CJADC2 concepts gain momentum
StoryJuly 31, 2025
A concept that is gaining steam and technological legs within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is the Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) strategy. We’ve covered CJADC2 since before the DoD added the “C” for “combined” as a way to interact with allied partners in a data-centric network scenario. At first it was mostly visionary discussions without practical solutions, but now actual products are being developed by primes and embedded hardware and software providers.
According to the DoD’s Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), CJADC2 “is not a single system, but a series of interconnected capabilities from the edge to the boardroom, providing the joint commander with sensors and systems across the tactical, operational, and strategic levels to create a clearer picture of the current situation in the fog of war.”
With that definition in mind, we developed our annual CJADC2 at the Edge Virtual Summit, set to be held September 17, 2025 at 11 a.m. EDT. The event is designed to drive awareness and thought leadership around CJADC2 concepts and requirements and to study how artificial intelligence (AI), secure communications, high-performance computing, cyber operations, data connectivity, and other embedded technology solutions will impact system designs.
The main CJADC2 sessions are:
- Solving Data Connectivity Challenges for CJADC2 Operations
- Enabling Trusted Networks & Systems for CJADC2
- Leveraging AI in CJADC2 Operations
Our keynote speaker this year is Ron Fehlen, National Security Space Mission Architect Vice President, Lockheed Martin. In this role, he is responsible for leveraging mission-focused systems thinking combined with the National Security Space (NSS), space, and the company’s 1LMX capabilities, investments, and partnerships. He directly supports Lockheed Martin’s initiatives driving toward CJADC2 and air-space-maritime-ground capability.
Fehlen’s team at Lockheed Martin developed a software solution aimed at connecting advanced warfighting systems for CJADC2, dubbing the software the CJADC2 Interoperability Factory. The self-funded solution is producing an open-architecture software stack designed to connect the machine languages of the United States’ existing advanced weapon systems, in a way that is message standard-agnostic, according to the company’s CJADC2 page. This “connection” is key to increasing data exchanges, advancing interoperability, and vastly improving situational awareness between systems and system operators.
Lockheed Martin will begin demonstrating the CJADC2 Interoperability Factory to customers over the next few months and is looking to test the system out in the field during future government exercises, according to the company.
Our July/August issue also features coverage on CJADC2 with an article by Michael McFadden, CTO of Sigma Defense: “Software mobility: keeping the U.S. military’s strategic edge.”
McFadden writes that programs like CJADC2 rely heavily on data mobility and “while there is no question that being able to move data quickly and efficiently is essential to delivering information superiority, the DoD must also achieve software mobility to continue to dominate.”
McFadden says “simply, software mobility is the ability to freely move applications around the entire enterprise and run them wherever they need to run based on dynamic mission requirements. While data mobility means moving information toward software – a foundational concept of the ‘any sensor to any shooter’ objective of CJADC2 – software mobility turns that concept inside out, making it the software that moves toward the data or the user.”
Modernizing the DoD’s command-and-control (C2) systems to create such a network of sensors and systems will require faster acquisition of commercial technology from the tactical cloud to processor chip, which means much wider use of modular open systems approach (MOSA) strategies. Acquisition reform and MOSA are subjects we opine on often in this space, and they will be critical to solving the CJADC2 approach. CJADC2 won’t happen today, at the end of 2025, or even next year, but the tools are there if the DoD can get out of its own way and integrate AI and uncrewed systems more quickly.
Apparently DoD leadership agrees. A mid-July memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth titled “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance” states: “Drones are the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation, accounting for most of this year’s casualties in Ukraine.” He says he is “rescinding restrictive policies that hindered production and limited access to these vital technologies. I am delegating authorities to procure and operate drones from the bureaucracy to our warfighters.”
He adds that the DoD has approved hundreds of U.S.-made products for purchase by the DoD, aiming to arm combat units with a variety of low-cost drones made by American engineers and AI experts.
