The Joint Staff’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control Campaign Plan Experiment 2 allowed Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines nodes to share near-real time information to enable sensor to shooter linkages and display it on a common operational picture. (U.S. Army Joint Modernization Command)

The Joint Staff’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control Campaign Plan Experiment 2 allowed Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines nodes to share near-real time information to enable sensor to shooter linkages and display it on a common operational picture. (Army Joint Modernization Command)

There are places where jointness, that still sometimes elusive character, is on full display in the US military and one of those is where close air support meets the Army. The Army’s Joint Support Team trains 4,200 Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Special Operations Command students in joint air-ground operations education, training and command-and-control systems integration. Few organizations will be so central to the future of All Domain Operations and our author, the commandant there, knows it. What’s his prescription for JADC2 and ADO? Read on! The Editor.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, after months of observing Russia’s attacks in Ukraine, spoke in April 2015 at the Army War College in Carlisle and set the Army on its path toward Multi-Domain Operations.

Work’s clarion call echoed across both the Atlantic and the Pacific, as the Pentagon sought to counter recent challenges to its ability to project power into contested areas. Five years on, Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) has entered the lexicon with such ubiquity that this unfinished and untested concept has reached mythic status as the panacea for the competitive environment expressed in the 2018 National Defense Strategy.

If MDO is the answer, then senior joint and service leaders must carefully balance myriad competing demands and resource constraints to successfully navigate the next five years to ensure the necessary capabilities and enablers are developed in a deliberate and coordinated manner. For MDO to succeed, optimizing army command and control to enable domain synchronization must be at the heart of the strategy, and it must be a top priority.

Underlying the theory of MDO is the idea that optimizing cross-domain effects through convergence at echelon will help overwhelm an adversary’s ability to contest a single domain (land, air, sea, space or cyber) To accomplish this in an environment that is hyperactive, hyper-lethal, and hyper-connected will require a thorough examination of our existing C2 structures.

That scrub will undoubtedly reveal shortfalls in joint training and education, an over-reliance on under-resourced liaisons, targetable structural vulnerabilities, and a poorly integrated joint and allied C4I architecture that can’t handle the task of All-Domain Operations (ADO) at speed and at scale. In sum, convergence will require an evolution in C2 to be achievable. This must incorporate the existing principles of our current domain integration processes and optimize their functionality, while also requiring adoption of a more streamlined design to enable information and decision dominance. Key to this will be improving the Theater Air Ground System (TAGS).

It will have to be folded into a more integrated, resilient, and collaborative approach that leverages our future capabilities as well as those of our allies and non-military governmental partners. Without a Joint Forces Command (which would have been ideally suited for synchronizing the creation of this requirement  but would have broken too many rice bowls), the Air Force has been made the lead on this integration effort through the Combined Joint All-Domain C2 (CJADC2) project. While all services are contributing there is understandable dissension about the way ahead and how to tailor this concept to the particular needs of each service.

As we enter the next five years of MDO development, there are important questions the Army and the Joint Force should be asking. First, what are the key factors the Army needs to consider as we change our C2 structure and methodology? How do we build a bridge from the current C2 system to C/JADC2? Finally, whose voices should it listen to most to lead this change and ensure that the various pieces work together as intended? The answers to these questions may not necessarily prove whether Multi-Domain Operations is a suitable Third Offset to complicate the plans of our adversaries, as envisioned by former DepSecDef Bob Work, but they will speed our path toward that goal and help  conserve resources.

The natural inclination will be to fixate on the elements that have always driven change: the emerging threat; advances in technology and behavioral science; and changes in the environment. The tenets of ‘Mission Command’ which drive the Army’s approach to C2, have a long and proven history and can trace their origins to the defeat of the Prussian Army by Napoleon in the Battle of Jena in 1806.

The reforms of the Prussian military after that defeat resulted in the concept of Aufstragtaktik, of which Mission Command philosophy is a direct descendant. Its emphasis on decentralized decision-making and subordinate initiative remains attractive in MDO given the possibility of forces having to execute operations in denied environments beyond the reach of strategic or operational centralized control. Despite significant advances in technology in the 200 years since Jena, the ‘friction’ and ‘fog’ of war described by Karl von Clausewitz — present at the battle — has not eliminated that uncertainty. That uncertainty will continue to require leadership at the tactical echelons be given the power to make timely decisions to capitalize on opportunities and avoid risks.

As tactical leaders begin to employ emerging All-Domain capabilities and get greater access to cyber, space and electronic warfare effects, they should consider how the versatility, reach, cost and potential for unintended escalation, factor into the control mechanisms of their C2 design. These emerging capabilities appear to have characteristics that are very similar to those of airpower, in terms of their ability to quickly span ‘levels of war’ from the tactical to the strategic, and are similarly desirable in terms of their ability to create an array of dilemmas for an adversary.

However, despite the advantages gained, C2 of these capabilities has the potential to create challenges for organizations like the Army that have relied on making decisions forward at the point of contact where a full appreciation of the operational/ strategic battlefield may not be possible.

Army leaders will have to decide whether and how to adopt the C2 methodology that has evolved to be most suitable for airpower; that of centralized control and decentralized execution, while simultaneously enabling subordinate action. While the Army’s Fires community has experience applying a centralized approach at the tactical level, the possibility of applying it more broadly at operational and strategic level, may blur the lines between the traditional roles of the services and require further delineation of mission sets and joint command relationships.

If the service’s ‘convergence’ approach is to work as intended, joint authorities must be delegated to lower echelons to ensure those who receive them are held accountable for their use, not just to their own service, but to the Joint Force as a whole. They must understand and use their power in a manner appropriate to the Joint Force Commander’s intent, even if that contradicts their immediate need and the needs of their service. This re-envisions the mission command concept of ‘prudent risk acceptance’ and places the delegated commander in the position of assessing not only what the risk is, and whom is assuming it (jointly), but also whether that action is prudent in a much larger context.

MDO will reinforce the familiar axiom, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ and future leaders will need to ‘bind’ the convergence concept’s application in a manner that it doesn’t become self-defeating. Historically, this has been done through physical, cognitive, and temporal limitations imposed on delegated authorities. These will still be relevant on the expanded battlefield but may cross inter-service lines at the tactical echelons in ways they never have.

Among other factors the Army will need to consider is how closely and widely we want to integrate the new C2 systems with our allies and non-military Unified Action Partners. For more than 20 years, the Army has been trumpeting that its formations need to be capable of joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational integration. This is key because since there has not been a major conflict since World War I where our military has fought without allies. Yet despite this, our command and technical interoperability with our partners remains low.

NATO soldiers during the closing ceremony of Tobruq Legacy 2020 at Siauliai Air Base, Lithuania.

From an institutional point of view, the Army looks at allied interoperability largely as a ‘nicety’ versus a ‘necessity’ and soldiers receive very little instruction about who our allies are and how they operate. Very few leaders are versed in NATO Allied Doctrine, are involved with its development, or even know that it exists. For many of our non-NATO allies, we simply assume allies will conform to our doctrine, or limit the degree of interoperability to synchronization versus true integration. The late addition of the “C” in C/JADC2 is a fitting testament to our continued perception of Allied interoperability as an after-thought.

The military’s increased reliance on expeditionary regionally aligned forces, as both a cost saving measure and a mechanism to shape the environment, provides us with an excellent opportunity to increase our exposure to working with our partners. However, that interaction, engagement, and sharing cannot be intermittent as it has often been. The preponderance of US forces cannot afford to remain blissfully ignorant of Allied systems, processes, and challenges.

If the Army’s plan for future C2 is predicated on achieving synergy with a multinational force, we must become better stewards of that relationship and design our C2 from the ground up with inclusion as a mission goal. Even for those partners outside of traditional alliances, US forces must prepare for the day when we may need to rapidly integrate those forces. Hybrid warfare and winning in the ‘competition period’ requires the capabilities and expertise of a whole-of-government approach.

The final key factor to highlight, as we adapt our C2 structure to support Joint All-Domain Operations, will be education. The Army needs to relook the skills and training we expect our at all echelons. While the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act enabled the military to make great strides in achieving joint competency, it may need to relook at whether it went far enough. Congress and the military may have been too limited in their reach to the tactical level. For example, within the Army, even those officers whose career fields are predicated upon successful integration of Joint assets, such as Fire Supporters, do not get exposed to the inner workings of the Air Force and the Joint Air Tasking Cycle that delivers many of their effects until they have been in the service for several years. Furthermore, the mechanism to enforce joint exposure through specialized duty assignments for the highest ranks and are insufficient to generate the base of leaders steeped in strategic joint thinking necessary within the context of Multi-Domain Operations at echelon.

This exposure to the joint force must happen far earlier in a military career and occur at all echelons. The mechanisms which currently exist to expand joint C2 knowledge, like Additional Skill Identifiers (ASIs), must be made available to  soldiers expected to occupy key positions within the Army’s Command Posts. I am not advocating the establishment of full-time C2 professionals as the Air Force has done with the establishment of the Multi-Domain Staff Officer (13O) positions. Instead, the Army should introduce additional qualifications for serving in key billets within each headquarters at echelons above brigade. All of this will require resources and an extensive commitment to collective training and doctrine enterprise to retool the force for C/JADC2. The costs will be borne through the consolidation of curriculums associated with legacy processes, increased reliance on allies to participate in instruction, and the introduction of distributed, autonomous and reduced-crew systems for both operations and training to reduce manpower costs and vulnerabilities while sustaining or boosting lethality.

As we build this new force we must assume an opportunistic adversary will seek to exploit a seam between the existing command structure and the objective C/JADC2 if possible. So the process needs to be deliberate, incremental, and based on iterative experimentation that introduces new ways of accomplishing existing functions. In essence, the joint force needs to treat this as a cognitive, passage of lines. Developers must build in backwards compatibility into all new systems and develop tactics, techniques and procedures to identify and overcome breakdowns in processes. They will need to assess the effects of those breakdowns on the overall system to ascertain what aspects are the most critical and where the system can assume risk and how to make it resilient. Practitioners of C/JADC2 processes will need to be trained to execute in a degraded environment and possess the command relationships and authorities to act appropriately. This will naturally be enabled by technology to diagnose, treat, and heal broken C2 networks automatically to maintain the desired decision advantage. Furthermore, the seams between non-DoD agencies and international partners must be addressed. The first step in this, similar to those taken in the 1980s with regard to AirLand battle, would be reassessing where we have permanent liaisons and willing partners across the interagency and international divide, and filling them with qualified personnel. All of this implies significant investment in the processes, systems, nodes and networks that comprise the JADC2 enterprise.

What remains is to identify those best suited to manage JADC2. The Army should leverage organizations whose functions and subject matter experts have historically bound the “seams” of the Joint Force C2 structure to assist Futures Command in collaborating with our partners. The Army has fertile ground from which to draw “champions” and “change agents”. Personnel vacating JDAL positions at Combatant Commands, joint institutional centers of excellence, Battlefield Coordination Detachments, Army Air Missile Defense Commands and Joint LNOs world-wide have a wealth of experience and understanding about both how and why other domains conduct C2 the way they do. They are not only deeply familiar with their own service doctrine and equities, but also understand the challenges and priorities of the other services.

Thankfully, due to recent changes in the Army personnel system, notably the adoption of a market-based approach to talent management, leaders now have the tools they need to restructure and meet the manning requirements of CJADC2. Army leaders must still have the foresight to identify and attract individuals with the right qualifications, to fill the right positions in both command posts and the generating force necessary to sustain momentum and accelerate change.

In the final analysis, the pace and success of our transition to Multi-Domain Operations will largely depend on how well the Army manages the simultaneous development of the Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept that brings the disparate parts together and enables convergence at the heart of the design. The Army must not only be an active participant alongside the Air Force as the lead agency, it must also ensure that the concerns above are addressed. It must be deliberate in its approach to change, resilient during the process, and seek out those who are uniquely qualified to help lead it.

Already the Army is making positive steps in this direction, as noted by the Sept. 29 memorandum of agreement on C/JADC2 development signed between the Chiefs of Staff of the Air Force and the Army. This agreement sets the stage for two years of cooperation and is intended to accelerate the positive change already underway in each service. It is a good indicator of Army and Air Force commitment at the highest levels to deliver a game-changing approach to maintain US dominance for the foreseeable future.

History has shown that it is only a matter of time before the Multi-Domain Operations concept is tested on a real battlefield. We would do well to remember that AirLand Battle was validated in 1991, during Desert Storm14, just five short years after Goldwater-Nichols. We are already in era of persistent competition so this is a good first step in creating the sense of urgency required.

No one can predict when and where the catalyst for escalation to armed conflict will occur, so the Army needs its best and brightest dedicated to making Multi-Domain Operations and C/JADC2 a reality in the shortest time possible and implementing Deputy Secretary Work’s vision crafted five years ago.

Army Lt. Col. Matthew Arrol is commandant of the Army’s Joint Support Team at Hurlburt Field, Fla. Arrol’s views are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air Force, the Army or any other federal entity.