Published in Milsat Magazine.
To optimize overall situational understanding (SU) in the battlefield, the US Army, Air Force, Navy and SOF are seeking new programs. These programs will adopt a variety of compute and bandwidth intensive technologies, such as cloud-based networks, and will drive far greater use of sensor data, video, big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to deliver the command and control information that warfighters need.
These new programs, such as Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and the US Air Force Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), will enable better coordination of deployed forces and enable the fielding of new capabilities to ensure that our warfighters have maximum SU and high-speed decision support.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville calls that "decision dominance" as described in his March 2021 report entitled Army Multi-Domain Transformation: Ready to Win in Competition and Conflict. The report describes an expanded battlefield - coupled with short-, mid-, and long-range precision fires to engage and destroy adversary land, air, and sea capabilities - that necessitates of how command control is executed at every echelon.