Air Force to Demo Ground-Air Communications Through JAD2C, Preston Dunlap Says

The Air Force plans to collaborate with all combatant commands, the Joint Staff and the other military services in establishing the next generation of tactical military communications.

Air Force Chief Architect Preston Dunlap, a past Potomac Officers Club event speaker, said that “even a KC-46 tanker” will be connected to the planned Joint All-Domain Command and Control capability, which is the Department of Defense’s concept to connect sensors from all of the military services.

Both air and ground assets will be able to “move data in a much wider bandwidth to many more forces. Fifth to fifth, fifth to fourth, back to the continental United States and other sorts of central locations that we want to process and move information to,” Dunlap told Breaking Defense in an interview.

The military services traditionally developed their own tactical networks that were incompatible with those of the other services.

JAD2C was conceptualized to prepare the military for future warfare, which DoD said might require near-instant communications and analysis.

In 2019, the Air Force demonstrated that the F-35 and F-22 could speak the same machine language by using a software translator.

Lawmakers are closely watching the Advanced Battle Management System, which is an Air Force project aimed at achieving JAD2C.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, in its draft 2021 spending bill, cut $93.5M from the Air Force’s $302.3M budget request for the ABMS.

The Air Force also plans to demonstrate man-unmanned teaming between the Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie drone and fifth-generation fighters. The demo was originally scheduled for the ABMS On Ramp in September but was postponed due to coronavirus pandemic complications.