Commercial space plays a critical role in the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architecture — enabling commanders to sense, make sense, and act at all levels of war — speakers from the U.S. Navy, DoD, Air Force, OneWeb, and Iridium said at SATELLITE 2022.
Mike Dean, DoD satcom chief, described JADC2’s core need: “You have some adversaries out there that are getting better in terms of their command and control. We have to be able to speed up ours to match that.” The warfighter needs “a global secure communications network. We can’t have any single points of failure. You have to have multi-path and you have to have multi-level security.”
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Brig. Gen. Steven Gorski of Langley Air Force Base said commercial space provides “redundant and expanded coverage and multiple modalities for sensing whether that’s electro-optical, multispectral, or radar. That allows us to do battlespace awareness, mission planning, and also speeds up our targeted efforts.” He noted interoperability as a key tenet: “I think industry is going to continue to be a great partner in that because generally it can move and adapt to market conditions faster than the government.”
Jay Chapman of Iridium observed that the conflict in Ukraine was providing real-time insight into JADC2 applications: “It’s really allowing us to apply that JADC2 model to see what we’re learning in real time. We have a confluence of modern warfare happening while we have humanitarian assistance, disaster response, even search and rescue.” Dylan Browne of OneWeb Government noted: “We’ve actually opened up coverage a little bit earlier than planned in Eastern Europe for humanitarian efforts.” He cautioned on time: “Our satellite industry moves forward in decades cycles. That’s too slow. We’ve got to keep the pace up.” VS
