According to Admiral Christopher W. Grady, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs, “Joint Force integration is uniform agnostic.” This was a critical theme that Adm. Grady underscored during his recent keynote address at the 2023 Air, Space & Cyber Conference, where he discussed the importance of the JWC in deterring and defeating military adversaries and the role that both the Joint Force and commercial industry will play in making the JWC a reality.

The Joint Force and JWC
During his keynote, Adm. Grady explained that the character of today’s modern warfighting and security environments is the most challenging the U.S. has faced in recent history. This is attributed to the challenges the military is currently combatting, which “transcend the ability of a single service, a single combatant commander, a single industrial partner, or a nation or government to address alone.”

Today’s warfighting environments that the U.S. military operates in have an “enduring nature to the strategic competition” that must be carefully and tactically managed. “Our task is clear: bolster our defense, strengthen our global network of allies and partners, and accelerate the development of cutting-edge capabilities and new operational concepts,” stated Adm. Grady.

To achieve the goals set forth by the JWC, Adm. Grady explained that the Joint Force will require ready, responsive, and resilient air and space capabilities that give a competitive advantage in a multi-domain fight. “We will win by integrating all of our nation’s strengths,” said Adm. Grady. “To do this…it is an absolute imperative that our warfighters, technology, and our strategies be attuned to the high-end fight.”

Modernization and the investment in digitally transformed technologies and capabilities are paramount to the realization of the JWC. According to Adm. Grady, the JWC will rely on a “flexible, innovative and tech-enabled” Joint Force. This is especially critical, as Adm. Grady pointed to the founding of the U.S. Space Force and how the military branch now plays a critical role in providing a large set of capabilities required to fulfill the JWC mission.

“We created a service meant to realize the joint alignment and integration that is necessary for reliable and resilient space-based capabilities,” said Adm. Grady. “The competencies of the Space Force enhance our domain awareness, our communications…and support the capabilities of our collective efforts.”

To Adm. Grady, having an integrated, modernized, and tech-enabled JWC, “…steers the Joint Force to ensure that we have the right people, the right equipment, the right training and …to deter and if necessary to win in any future conflict.”

CJADC2
One sub-component that falls under the JWC capability set umbrella is the Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) initiative. CJADC2 is a vision set forth by the DoD that would provide the Joint Force with a full, common operating picture of warfighting environments across the entire military. The Congressional Research Service describes CJADC2 as a “concept to connect sensors from all of the military services—Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force—into a single network.”

The success of the CJADC2 initiative requires modernized and tech-enabled sharing of mission-critical data across DoD agencies, which would enable real-time, threat-informed decision-making for military leaders.

“CJADC2 will integrate our next-generation platforms and break down seams between domains for a truly globally integrated and informed force,” explained Adm. Grady. “As space and cyber and strike are not constrained by national boundaries or borders between combat and commanders, neither will our C2 networks.”

Extending CJADC2 to Space
But there is more to interoperability than simply getting disparate military networks to work together. Mission success in the future also relies on the military developing an integrated space architecture. This integrated network would increase assuredness and resiliency by enabling warfighters to seamlessly roll across multi-orbit, multi-band satellite capabilities provided via disparate military and commercial constellations.

To Adm. Grady, the overall success of CJADC2 and the Joint Warfighting Concept will greatly rely on the innovation and new technologies coming out of the commercial industry. “It is imperative that our partners of the defense industry see themselves in this as part of the value proposition,” explained Adm. Grady. “We need their innovative approaches to discovery and design. We need their operational expertise, efficiencies, and ability to right-size capacity and production to meet our needs. We cannot do it without them.”

And that innovative approach extends beyond companies manufacturing terrestrial communications equipment and solutions, to those that deliver satellite services.

The commercial satellite industry has heeded the call from the DoD, and stands ready to provide the technologies and capabilities to ensure a readied, prepared, and integrated Joint Force.

Solutions like the Information, Communications, and Technologies (ICT) Portal by SES Space & Defense  are specifically designed to deliver the network management, performance monitoring, and security capabilities that are needed for the creation of an integrated satellite architecture.

According to SES Space & Defense’s Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives, Ram Rao, the ICT Portal enables DoD leaders to gain visibility into thousands of different network data points on a singular, consolidated interface, which would ensure the U.S. military maintains a one-step-ahead, competitive advantage over its adversaries. “The ICT Portal will be a window that will enable visibility into the network’s capabilities, how it is built, and how it is operating,” said Rao. “This will deliver complete resiliency to military networks and support the DoD’s CJADC2 initiative.”

To learn more about the multi-domain functionalities that ICT Portal provides to the DoD, click HERE.

The post New technologies Enabling JWC and CJADC2 appeared first on SES Space and Defense.

During one session at this year’s AFA conference, “Partnering to Win in the Space Fight,” military officials from the U.S. and its allies assembled to discuss the current state of their military coalitions in space, the joint capabilities they have leveraged to gain dominance in the domain, as well as the work that is still left to be done in order to hold a strong deterrent position over space adversaries. Session speakers included:

• Space Systems Command’s Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein,
• Royal Canadian Air Force’s Lt. Gen. E.J. Kenny,
• Australian’s Air & Space Attaché’s Air Commadore Angus Porter
• RAF Air and Space Commander Air Marshal Harvey Smyth

According to Air Commodore Porter, a century of joint warfighting as allies have proven that the four nations are capable of protecting any domain that must be defended from adversarial aggression. “The last 100 years have really demonstrated to us the value of working closely with partners,” said Porter. “Particularly with capabilities…and [conducting] warfighting training exercises together, we feel like we’ve been in the environment together before we arrive.”

But the idea of space as a warfighting environment poses a new challenge that the allied nations must come together to solve. As session moderator Col. Charles Galbreath (Ret.) put it, “The space domain is more congested, contested, and competitive than ever. The challenges and threats facing the United States and our allies are growing at an alarming rate.”

But as the session unfolded, it was clear that the four space leaders held the conviction that through their “collaboration, cooperation, and coalition” as spacefaring nations, they indeed will be able to partner and win in the domain.

Opening an international space dialogue
For Air Marshal Smyth, he attributes the standing up of the U.S. Space Force and Space Command as a hefty contributing factor to the U.K. opening a formal discussion around their own military space operations. “I think it’s probably fair to say that had we not seen the U.S. Space Force and a U.S. Space Command, I’m not confident that I could have landed the argument across the government to stand up a U.K. Space Command,” he said.

He went on to acknowledge that at this point in military history, having his nation prioritize space as a warfighting domain is critical as the pace of space threats are picking up speed as well as continuously manifesting themselves in different ways. “Those two things have really aligned us in the U.K. to accelerate our approach,” Air Marshal Smyth explained. “It’s also fair to say that we would not have been able to accelerate that approach had it not have been for the dialogue with the U.S. We’ve been very grateful for that clear partnership of bilateral and multilateral…space ops initiatives.”

But the gratitude of these multilateral partnerships is not just directed towards the U.S. from its allies. According to Lt. Gen. Guetlein, the conflict in Ukraine has served as a reminder to him of the critical importance of international partnerships in the space domain. “I would say going into Ukraine, we probably were not thinking about coalitions as much as we possibly should,” he said. “I will tell you though, now that we’re fully ingrained in that conflict, it all becomes about coalitions. And what we do know going forward, especially in the space domain, is that we can’t do it alone.”

He went on to say that the U.S. must continue to leverage allied partnerships in order to stay one step ahead of its adversaries. “If I look at what is the U.S.’ competitive advantage, it’s our partnerships,” he explained.

As it pertains to space, the competitive advantage of allied partnerships comes in many forms. For Lt. Gen. Kenny, allied coalitions represent a monumental opportunity to bring together and share joint space capabilities.

“We need to work together as allies and partners,” he said. “From a Canadian perspective, one of the things that we’re focused on is what are some of the niche capabilities? What are some of the gaps that we can help fulfill, so that we’re not duplicating efforts, and that we’re building a more resilient and proliferated orbit and capability that can allow us to conduct operations worldwide, as allies and partners?”

Tackling the space threat together
For Lt. Gen. Guetlein, the founding of the Space Force has created many different avenues for tackling the space threat alongside U.S. allies. “[Space] is not new for the U.S.,” he said. “What is new for the U.S. is…we are actually talking about the threat [with allies] at levels that I was never allowed to talk about my entire career, and we’re doing it openly in the public…[The dialogue] is no longer ‘what can you give me.’ It is ‘what can we each provide, in a certain synergistic effect to get after the space threat.’”

Air Marshal Smyth agreed with Lt. Gen. Guetlein by saying that the open dialogue between the allied nations has benefited an international, integrated deterrence in the space domain. “We’ve seen the doors open from the U.S.,” he explained. “We’re delivering more together and building a coalition so that a potential adversary doesn’t see the world through the lens of ‘it’s us versus another country’…But they see it as ‘us versus everyone else.’ That in itself is a very deterrent position to be in.”

Lt. Gen. Guetlein agreed that the more aligned the U.S. and her allies are on the topics of space values, responsible behavior in the domain, as well as deterrence, it sends a very strong signal to the coalition’s adversaries. “Our competitors are not operating responsibly nor safely in space,” he explained. “But we are. We’ve got to continue to keep sending that signal…They may be able to take on one of us at a time, but they cannot take on all of us at once.”

To learn more about this year’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference, click HERE.

The post “Delivering More Together” – U.S. and Allied Space Leaders Highlight Importance of Joint Coalitions at AFA 2023 appeared first on SES Space and Defense.