特罗迈尔说：“六个月前，副部长告诉我们，‘我希望CJADC2具备最低限度的可行能力’，而国防部已经能够在各作战司令部和联合参谋部大规模地实现这一目标。这表明​​，我们在将实际能力交付给作战人员方面取得了非常切实、迅速的进展。”

美国国防部希望通过数字化方式连接陆军、空军和海军部队，以改善信息共享和应对外国侵略的能力。

通过更快地接收、解析和传播信息，国防官员希望能够智胜并压制未来精通技术的对手。国会议员已敦促国防部优先考虑印太地区的远程网络和情报中继需求，因为美国可能在该地区与中国发生冲突。

斯特罗迈尔说：“抛开人工智能不谈，当你开始汇总数据时，你就能从纷繁的细节中看到竞争对手可能正在做的事情，从而逐渐了解全局。随着我们将这些数据集整合在一起，我们开始真正获得一些之前并不知道的洞见，而无需创建任何新程序，也无需投资任何新东西。”

美国国防部斥资数十亿美元开展互联互通计划之际，中国也在推行自己的版本——或者说是一种反制措施——即多域精确战争。

根据美国国防部提交给国会的《中国军事力量报告》，大规模杀伤性武器（MDPW）体系依赖于相互关联的指挥控制、通信、计算机、情报、监视和侦察系统，以便快速协调火力并暴露外国弱点。北京方面长期以来一直致力于打造一支信息素养极高的军队，使其能够掌控网络并从遍布各地的地点，利用多种武器对目标进行轰炸。

美国国防部首席数字与人工智能官克雷格·马特尔周四告诉记者，他接受这份工作的部分原因是为了解决诸如联合联合防务与控制（CJADC2）等复杂问题，并为美军提供成功所需的工具。马特尔于2022年4月被任命为首席数字与人工智能官。此前，他曾在Lyft公司从事机器学习工作，并曾担任海军研究生院计算机科学系副主任。

首席数字与人工智能官克雷格·马特尔于2024年2月20日在华盛顿特区举行的国防数据与人工智能研讨会上发表主题演讲。（科林·德马雷斯特/C4ISRNET）

“拿破仑时代的指挥控制是什么？你是一位将军，站在山顶上，观察你的部队，然后向你的将军们下达命令。这就是指挥控制，”他告诉记者。“现在，指挥控制高度数字化，数据快速流动，因此指挥官可以做出战略决策，并将结果迅速传达给能够执行决策的人员。”

“这正是我们想要创造的，”他补充道。“我们想尽一份力。”

美国国防部2024财年预算蓝图为联合联合防务司令部第二司令部（CJADC2）拨款14亿美元。预算文件称，这项计划将彻底改变战争的作战方式，尤其是在与其他军队联合作战方面。

遏制中国日益增长的全球野心需要与其他国家合作，包括澳大利亚、日本和韩国。CJADC2 的一个关键组成部分是任务伙伴环境，在该环境中可以收集、保护和分发来自各种外国来源的数据。

“没有我们的伙伴和盟友，我们不可能取得成功，”马特尔说。“我们所做的一切，从一开始就考虑到了我们的伙伴和盟友将如何与我们合作、并肩作战、共同训练。”

科林·德马雷斯特曾是C4ISRNET的记者，负责报道军事网络、网络安全和信息技术方面的新闻。此前，他曾为南卡罗来纳州的一家日报报道美国能源部及其下属的国家核安全管理局，主要关注冷战后的清理工作和核武器研发。科林还是一位屡获殊荣的摄影师。