2024 was a banner year for the Department of Defense’s mission to erect and proliferate an interoperable information-sharing system throughout its services, in the many locations they operate and on the litany of tools they use. This undertaking, dubbed Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, reached what Deputy Secretary of Defense and Wash100 awardee Kathleen Hicks called âminimum viable capabilityâ status in February of 2024 and continued to notch more accomplishments as the year wore on.
We have collected some of the biggest recent CJADC2 milestones and assessed where the project stands now.
At the Potomac Officers Clubâs 2025 Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 23, panel discussions will tackle subjects key to CJADC2: autonomous technologies, global defense partnerships, contested environment operations and more! Ring in the new year with all of your GovCon friends and competitors at the Hilton McLean in Virginia. Register before tickets run out!
Open DAGIR
The Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories, or Open DAGIR, apparatus went live over the summer. Itâs meant, according to Breaking Defense, to be a corrective to the informal tradition of stovepiped Pentagon tech systems masterminded by a single contractor. Instead, Open DAGIR works to assure that different tools can talk to one another and function while interlocking, as well as allows new industry partners to build on existing creations without having to start from square one.
The DOD wants to put Open DAGIR in effect across all domains and operating environments with CJADC2, so that the patchwork of hardware and software that comprise the initiative is accessible and widely compatible.
In December, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office at the DOD, which is responsible for CJADC2 oversight, awarded Anduril Industries a $100 million other transaction agreement, or OTA, to perform tactical data mesh-related work that will hopefully facilitate low-latency data comms throughout all of the arms and branches of the CJADC2 tree. The award was made via the Open DAGIR program.
Joint Fires Network
DOD officials reportedly worked steadily for all of 2024 to produce a first iteration of the Joint Fires Network. This service would bring automation into the weapon discharge arena, though it isnât designed to do the trigger-pulling in place of humans. Rather, JFN is being built to provide a greater situational awareness of the battlefield and make recommendations about where and who to shoot. Right now, JFN is U.S. Indo-Pacific Command-centric and was tested at the Valiant Shield exercises in June alongside international partners.
Future Maritime Mission
This year, the Pentagon is ready to put CJADC2 to the test at sea with allied nations. The test activity will be led by the U.K. and will try to resolve how to make shared international military communications secure and impervious to most/all cyber risks. This means implementing zero trust, the increasingly popular strategy that forces a demonstration of credentials at all levels of access (as opposed to a perimeter-style, once-youâre-in-youâre-in approach).
The forthcoming demo will be conducted with nations like Norway, France, Italy, Japan and New Zealand, among others, and will incorporate takeaways gleaned during Project Olympus 2024.
âWeâve historically looked at security as the antithesis for information sharing. The security folks come in and want to sort of clamp down. With zero trust and data centric security, they are security mechanisms, but they are enabling information sharing,â said U.K. representative Jim Knight.
Want to gain a deeper understanding of the technologies that enable CJADC2 and learn from the folks tasked with researching and acquiring that tech? Attend the Potomac Officers Clubâs 2025 Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 23. Browse the full lineup, brimming with exciting names, and register today.
