The Air Force uses Leidos to run the digital infrastructure that connects everything

The Air Force selected Leidos, a longtime defense IT contractor, to develop and manage its next-generation command, control and communications network Defense first he learned.

The $303 million contract covers “planning, analysis and operations” of the digital infrastructure network within the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System – a key element of the service’s contribution to the Pentagon’s connect-everything effort called Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2. The Air Force also recently announced plans to engage more industry partners in ABMS experiments.

The Air Force Executive Office of Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management is building on ABMS and expanding the use of cloud-based command and control tools as part of overall digital infrastructure plans for operators to improve battlefield communications.

However, the agreement, which runs for three years with an option for an additional two years, puts Leidos at the forefront of technology interconnection for the ABMS digital infrastructure network.

Defense first spoke with Chad Haferbier, who leads Leidos’ Multi-Domain Solutions practice, to learn more about this largely secretive initiative. He said the first order of business is to talk to Air Force leadership to understand “what they want to present, how we can help them with that and how we want to organize,” and then hire more people to work on solutions.

What does this contract mean for the Air Force? Battle netthe service’s contribution to JADC2 and the ABMS efforts that fall within this scope?

Digital infrastructure underpins the command and control modernization aspects of combat management. How do we start connecting things, sharing and processing data? How to build and manage the network and ensure operational security and data security (while moving) from the tactical edge to operational and strategic decision makers?

And if they share elements of this network, we will partner with them and support them in making this vision a reality.

What does it look like?

This element is more focused on infrastructure than applications. (That means) supporting the Department of the Air Force on where do we need to put this infrastructure to start sharing and sharing this data and keeping it secure? And then move it to them, whether it’s a tactical node, an operational node, technology code, strategic code – and that’s all, I would say, speculation – and move that data to inform the decision makers… in order to make those decisions in a timely way.

DAF is truly prepared – and I’m very proud of this team because they actually turned all of those ideas and lightning bolts on PowerPoint charts into record-breaking programs. They also secured a budget from Congress for investments to realize the vision of a connected network. And digital infrastructure is only its basic element.

How does this relate to other work Leidos is doing in the JADC2 space, for the Air Force or elsewhere within the Department of Defense?

We also make (independent R&D or) IRAD investments in command and control applications and AI/(machine learning)-based code generation. How do we start to meaningfully incorporate other domains and filter that data for the decision maker in terms of what they need… so that we can be the preferred partner higher up in the stack… as we start to pull all this data together.

Have you successfully done something like this at scale before? Even if it happens in a lab where you collect a lot of information from different locations.

Evidence that we can be an integrator in terms of digital infrastructure: the DISA contracts we have and the Navy contracts.

There are examples where we show that we can make sense of all this data. A program that is also part of my team (Air Force Emergency Response Command and Control Incident Management Application or) C2IMERA would be an example of collecting data from multiple sources to help manage a base in a crisis scenario. (During) the withdrawal from Afghanistan, C2IMERA was used quite extensively to help decision makers get all the data and make the right decisions based on it.

Let’s just say things are going well with the Air Force. This is a limited contract. What do you think about integrating and feeding into the larger beast of joint joint command and control across all domains over all joint forces?

Because we are fully committed to enterprise open architecture, not proprietary frameworks. In the past you have seen proprietary boundaries between systems and therefore having an integrator that is fully willing to tie its business strategy to being a trusted partner and ensuring open architecture and backward compatibility. For me, this is why Leidos is a great choice to help with this.

Even if there is an open architecture, it can still exist political challenges when trying to combine technologies.

The recent news that (Major General) Cropsey has become the Joint Fires Network executive agent for INDOPACOM is a perfect example of how a single acquirer can begin to combine services under one service.

You will always need to have an acquisitions office to manage procurement and development with industry partners to take advantage of these opportunities. Given the steps that the Air Force has taken and the confidence that the Department of Defense has now shown in them in giving them responsibility (Joint Fires Network), I think this is huge in terms of progress toward joint implementation of these connections.

Anything else?

There are ongoing requests to take over the network of mission partner environments, which we are very interested in implementing. (E.g.) How do you use management software (identity, authentication and access) or ICAM to adjudicate among NATO partners what data they can see? Because everyone in the NATO environment today has point-to-point networks, so the way data is shared requires a lot of manual work. I believe the vision is to put this together on one network and then provide security through software to quickly enable allies and partners to have all the data access they can.

We invest in (independent research and development) to turn this data into information. We’re also very interested in helping to close the gap between the (Intelligence Community) and the Department of Defense to accelerate data flow, information flow and decision-making capabilities.