Optical links will connect SDA’s Transport Layer to weapons platforms. (SDA image)
WASHINGTON: Military commanders across the board need two key capabilities to fulfill their missions — awareness of their respective domains, and the ability to command and control their forces — both of which rely heavily on space systems, Space Force chief Gen Jay Raymond said Wednesday.
“If you look at JADC2, Joint All Domain Command and Control, space is one of the domains that puts the ‘all domain’ into that definition,” Raymond told Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in an online interview Wednesday. “I’ve been saying, kind of tongue in cheek, we’ve been JADC2 before it was cool.”
Raymond explained that Space Force has been “working really hard” on developing these two baseline JADC2 capabilities over the past two years of its existence.
“We made some really good progress in some capabilities that we’ve built on the space side of the house that better integrate with with other domains, specifically the air domain,” he said.
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“Our big focus for the first couple years of the Space Force on C2 was with data. The domain that we operate in is a domain that … we experience through data,” he added, noting that only a small number of astronauts (and some very wealthy tourists who have traveled to the International Space Station) have had the opportunity to live and work in space. “And so we really been focusing on building the data architecture, if you will, for being able to solve a lot of the challenges that we have, which are big data challenges.”
Raymond stressed that his service has a “critical role” in ensuring that commanders from all the services have the data they need, when they need it, to effectively “command and control our forces in a way that lends itself to integrated deterrence across all domains.”
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In particular, he stressed the the service’s evolving effort to develop and deploy a new satellite constellation for space data transport is “one of the key pieces of JADC2.” This is because “linking sensor to shooter” requires “being able to take data and transport that data to decision-makers and I really believe that the work that we’re doing on the force design for a data transport layer will really be a key part of that.”
At the moment, development of a constellation of small, low-cost satellites in Low Earth Orbit to transmit everything from phone calls to video streaming to military operators around the globe is the purview of the independent Space Development Agency (SDA). But in October, SDA, by law as enshrined in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, will transfer from the Defense Department office of Research & Engineering to Space Force.
