JADC2 and the Future of National Security

The most recent U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS) states that “without sustained and predictable investment to restore readiness and modernize our military to make it fit for our time, we will rapidly lose our military advantage, resulting in a Joint Force that has legacy systems irrelevant to the defense of our people.”

In the years since the 2018 NDS was released, the Department of Defense (DoD) has made great strides in military modernization. Peraton has supported those strides with mission-critical solutions across air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace.

Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) is the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) concept to connect sensors spanning the military services and the intelligence community (IC) to a single network to create a decision advantage for our warfighters and unified command and control across all domains in great power military engagements.

JADC2 is much bigger than connecting sensors to shooters. The concept is also about creating resilient, adaptable lines of communication across the entire Joint Force at every echelon from the strategic level to the tactical edge. This protected and hardened network will power the ubiquitous flow of relevant information across all domains around the globe, enabling U.S. and allied commanders and senior leaders to make decisions and direct actions better and faster than adversaries in order to deter their actions and intents, and defeat them outright when necessary.

JADC2 is intended to enhance mission planning, command and control, and situational awareness across multiple systems and platforms to enable warfighters to operate in a holistic manner.

Peraton is a system and solution agnostic mission capability integrator, focused on how to optimally support our nation’s missions. Unencumbered by monolithic and legacy systems, Peraton has the people, technology, and flexibility required to provide the DoD with agile and scalable solutions.

There is not a singular, tangible solution to enable JADC2. Modernizing current DoD systems to enhance decision-making across interagency command and control networks will involve innumerable enterprise networks, components, and systems. As U.S. Army executive Michael Moneleone, founder of the Joint Systems Integration Laboratory, said to Breaking Defense during a JADC2 experiment exercise, “There’s capabilities out on the bench, on the floor, sitting out back in the parking lot.” These capabilities must be identified, improved upon, and more comprehensively integrated in pursuit of JADC2 goals.

Peraton already contributes to key elements of the overall JADC2 framework, through existing support for the Navy’s Project Overmatch and Army’s Project Convergence, and an IDIQ contract for Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS).

Peraton is up for the challenge of addressing necessary JADC2 requirements, adapting current capabilities to meet emerging needs, and designing new capabilities to fill operational gaps.

Charting a new course is a central tenet to Peraton’s future after its recent acquisitions of Northrop Grumman’s integrated mission support and IT solutions business and Perspecta.

The DoD will likely use an agile acquisition approach for compiling JADC2 capabilities that is underpinned by Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) for robust requirements, scaled agile development methodologies for software and hardware development, and DevSecOps for rapid deployment of operational capabilities. Peraton has demonstrable, validated capabilities in agile development, MBSE, and DevSecOps solutions for government customers.

Emerging technologies for JADC2 include 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), microelectronics, quantum computing, and cloud-based data storage platform. Peraton Labs has deep expertise in all these areas, along with a proven track record of bringing research all the way to solution. The Labs team not only creates new technologies, but also advances, matures, and hardens emerging capabilities to deliver mission-critical services that work at scale in complex, real-world operational environments.

Peraton is ready to apply company resources to JADC2 situations and to grow alongside JADC2 as the concept matures––investing, collaborating, and testing along the way, uninhibited by internal pressure to carry forward legacy products and services that reflect yesterday’s investments. As Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of U.S. Northern Command, said to Defense One during a data integration exercise, “We can’t go slow for the legacy processes that take years to field capabilities.”

Learn more about Peraton’s defense capabilities