JUST IN: DoD Looks to Close Capability Gaps Through Updated JADC2 Plan

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ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — The Defense Department is finalizing an update to its Joint All-Domain Command and Control Implementation Plan focused on key operational problems and capability gaps, the chair of the combined joint all-domain command and control cross-functional team said July 19.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks signed the classified JADC2 Implementation Plan in March 2022. The document “details the plans of actions, milestones and resourcing requirements” for the initiative, identifying the organizations responsible for delivering capabilities, a Defense Department release said.

The plan contains “the entirety of what DoD needs to do in order to effectively modernize the force … and our systems,” said Navy Rear Adm. Susan BryerJoyner, the deputy director of command, control, communications and computer/cyber systems, J-6, Joint Staff, who also chairs the department’s CJADC2 Cross-Functional Team.

The team is now “in the process of conducting analysis through the lens of a campaign plan focused on key operational problems from the Joint Warfighting Concept,” BryerJoyner said during remarks at the National Defense Industrial Association’s JADC2: All Domain Warfare Symposium. Their list of recommended key operations problems to analyze has been “blessed off through the Joint Staff decision boards,” she said.

“The first one, I took up to the four-star level, because I wanted to make sure that we were getting the framework right,” she said. “The key operational problems that we chose were validated, and we are conducting mission thread analysis on those right now — this week, as a matter of fact — in order to identify the capability gaps, and I anticipate that we are going to focus on what changes we need to make.”

After noting she is “not part of the analysis,” BryerJoyner said one particular challenge is finding “a way to branch between kill chains in order to deliver the kill web. So, how do we target improvements for our most important kill chains?”

Another point BryerJoyner emphasized to the largely industry audience during her remarks was “the data centricity that needs to underlie” JADC2.

“If we cannot figure out a way for our legacy systems to expose and share the data and exchange the data with our data-centric environments, then we will not be able to achieve the true focus of improvement and decision advantage that we need,” she said. “Modernizing how we execute … joint all-domain command and control requires us to consider how we develop the data-centric capabilities,” and they must be “backwards compatible” with existing systems, “in a way that continues to maintain the necessary level of security.”

Once the mission thread analysis is complete, the cross-functional team will brief Hicks and then update the implementation plan based on the results, BryerJoyner said. “So, it is not there yet. It will be this fall.”

BryerJoyner was asked if the update will be shared with industry partners with the appropriate security clearances. “I don't want to get in front of decision-makers as to whether it will be shared with industry, but for key partners I anticipate that the right information will be shared,” she said.

Overall, BryerJoyner urged the audience to think of CJADC2 — the word “combined” increasingly added to joint all-domain command and control to recognize the role of allies and partners in the initiative — as “an adjective, not a noun.”

“I'm trying to move us away from talking about CJADC2 as a thing, because it's not,” she said. “It's not a system. It's not a program of record. It is a holistic approach to the way we fight.”

There is no “end state” to CJADC2, and as the concept is developed the Defense Department will need help from industry to provide solutions “that fill a gap in a novel way that we never used before,” she said.

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