Department of the Air Force Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, and Battle Management (DAF PEO C3BM) Overview

The Data Challenge 

Military modernization in the digital age is as much about how best to process staggering amounts of information and raw data, as it is about fielding advanced kinetic weapons systems.  Global cloud connectivity and sensor proliferation have driven an explosion in the volume of knowledge available to warfighters and senior decision makers and forced a reimagining of Joint Warfighting Functions like information, intelligence, and fires.   

For those charged with developing and designing the Joint Force, the historical data and information management challenge has been orienting U.S. military services toward acquisition and requirement processes rooted in a single vision: interoperability in the name of collecting, transmitting, processing, and sharing knowledge across mission partners at speeds and scale that translate to overwhelming informational — and by extension operational — advantage over adversaries.   

Command, Control, and Communications (C3) systems, characterized in strategy planning documents as “fundamental to all military operations, delivering the critical information necessary to plan, coordinate, and control forces and operations across the full range of Department of Defense (DoD) missions,” are the backbone of this vision. Underpinning the successful delivery of C3 is the understanding that the effective harnessing of data is paramount. In short, data is our new commodity for transaction to deliver lethal force at speed and scale. 

Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2)  

In March 2022, DoD announced finalization of the classified Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) Strategy Implementation Plan, pulling together two distinct but mutually reinforcing objectives: maximizing the utility of all available information and data, and equipping the Joint Force with the latest C3 capabilities to achieve real-time awareness and decision support across all domains. Shortly thereafter, the initiative’s name was expanded to reflect an emphasis on “combined” efforts with partnering organizations and coalition  partners, making it “CJADC2.”

Importantly, CJADC2 is not a single weapon system or acquisition program. Instead, CJADC2 is a concept for managing investments in modernizing and upgrading current systems, as well as developing and acquiring new systems to ensure the Joint Force of the future has the capabilities, like communications and data sharing, needed to succeed in future warfighting environments.  

Although each of the Departments is developing its own individual contributions to the CJADC2 initiative — the Army’s Project Convergence, the Navy’s Project Overmatch, and the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF) DAF BATTLE NETWORK — the guiding ambition behind CJADC2 is a bundling of all U.S. and allied sensors and shooters on an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled network to enable faster decision-making on the battlefield. At the DoD level, these individual lines of effort are conceptually and operationally tied together by unifying constructs such as the initial delivery of the CJADC2 capability announced by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) in February 2024. This initial version represents a “minimum viable capability combining software applications, data integration and cross-domain operational concepts,” and tangibly evidences progress toward domain agnostic interoperability and cross-Department integration. As a warfighting capability, multi-domain interoperability and integration is a polestar cited in guiding documents no less authoritative than the National Defense Strategy:  

Our National Defense Strategy relies on integrated deterrence: the seamless combination of capabilities to convince potential adversaries that the costs of their hostile activities outweigh their benefits. It entails, among others: 

• Integration across domains, recognizing that our competitors’ strategies operate across military (land, air, maritime, cyber, and space) and non-military (economic, technological, and information) domains—and we must too.

In pursuit of multi-domain interoperability, CJADC2 is intended to provide warfighters and decision makers with the ability to collect, process, and apply data at all levels and phases of war, across all domains and with partners, to deliver information advantage at the speed of relevance. As an approach, CJADC2 transcends any single capability, platform, or system. It is an accelerant for implementing technological advancement and doctrinal change in the way the Joint Force conducts command and control, which will enable exploitation of increasing volumes of data, and employ automation, AI, and a secure and resilient infrastructure to empower action inside an adversary’s decision cycle.  

More than that, successful CJADC2 implementation entails a deft threading of the needle that is balancing technology and AI-oriented, Combatant Command-driven, "fight tonight" requirements—an OSD and Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office focus—with long-term strategic investments in future force capability, as reflected by Service-led modernization initiatives like the Army's Project Convergence, the Navy's Project Overmatch, and the DAF BATTLE NETWORK. Both are essential to maintaining U.S. global military preeminence, and the universality of the principles underwriting CJADC2 ensures that both countering anticipated future threats and accelerating delivery of near-term capability can be prioritized in tandem.   

CJADC2 and the Air Force 

As the digital age has spurred rapid advances in both technology and the threats that leverage that technology, the Air Force has prioritized enabling U.S. warfighters to make operational decisions faster than their potential adversaries through more effective and efficient collection, analysis, and sharing of information. This upper hand in the processing and application of information, known as “decision advantage,” requires a material support structure comprising resilient, distributable command and control, capable of delivering precisely the right effects at the right time and place, in furtherance of combined and Joint Force victory in a highly contested environment. While the quest for decision advantage predates CJADC2, the Air Force has been nimble in making design and structural changes to align organizationally with the objectives of the broader DoD initiative, as detailed in the 2022 JADC2 Strategy Implementation Plan.   

The DAF Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, and Battle Management    

After a series of organizational responses and evolutions that commenced with the Air Force’s initiating the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) under the Chief Architect Office (CAO) in 2018, the SecAF established the DAF PEO C3BM as the DAF Integrating PEO for C3BM in September 2022 (see Table below).    

Establishing the DAF PEO C3BM brought technical architecture authorities, previously under the CAO, and acquisition authority for ABMS, previously under the DAF Rapid Capabilities Office, beneath the direction of a single Program Executive Officer empowered to integrate C3BM equities at the DAF level. Within this organization, acquisition divisions such as ABMS, Intelligence, Surveillance, & Reconnaissance and Airspace Mission Planning, are procuring technology to support the DAF BATTLE NETWORK, while architecture divisions, under the lead of the DAF Chief Architect for C2, go about designing joint architectures and building out the technical capabilities that meet Joint Warfighting Concept derived mission integration threads to directly address domain specific threats and operational needs. The integration of technical requirements, architecture, and engineering through the DAF PEO C3BM aligns and integrates the DAF’s modernization efforts for C3 and streamlines delivery of decision advantage capabilities. To further emphasize the importance of the Integrating PEO role, the SecAF also designated DAF PEO C3BM as the Department’s single technical interface to CJADC2. 

The work of the DAF PEO C3BM breaks command and control into three integrated functions: 1) building situational awareness, 2) making operational decisions, and 3) directing the force, which collectively position the commander or battle manager to: 

• Understand what is happening in the battlespace in a relevant time and spatial framework to engage in the battle. 

• Identify, prioritize, and assign targets to the appropriate coalition or Joint Force element to engage them in a manner consist with the commander’s intent. 

• Communicate the engagement plan to the appropriate coalition or Joint Force element so they can execute to close, engage, and finish the target. 

The DAF BATTLE NETWORK  

The DAF PEO C3BM’s chief responsibility is delivering the DAF BATTLE NETWORK. The DAF BATTLE NETWORK is a system-of-systems, tying together the Air Force’s and Space Force’s command, control, and battle management capabilities using targeted communications systems and digital infrastructure. The specific individual platforms and capabilities connected in this system-of-systems dynamically change with time and operational context to account for many factors including:  the type of target to be engaged, the level of protection the target has, the available assets for attacking the target, and the adversary’s capabilities to respond to the attack. Nonetheless, the DAF BATTLE NETWORK employs a “best of breed” approach to capability delivery, prioritizing risk management to optimize the delivery of mission thread closing solutions. 

To fulfill its mission, the DAF PEO C3BM must create an architecture for the DAF BATTLE NETWORK that enables rapid integration of new technologies, processing infrastructure, software applications, algorithms, and data flows at low switching costs to stay apace of commercial technology advances and ahead of the adversary’s ability to do the same. The critical, “cannot fail” function of the integrated DAF BATTLE NETWORK is providing resilient decision advantage to the Air Force and Space Force and by extension, consistent with the strategic objectives of CJADC2, our joint and coalition partners.  

Obtaining decision advantage, which in practice is the ability to make better, faster, more accurate decisions about how military forces engage the adversary, is at the core of everything the DAF PEO C3BM does, because the speed and quality of a military’s command and control is a major factor in their ability to defeat an adversary. The DAF BATTLE NETWORK system-of systems will modernize Air Force and Space Force command, control, and battle management to accelerate and harden decision advantage by making CJADC2 resilient to enemy efforts to deny, degrade, interrupt, or limit this crucial warfighting capabilities. 

Additionally, in its role as an Integrating PEO, DAF PEO C3BM works across the Air and Space Force with other DAF PEOs delivering “core” and “connected” DAF BATTLE NETWORK capabilities to ensure the integration of technical architecture authorities and programmatic alignment. 

Key Department of the Air Force Milestones: