By Ann Roosevelt

U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) is the voice of the services when it comes to joint command and control(C2), according to a command official.

“We are the sole joint voice in developing capability,” Air Force Maj. Gen. David Edgington, JFCOM J-8, director, Joint Capabilities Development Directorate, said at the Joint Warfighting Conference in Virginia Beach, Va., last week.

J-8 is the lead joint integrator for the military and oversees Joint C2 Capability Portfolio Management (JC2 CPM) program. JC2 CPM responds to the Quadrennial Defense Review, which stressed the need to expand the DoD’s capability-based planning and management efforts to better enable strategic choice and improve the ability to make capability trade- offs.

The JC2 CPM mission is to deliver integrated JC2 capabilities, improve interoperability, identify and capture efficiencies, reduce capability redundancies and gaps, and increase joint operational effectiveness.

The services still develop their own service-specific systems, but where it crosses the joint discipline, J-8 is there.

“Command and control is first and foremost a human endeavor; it’s beyond science and is an art,” Edgington said.

Assured information builds knowledge and speeds decision-making through reliable systems and tested processes, he said. Distributed information allows relevant knowledge, thus allowing decentralized execution.

The whole idea of joint command and control is to promote decision cycles that are within an enemy’s ability to adapt, Edgington said. It’s an art to get the right information at the right time, and ensure everyone is seeing the right information.

The military is moving toward leader-centric, network enabled joint warfighting, and away from the term network-centric, he said.

The directorate is tied to the Defense Department Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations to aid in the rapid transition of capabilities. From the joint aspect the idea is to get the capability into a program of record so it becomes a sustainable capability for the services, he told attendees at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, U.S. Naval Institute co-sponsored event, with the support of JFCOM. In the multinational arena, the work aims to increase the interoperability and operational effectiveness for all command and control stakeholders to ensure they have the best advice for their own systems or as they are involved in the joint effort.

JFCOM is the operational sponsor for Net Enabled Command Capability (NECC), and is the direct coupling of capability requirements to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the services as materiel developers. Essentially, Edgington said, the services define the level of fidelity needed, JFCOM negotiates disparities, then develops it. DISA fills the role of program executive office.

Common data means whether a warfighter is looking at information at U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Pacific Command or U.S. Northern Command, everyone is looking at the same, trusted data.

Examining policy is one JFCOM priority. For J-8 the purpose is to have a coherent, unambiguous and transparent command and control policy, Edgington said. Working with DoD, the directorate is reviewing the more than 400 policies that exist in and around command and control to see what’s redundant or confusing and clear it up.

Another directorate priority is to strengthen partnerships, working with agencies such as DISA in a collaborative and coordinated manner.

Ensuring a training path for future C2 also is important, he said, to reinforce human endeavor. Nothing should be so complex that training can’t help to make the best use of a system.

Commanders demand C2 that is comprehensive, resilient, pervasive and timely, he said. Joint C2 Capability Portfolio Management expects to provide solutions that are effectively synchronized, interoperable and rational, he said.

At the same time, warfighters have to expect to lose some connectivity, Edgington said. The goal is that if a warfighter sees, say, Saddam go into a restaurant, and the combined air operations center is watching, if enemy action brings down some connectivity, the idea is that the warfighter out front will still know the rules of engagement, know if there’s a positive target and can still execute a mission using whatever is available, even if the “Gucci stuff” is down. That would mean no one is crippled by the loss of one technological element.

Warfighters want data that is completely authoritative no matter the depiction.

The services are working corroboratively on this, and there’s very little resistance, he said.

The same data seen at the company level will be seen at brigade and division or whatever command echelon. The same databases are being accessed.

Right now, the directorate is developing a joint C2 strategy roadmap to provide more specifics on how to do this. A capabilities mix study is looking at everything that currently exists.

The outcome will be a picture, for example, showing what systems the services will be relying on in 2014, so it can be understood what needs to be developed.

Additionally, as JFCOM develops Joint C2, there’s a cost avoidance piece. DoD is spending the money just once.