From the frontlines to the home base, our nation’s warfighters must be connected at all times to enable information sharing and support joint decision-making. To deliver on these goals, the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept – or JADC2 – aims to connect all military services on a single network.
In a new MeriTV “IT in Depth” episode, MeriTalk’s Caroline Boyd sat down with John Hale, chief of product implementation for the Hosting and Compute Center (HACC) at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and Jim Matney, vice president and general manager for the DISA and Enterprise Services Sector at General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), to discuss JADC2. Both Hale and Matney agreed that a critical element of JADC2 is data-centric architecture in the enterprise cloud.
Over the years, DoD organizations have developed their own versions of command and control (C2) systems, with cloud being the lowest common denominator to help those systems work together, Hale noted.
The JADC2 effort leverages enterprise cloud solutions to bring the data together in a single, unified solution to share data and supply accurate information to decision makers. As Hale observed, “[This] is seen as a fundamental requirement for us to move forward in our continued fight against our adversaries every day.”
In keeping with JADC2’s philosophy of unified command, DISA reorganized to reduce complexity, moving from two centers to four. The new HACC brings together various systems, including traditional data centers, commercial cloud, and off-premises or on-premises cloud – as well as solutions like GPU-as-a-service to support artificial intelligence and machine learning. Hale noted, “All of those technologies and capabilities are together in one organization now, so that we can deliver them to the warfighter and to the JADC2 effort.”
A key component of JADC2 is data-centric architecture, which integrates data at three different levels: regional; operational, at forward operating bases; and tactical user, including disconnected, intermittently connected, or limited-bandwidth environments. “Once you identify and build out that data-centric architecture from [the] regional to the operational to the tactical level, then you’re able to support the intent of what JADC2 is looking for,” Matney said.
An essential JADC2 goal is accessing data at the tactical edge in real-time without having to pull capabilities from the continental U.S. (CONUS), which creates problematic latency. “We believe on the part of GDIT…that the focus is on the warfighter at the tactical edge,” Matney said.
GDIT provides on-premises cloud capabilities in milCloud 2.0 at the unclassified Impact Level 5 for years and is now in the final stages of approval for Impact Level 6 – which supports the classified workloads where most C2 systems reside.
As a result, “We can take the same cloud capability supporting CONUS and replicate it anywhere OCONUS to allow real-time decision making at the tactical edge,” Matney said.
Check out the full interview.