After delivering a minimum viable capability for its data-centric command and control (C2) effort, the Department of Defense (DoD) is now focused on deploying enterprise enablers through its new Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories (Open DAGIR) program, ensuring that this capability is accessible across combatant commands at the strategic level.
Earlier this year Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced that the DoD had delivered its long-sought initial iteration of the Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) capability – the department’s AI-powered meta-network of connected sensors to coordinate all the armed forces.
CJADC2 is the department’s approach to developing both material and non-material solutions to deliver information and decision advantage to commanders. DoD aims to apply the CJADC2 approach across all warfighting domains to give warfighters the edge in deterring and, as necessary, defeating adversaries anywhere around the globe.
“To date, we’ve really focused on kind of driving initial investments and capability delivery at that kind of strategic combatant command headquarter level,” Lindsey Sheppard, deputy director for the Advanced Command and Control Accelerator at the DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, said during a Defense News webcast on Dec. 10.
The initial version of CJADC2 represents a minimum viable capability combining software applications, data integration, and cross-domain operational concepts designed to provide decision advantage to warfighters.
Sheppard explained that the CDAO’s Open DAGIR, launched this summer, aims to leverage the full potential of the defense industrial base to meet the evolving needs of warfighters, and CJADC2 is serving as the first program to receive support.
DoD initially leveraged the Open DAGIR ecosystem to support the data infrastructure and applications that support CJADC2, “expanding access to those mission command applications ensuring that, that capability is available across the combatant commands at the strategic level,” she said.
Most recently, the CDAO awarded Anduril Industries a $100 million production agreement under the Open DAGIR program to support the “continued development of its tactical data mesh system to enable low-latency data exchange across multiple networks, domains and organizations,” according to a DoD announcement last week.
“This award for an edge data mesh really serves as a data delivery bridge between the commands and the investments the services are making at the tactical level,” Sheppard said, adding that Open DAGIR complements these efforts by “marrying up the investments in the activities that CDAO is making at the combatant command headquarters level and the strategic level,” with the department eventually focusing on the operational stack down the line.
