After years of changing strategies, the Air Force may have finally landed on a pathway to build and field its contribution to the Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control effort.
The newest strategy -- creating a Department of the Air Force Battle Network laser-focused on C2 capabilities and only C2 capabilities -- stems from the Command, Control, Communication and Battle Management integrating program executive office created by service Secretary Frank Kendall about two years ago.
Maj. Gen. Luke Cropsey, the first leader of the C3BM office, sees his task as revolutionary for the Air Force.
“We have an opportunity that is pretty much once-in-generation to really change how the DAF is glued together,” Cropsey said in an interview with Inside Defense.
The C3BM office works with and across different program offices to build cross-compatible capabilities that can plug into overarching networks. Integration has been a key factor in the office’s decision making every step of the way, Cropsey said, as programs of record had historically been in stovepipes and produced platforms that couldn’t connect to others.
“How do we consolidate those gains so that, as we’re deploying DAF Battle Network capabilities out the door, that those are sustainable, scalable things that are going into the force structure that we have and the broader warfighting apparatus?” Cropsey said of his thought process.
Command and control capabilities had been scattered across a multitude of offices, Cropsey said, but now, his team has the duty to oversee and join all those efforts for the entire department and even joint force.
He also touted the work of chief DAF Battle Network architect Bryan Tipton, saying “Tipton’s work with the architecture and system engineering team has really been transformative over the last couple years with putting that plan in place and giving the rest of the enterprise a clear direction around where we need to point to and what we need to get done.”
Kendall created the C3BM integrating program executive office to focus the service’s sprawling Advanced Battle Management System projects that had failed to deliver the desired enterprise-wide web of digital connectivity. Prior to the office’s creation, ABMS had even earned some disdain from lawmakers, leading Congress to slash in half the service’s ABMS budget request in fiscal year 2021.
“Having that program of record -- and being able to explain what it is and that it’s an umbrella program that’s going to include lots of different things and there are concrete capabilities that they can point to that have been deployed -- is helpful practically and it just increases understanding of people on that at home and other places,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the Center for a New American Security’s defense program.
Working with the ABMS CFT
Col. Jonathan Zall has been a member of the ABMS Cross Functional Team for about three years, working with the group to determine the operator requirements that will go to the acquisition officials for what is now called the DAF Battle Network. He’s now seeing an actual plan to get after service-wide integration and capabilities that “would deliver on the promise of ABMS,” he said.
Under Cropsey and the C3BM office, Zall told Inside Defense, the Air Force has focused the effort in a way it hadn’t been before and has prioritized the service’s resources more effectively.
“We don’t have a bunch of people working in parallel but potentially inefficiently and [are instead] bringing them together to achieve the best bang for the bucks that we have,” Zall said.
The ABMS CFT is an integral part of creating the DAF Battle Network, Cropsey said, as its members are the ones assessing how C2 capabilities will be used in the field and what gaps in capabilities need to be filled first.
“We look at the ABMS CFT in an operational sense and we say, ‘hey, what are the operational priorities for the things we have to go figure out first,’ and they work through the operational community … and they come back to us with a consolidated hit list,” Cropsey said.
Through its work, the CFT found operators want the DAF Battle Network to take on some of the decision-making, CFT lead Maj. Gen. Robert Claude said. With simpler decisions made by a machine, the operator would be free to “make some of the more ethical and moral decisions,” he said.
“Ultimately, it’s about providing that decision advantage that we think is going to make a difference,” Claude said in an interview with Inside Defense.
Collaborative acquisition
The C3BM office doesn’t necessarily own every program working on communications capabilities, but Cropsey said it works as a connector between the PEOs and helps guide development and integration.
The office tries not to be overbearing, Cropsey said, letting other programs choose to work collaboratively with the office rather than ordering programs to implement his strategies.
“You’re creating an environment that provides others . . . with a positive incentive for joining,” Cropsey said. “Individual programs on their own are doing things, but they would be able to do them faster, better, cheaper if they actually did them with us as opposed to without us.”
When approaching other offices, the office focuses on the missions that need to be addressed, and Cropsey comes armed with the data and analysis that informs the office’s priorities.
While C3BM might not have control over every piece of the puzzle, the chief architect Bryan Tipton told Inside Defense, being able to describe the mission needs helps keep other organizations focused on what needs to be done and how it needs to come together to achieve broader military goals.
“As we’re driving investment priorities and modernization,” Tipton said, “we’re trying to understand what the future fight looks like. Of course, there’s going to be things we get wrong, but we want to make sure we’re going in the right direction.”
Defining what a “future stressing fight” could be -- including the speed, scale, complexity and domains -- helps partners within and outside of the Air Force prioritize where their funding will go, Tipton said.
“You can draw that line from ‘here’s what we’re worried about in the future’ to why we’re making the investments we are today in the C2 programs,” Tipton said. “If you can do that really well, you get a lot of people on the same page.”
Prior ABMS efforts
ABMS started years ago as a replacement for the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System and E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System but evolved into an ever-expanding concept of connectivity. In 2018, ABMS was described as a system of systems including ground, air and space assets that would collect, process and share data.
Congress had been skeptical of the ABMS effort since its edges started to blur past recapitalizing AWACS and JSTARS. In the FY-20 National Defense Authorization Act, lawmakers required a report updating them on the initiative. The Government Accountability Office also issued a warning about ABMS, citing the lack of firm requirements, plan to attain mature technologies or an affordability analysis as significant concerns.
Pettyjohn of CNAS said the new approach with the DAF Battle Network takes ideas instituted by then-acquisition chief Will Roper with the initial steps of ABMS and makes them more achievable.
“I think it’s, in some ways, come full circle and more back towards some of the things that Roper was trying to do,” Pettyjohn said, “but in a more systematic and clearly articulated fashion and from a bottom-up approach versus top-down.”
The C3BM office’s approach is incremental and methodical, she said, looking at how to create smaller networks to meet immediate communications needs with plans to then connect those networks together. Under Roper, the goal seemed to be creating “one network to rule them all,” she said, by running experiments and demonstrations on how to connect various platforms in various ways.
Rather than pushing ABMS initiatives into existing stovepipes in programs of record, Kendall’s creation of the C3BM office houses these efforts within one place, she said.
“This was an attempt to really create its own program instead of embedding it within existing programs, whether it was the KC-46 tanker or F-35 and saying that we need to make these command and control systems their own thing,” Pettyjohn said.
Lawmakers have had little to say about ABMS in the past two budget cycles, which Pettyjohn said could be seen as a sign of support.
Progress made
Cropsey isn’t throwing out all the work completed by his predecessors. He’s kept a list of the promises made to major and combatant commands, and he’s also extended task orders to some of the companies awarded indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts in prior years.
Cropsey had been particularly focused on Cloud-Based Command and Control, he said, which has been successfully deployed at U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command. CBC2 integrates hundreds of radar feeds and sensor data into one interface, which allows operators to then use cloud-based applications, artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a common operating picture.
Cropsey told reporters in September that CBC2 had been delivered to each air defense sector in NORAD and that the next step is expanding it beyond that command.
“We’ve made commitments to the broader enterprise that we have to deliver on,” Cropsey said, referring to programs started before he took his position.