Pentagon’s AI-integrated war system ready to roll

The US Department of Defense’s (DOD) Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) system, a tech-driven plan to enhance military interoperability and artificial intelligence (AI) integration across all warfare domains with allies and partners, is initially ready.

C4ISRNET reported this month that the DOD has achieved a basic version of CJADC2, which aims for strategic and operational dominance in warfighting through the connection of sensors from all branches of the armed forces into a unified network. US Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks made the announcement.

The DOD’s fiscal 2024 budget blueprint allocates US$1.4 billion for CJADC2 to transform how the military operates, especially alongside foreign partners.

The DOD seeks to digitally tether forces across land, air, sea, space and cyber to outwit and outmaneuver tech-savvy adversaries like China. The quicker battlefield information can be collected, analyzed and disseminated using AI and other pattern-recognizing programs, the faster targets can be identified and hit.

The DOD’s chief digital and AI officer, Craig Martell, said that the goal is to create an information-fluent force capable of dominating networks and bombarding targets from a sprawl of locations with a wide range of weaponry.

CJAD2 is an evolution of the older Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept, with the former building on the latter’s framework while adding the element of interoperability with allies and partners.

A January 2022 US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report says previously each US military branch developed its own tactical network, which in cases were incompatible with each other. Meanwhile, the DOD recognized that future conflicts would require