JADC2: Trusted, reliable, timely

Combatant commanders must rely on a comprehensive set of digital capabilities that use decision-quality data to support the warfighter with trusted access to reliable and timely information. Therefore, the development and implementation of the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) system prioritizes transforming voluminous amounts of data with varying levels of quality into actionable information leading to accelerated decisions. 

Decision dominance is underpinned by architectural and operational decisions that create the foundation for multi-domain operations (MDO). The JADC2 construct requires organization-wide Department of Defense (DoD) information collection, analysis, and correlation of the “data enterprise” that generates actionable knowledge—a key enabler and catalyst in providing the warfighter an on-demand operational capability. Currently, DoD mission partners operate and maintain highly sophisticated, globally distributed environments that are often cumbersome and isolated. Crossdomain data ingress and egress, particularly during real-world events, further highlight these complex challenges. 

Accelerating the transformation of raw data into actionable intelligence will equip Joint Forces to make timely and confident decisions concerning warfighter operations. The contents of the command and control (C2) systems, often just raw data, attempts to support decision-making. However, often operators and commanders struggle to find the information they need to make sound decisions. Valuable data is frequently trapped in organizational silos, inconsistently described and named, missing critical pieces of information, and frequently out of date. Also, sharing data across applications—despite the apparent benefits—introduces more uncertainty as these data problems multiply. 

For Joint Force C2 functions to achieve decision dominance in all-domain operations, the implementation strategy requires a blend of planning guidance, industry advancements, and modernized technologies that use and combine existing data and infuse new data assets while adapting commercial solutions to military-specific requirements. 

Those requirements, driven by lines of effort (LOE), will need to mandate that applications and data that will play critical roles in the ability to improve Joint Force C2, while also enabling commanders to “sense, make sense, and act,” will be re-composable and based on modern applications built using microservices. Also, given real-time access to data, the warfighter will need to overmatch the adversary in the globally distributed MDO world of modern warfare.

Red Hat, the world’s enterprise open source leader, unlocks open source innovation in the complexity and scale of Joint Force warfighting domains. 

Red Hat’s approach to a software-defined network (SDN) architecture provides the backbone for a security-focused and converged joint all-domain digital infrastructure solution. The solution includes data collection, integration, analysis, and syndication. The goal is to provide the warfighters and commanders with a single collaborative environment to access geospatial data combined with the latest analytic models and tools. Further, this solution encompasses the key tenants for mission priorities of security, latency, and speed across all topologies, end-to-end. This approach provides a rich transport, communication, and integration layer for success. The collaborative environment and analytic tools help the warfighter interact with data in a single common operating picture (COP) / common intelligence picture (CIP).

Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) are strategic tools; however, today’s AI/ML systems are far more dynamic and must be regularly updated, modified, and adjusted to maximize the accuracy and value of the insights they deliver. Thus, AI/ML tooling should be focused on containerization, data management, and configurable deployments. Red Hat’s portfolio, combined with a powerful AI/ML platform, provides the flexibility and portability to use containerized AI/ML tools to quickly build, scale, reproduce, and share AI/ML results consistently with a joint community of interest (COI). 

Additionally, a key differentiator of Red Hat technology is flexible messaging architectures to achieve near-real-time situational awareness. A robust messaging infrastructure will allow a rich and performant data exchange among all nodes in the JADC2 domains offering tremendous capability to process enormous volumes of data at speed. With Red Hat, you can bridge data between disparate systems with the ability to transform and enrich data at the edge of the network.

Our solution takes advantage of new and existing sensor data to form an edge-computing fabric, wherein initial data analysis and complex event processing occur at the edge of the network—in parallel to the sensors themselves. This also carries the benefit of real-time situational awareness, delivering sub-second results on data collected at the edge, allowing time-critical and dynamic mission processes to be changed quickly while processes are still in progress. This offers an alternative to the lag time required by systems that must amass collected data at a central data warehouse before any processing can occur. 

Red Hat unifies components of the distributed JADC2 architecture providing the tools and capability to have granular control and visibility of deployed artifacts within each domain. This allows warfighters to deliver change from the initial idea, through the innovation, and to production as quickly as possible.

Together, the dynamic automation of integrated tools and automated data processing can provide combat forces with the global shared information and awareness they need to maintain C2 of their combined terrain in real time. The foundation for this comprehensive capability requires taking advantage of AI, data science, and emerging technologies. By adopting these technology enhancements, modern Red Hat capabilities can provide warfighters access to data while managing critical information and applications wherever and whenever needed.

Red Hat offers the DoD a low-risk, highly capable technology stack to support the strategic outcomes of information and decision advantage to meet the critical and timely challenges described in the recently released JADC2 Strategy.¹

Red Hat offers a partnership to bring world-class open source products and solutions, extensive DevSecOps expertise, industry-leading automation technology, a hybrid cloud strategy, and extensive technology training to the combined Joint Forces team. Our team reduces risk by making open source software usable for the enterprise with a dedicated Product Security team that monitors, identifies, and addresses vulnerabilities quickly. Additionally, we invest in strict engineering requirements to certify products to meet stringent government and commercial security standards such as Common Criteria, Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs), and Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS). 

Red Hat stands ready to help transform and operationalize the JADC2 vision and support the integration of fused data sources, develop analytics, and deliver security-focused data and interoperability standards—at scale—as identified and prioritized by the JADC2 cross-functional team (CFT).