JASPREET GILL
TECHNET CYBER 2022: For the Pentagon’s information security agency, the Ukraine conflict has only emphasized the need to bake in resilient information-sharing as it lays the foundations of the military’s sprawling Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) initiative.
Caroline Bean, acting director for Defense Information Systems Agency’s joint enterprise services directorate, told the AFCEA TechNet Cyber 2022 conference that the agency wants to deliver enterprise services with the “foundation of JADC2.” The agency is starting to think of challenges from the beginning, like denied and disconnected low bandwidth situations, instead of that being an afterthought.
“We’re thinking of it from the beginning because we need to do things differently…The situation in Ukraine has made this more evident that we need to do the information sharing and we need to… mobilize our enterprise services,” Bean said. “That’s really a lot of what we’re looking at, especially as we’re evolving our enterprise service capabilities.”
One of the “foundational components” of the JADC2 initiative is the Electromagnetic Battle Management System, which another official said the Pentagon is working to bring to life.
The EMBM is a situational awareness tool that will enable Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations cells to better operate in contested environments. Jason Martin, director of DISA’s Digital Capabilities and Security Center, told reporters at the AFCEA TechNet Cyber 2022 conference Wednesday that the agency has been working with the DoD CIO’s office on the effort.
Martin called EMBM a “fantastic capability widely held as critically important” from a JADC2 perspective and for DISA’s goals in the electromagnetic space.
DISA released a white paper request for the capability last June and noted that DoD has never had a capability like it before. The agency wanted a prototype that would advance electromagnetic spectrum planning capabilities, improve data sharing and enable joint command and control of the electromagnetic spectrum cells.
Martin added DISA and the DoD CIO are using agile software framework for building out the EMBM, conducting reviews on the capability and testing it early. US Strategic Command is the “operational sponsor” for the capability.
At a panel during the conference, Col. Andre Johnson, DISA’s EMS lead, said the EMBM is broken down into four capability “levels”: situational awareness, decision support, command and control, and training support.
The agency is currently tackling the first level and anticipates reaching initial operational capability by September this year. The overall EMBM capability will be delivered by fiscal 2024.
“Situational awareness became the first of the four because it was the number one request for the combatant commander,” Johnson said. “So it’s important to note that as we are looking at these four key capability deliveries, we are focused on things that are important to combatant commanders.”
Other sub-tasks DISA is working on for the JADC2 front include modernizing global force management capabilities, network modernization and transport capabilities, identity credentialing and access management reference design, and multiple data and mission partner environment initiatives.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks signed the JADC2 implementation plan in March, outlining how DoD will implement the JADC2 strategy. “Command and control in an increasingly information-focused warfighting environment have never been more critical,” Hicks said in a statement. “JADC2 will enable the DoD to act at the speed of relevance to improve U.S. national security.”
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