By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
(Washington D.C.) What if a satellite detected some kind of enemy movement behind a small mountain on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific and was able to quickly transmit threat data to an Air Force drone within range to “zero-in” on the target? Meanwhile, in near simultaneous fashion, the drone sends threat coordinates, imagery and even real-time video of the enemy movement to Navy amphibious assault ships and destroyers in position to take action with long-range precision weapons such as Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Targeting specifics and intelligence can then also be sent to airborne ship-launched 5th-gen stealth aircraft such as Marine Corps F-35Bs able to both conduct additional surveillance or fire weapons at the enemy positions.
JADC2
Concurrently, the amphib instantly launched an amphibious assault transporting Marines, weapons and armored vehicles toward the island. As surface ships approach the island and Marines and armored vehicles move ashore, air and surface platforms continuously send advancing ground forces real-time targeting detail and intelligence of critical operational relevance to the Corps’ attack.
What if, instead of needing to travel through various ground centers, command and control stations and an extensive decision-making process, all of this data sharing was secure, able to transition between otherwise disparate transport layer formats and taking place in a matter of seconds? Attacking fighter jets and advancing Corps ground forces, fortified by the multi-domain data-sharing network, would be able to operate with real-time knowledge of changing enemy movements, weapons positioning and tactical maneuvers in order to optimize timing, method and location of attack.
Video Above: Maj. Gen. Pringle Manned-Unmanned Teaming
This kind of real-time scenario, in which attacking forces operate within or faster than an enemy’s decision cycle, increases prospects for a rapid, successful first strike attack, decreasing risk to friendly forces and ensuring near immediate destruction of enemy forces before they can launch offensive operations …. Is increasingly becoming realistic. It is the premise of the JADC2 program, a multi-service effort to connect “air-ground-sea-space-cyber” domains to one another seamlessly across a dispersed, multi-domain operational area.
Tactically speaking, this means 5th-Generation fighter jets will, among other things, control small groups of drones from the cockpit while in flight, breaking manned-unmanned teaming operations through into a new high-speed operational sphere. As an example, while manned-unmanned teaming is of course blazing a new trail at lightning speed across all the services, the Air Force is now reaching previously unprecedented levels of data sharing between 5th-generation stealth fighter jets and nearby drones and unmanned systems.
The service has demonstrated data-exchange between an F-35 and its Valkyrie drone and is now engineering a new group of Combat Collaborate Aircraft, unmanned systems intended to operate alongside and in coordination with 5th and 6th-generation stealth fighter jets. One can only imagine the fast-emerging sphere of new tactical possibilities this introduces, as forward operating groups of drones could blanket an area with ISR, test or attack enemy air defenses or even launch weapons when directed by a human.
This invites a critical question, meaning where is this kind of breakthrough technology heading when it comes to JADC2 and joint, multi-domain interoperability? Chris Ristich, Director, Integrated Capabilities Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, told Warrior in an interview that this kind of fighter-jet-to-drone manned-unmanned teaming, involving intelligence transmissions and video-sharing are just a “part of a bigger picture where the ABMS (Advanced Battle Management System) effort is going.” The Air Force’s ABMS, which contributes to and supports JADC2 is, as Ristich describes it, “establishing that architecture, which is really an architecture of networks, related to how we pull that all together to be able to conduct warfighting operations. The manned-unmanned teaming part of it that you see in that example is just a portion of the challenge that we have too.”
Video Above: Air Force Research Lab Breaks Through With Networked Attacks
As Ristich points out, manned-unmanned connectivity such as that anticipated between 5th and 6th-generation stealth fighters and multiple drones and unmanned systems is one element of a fast-growing and complex enterprise designed to network the entire force. The intent with ABMS, which is informing and contributing to the Pentagon’s multi-domain Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) networking initiative, is to not only connect drones to fighter jets but network other weapons systems, sensors, aircraft and command and control nodes.
“We look at distributed unmanned systems that are sensing platforms that would be working collaboratively to optimize their sensing locations, their resource management, and all of that to be able to create a target quality common operating picture to feed into our JADC2 network,” Ristich said.
DoD’s JADC2, integrates Army, Navy and Air Force weapons, platforms, command and control centers and forces into a secure, yet seamless network of interconnected combat “nodes” able to share time-sensitive information across a joint warfare environment in real-time.
The idea with the Air Force’s ABMS, which is fully aligned with the Pentagon’s JADC2, is to enable an ability to “fight at the speed of relevance” and massively truncate or shorten sensor-to-shooter pairing to expedite targeting, threat identification and attack possibilities.
“Latency is absolutely key in modern warfare. We’re trying to understand what kinds of activities we can do through local area networks versus mesh back long range beyond line of sight,” Ristich told Warrior.
The service’s ABMS first emerged as a concept years ago when the service was conceptualizing anticipated future warfare environments and the need to be survivable in a contested environment wherein adversaries operate new generations of long-range precision weapons, multi-frequency air defenses, air-and ground radar detection systems and stealthy air platforms, among other things. This means, for example, that large non-stealthy platforms such as fixed wing J-STARS planes may not work as an optimal ISR solution in high-threat environments but rather needed to be supplemented by a dispersed networking of smaller, faster and in some cases stealthier interconnected “nodes” across broader maneuver formations in highly contested environments.
Naturally, as Ristich indicated, an enterprise of this kind presents an entire sphere of technological and even tactical challenges, as transport layer formats and incoming sensor-gathered data need to
essentially be “translated” and connected in a way not previously possible. For instance, perhaps an RF signal arrives from one node, while a wireless computer stream arrives from an otherwise disparate “node” or sensor, and both sets of incoming data need to be integrated, organized and analyzed along with still more information arriving from additional “datalinks,” “sensors,” “RF frequencies,” “wireless computer transmissions and other transport layer technologies.
Video Above: Air Force 6th-Gen Stealth Fighters Control Attack Drones
In order to accomplish these kinds of technical “translations,” as they could be called, many weapons developers are developing so-called “gateway” technologies, meaning advanced systems engineered with an “open” or “adaptable” architecture such that they can integrate, organize and transmit data from otherwise incompatible “transport layer” sources of data. In many cases, this requires common standards or IP Protocol that can essentially adapt to, incorporate and “translate,” different data formats. Essentially, interfaces could enable aerial drones to instantly share information with large fixed wing aircraft, stealth fighter jets, other unmanned systems and additional nodes across otherwise disconnected combat domains.
Ristich addressed this technical challenge in a number of respects, one of which is software programmable radio and an ability to adjust waveforms.
“Maybe a broader technology area here is essentially RF defined apertures, radio frequency defined amplitudes. With software defined radios where we can change the frequency, we can change the waveform. We can actually change the function of the system too, where it can go from a radar to a communication system,” Ristich.
Yet another area of this networking involves the use of secure, yet flexible technological “interfaces” designed to enable otherwise incompatible data formats and information streams. This seems to be precisely what Ristich is referring to by suggesting that indeed the ABMS interoperability enterprise extends far beyond manned-unmanned teaming between drones and fighter jets but a broader, multi-domain interconnectivity involving space, surface nodes, land assets, ground vehicles on the move and a wide range of ground and aerial command and control centers.
“The interfaces are key to us, right? That’s where open system architectures come back in. We’re specifying the interface controls and documenting those. That’s where we’re primarily focusing right now,” Ristich explained.
These AFRL efforts work in close coordination with similar Army and Navy initiatives aimed at developing, refining and ultimately deploying an integrated, multi-domain network. The Army’s Project Convergence, for instance, is a series of war scenario experiments which are already demonstrating a paradigm-changing ability to shorten sensor-to-shooter kill chains from minutes down to mere seconds.
For instance, using an AI-enabled computer called Firestorm, air-launched mini-drones were able to detect forward threat objects, relay information instantly to a larger drone and helicopter before sending relevant specifics to Firestorm. The AI-enabled system then performed analytics on the aggregated data, and, bouncing information off of a vast-database filled with historical information and weapons and threat detail, made a near instant sensor-to-shooter “pairing” and sends it recommendation to human decision-makers regarding the optimal method of attack.
Targeting and location specifics can, for instance, now be sent to an armored ground vehicle best positioned to destroy the enemy target … in a matter of seconds. This entire kill-chain, which used to take 20 mins, can now be completed in 20 seconds, due to interfaces, high-speed AI-enabled computing and secure, real-time multi-domain networking.
Video Above: Air Force Scientists Expand AI-Enabled Data Sharing Between Bombs “In Flight”
The Navy’s Project Overmatch, for instance, has origins going back many years to a Office of Naval Research effort called Ghost Fleet. Ghost Fleet, also called Operation Overlord, is a groundbreaking initiative to link unmanned surface systems to one another and manned command and control nodes to exact a dispersed, high-lethal, network of surveillance and attack Unmanned Surface Vehicles operating in coordination with one another. The Air Force is also advancing a Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation program with the Navy as well, an effort which Ristich described as aimed at “building the kill chain of the future.”
“We are Developing kill chains in the future, and JADC2 is going to be the layer that operates those kill chains. It’s going to be with a mantra of any shooter, any weapon, any node, essentially, that is able to share that and conduct targeting operations in a joint way,” Ristich said.
Naturally, this kind of technological expansion introduces a time-sensitive need to adjust tactics, refine strategic thinking and explore new Concepts of Operations.
“We have been partnering with the operational part of the Department of the Air Force as well. If you look at a lot of our different activities in the Integrated Capabilities Directorate today, they’re founded on bringing operators, technologists, and acquisition folks together from the very beginning so that we have the stakeholder buy in and understanding and ability to shape the concepts as they evolve, and that includes CONOPS development,” Ristich said.
As for what this might look like in terms of implementation, AFRL scientists, researchers and teams of innovators are looking at how breakthrough technologies might inform and shape future operations. Much of this, Ristich explains, detailed examination of both individual systems as well as the particular capacity in which they would integrate into a broader, multi-service JADC2 environment.
“What we’re trying to do is understand the military utility of technology projected into the war fighter’s hands. Looking at emergent systems, looking at disruptive technology, we’re doing analytics to try and identify pockets of technologies that could be disruptive, for example, for us. But looking at that from a holistic system of systems, multi-domain point of view, and doing it with analytical rigor, that’s the challenge that we have. The kinds of technologies that will emerge from that will be things like greater autonomy, information operations, right? The ability to generate courses of action for ourselves to inform the operators rapidly and faster than our opponents,” Ristich explained.
Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics& Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
