The battlefield of tomorrow demands decision-making at machine speed, not human pace. Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) represents the Pentagon’s most ambitious attempt to transform how America fights wars—connecting sensors to shooters across every domain in real-time. After achieving its minimum viable capability in February 2024, CJADC2 moved from experimental demonstrations to operational deployment, with successful multinational exercises and major industry partnerships driving the initiative forward.
What is CJADC2? The Foundation of Future Warfare
What is CJADC2? At its core, CJADC2 is the military’s answer to adversaries who operate integrated kill chains across land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains simultaneously. The “Combined” designation emphasizes the critical role allies and coalition forces play in this strategy, bringing all military action and coordination under one umbrella. Traditional stovepipe systems that worked for previous conflicts become liabilities when facing enemies who coordinate multi-domain attacks faster than American forces can detect, process, and respond.
CJADC2 envisions a networked battlespace where sensors from any service automatically share data with decision-makers and weapon systems across all domains. A satellite detecting missile launches shares information instantaneously with naval air defense systems, ground-based interceptors, and cyber warfare units. This integration compresses the kill chain from minutes to seconds, providing decisive advantages against adversaries who still operate disconnected systems.
The concept extends beyond technical integration to operational transformation. CJADC2 requires cultural shifts where services prioritize joint effectiveness over individual domain superiority. Air Force satellites must serve Army ground units, Navy ships must support Space Force operations, and Marine Corps units must integrate with Coast Guard networks—all through seamless data sharing that legacy systems cannot support.
CJADC2 strategy emphasizes outcomes over platforms, focusing on effects delivered rather than systems deployed. This represents a fundamental departure from traditional acquisition approaches that prioritize individual service requirements over joint operational needs. Success metrics shift from platform performance to kill chain effectiveness, measuring how quickly the joint force can engage targets rather than how well individual systems perform in isolation.
From Promise to Reality: Major Milestones Achieved with CJADC2
In February 2024, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced that “the minimum viable capability for CJADC2 is real and ready now,” describing it as “low latency and extremely reliable.” This marked a critical transition from experimentation to operational deployment, fulfilling a challenge Hicks had issued to the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) in summer 2023.
The Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories (Open DAGIR) apparatus went live in summer 2024, designed to correct the informal tradition of stove piped Pentagon tech systems masterminded by a single contractor. Open DAGIR creates a multi-vendor ecosystem that lets DoD integrate industry solutions while retaining ownership of its data and allowing companies to develop applications using this data.
In December 2024, CDAO awarded Anduril Industries a $100 million production agreement under the Open DAGIR program to scale its tactical data mesh system, enabling low-latency data exchange across multiple networks, domains, and organizations. This contract represents the largest single investment in CJADC2 tactical infrastructure to date.
Joint Fires Network: Operational Automation
DOD officials worked steadily throughout 2024 to produce the first iteration of the Joint Fires Network (JFN), designed to bring automation into weapon targeting while maintaining human decision-making authority. JFN successfully linked participants in the multilateral Valiant Shield 2024 exercise, enabling real-time data sharing and coordinated battle decisions among U.S., Canadian, Japanese, and French forces.
INDOPACOM expects to receive a “combat-representative” Version 1.0 of JFN by early 2025, transitioning from experimental status to an enduring acquisition program of record. The fundamental problem that JFN solves is matching targets to the best available “shooters” — land-based missiles, strike jets, submarines, cyber attacks, and more — in complex, rapidly changing conflicts.
Commercial Innovation at Defense Scale
The private sector demonstrates daily that large-scale network integration is achievable within commercial timelines. Financial institutions process millions of transactions across global networks with sub-second response times. Technology companies coordinate data centers on multiple continents through automated management systems. These commercial precedents prove that CJADC2 technical requirements are solvable when approached with commercial methodologies.
CJADC2 strategy must embrace commercial technology cycles rather than traditional defense acquisition processes. Commercial companies deploy machine learning algorithms, cloud computing platforms, and network automation tools that defense organizations spend years evaluating. While adversaries leverage commercial innovations immediately, American forces wait for security certifications that take longer than entire commercial product lifecycles.
CDAO’s Open DAGIR acquisition model enables military programs to bring on new capabilities quickly from whoever can provide the best technology in the least time. Rather than developing proprietary military systems from scratch, defense organizations can adapt proven commercial platforms to meet specific operational needs. This approach reduces development time, leverages existing expertise, and provides access to continuous innovation cycles that proprietary systems cannot sustain.
Cloud computing platforms offer the scalability, redundancy, and global reach that CJADC2 demands. They provide standardized interfaces for data sharing, automated security updates, and the processing power necessary for real-time artificial intelligence applications. Commercial cloud providers invest billions annually in capabilities that individual military services cannot match through internal development.
International Integration and Zero Trust Security
In 2025, the Pentagon is ready to put CJADC2 to the test at sea with allied nations in a U.K.-led demonstration that will resolve how to make shared international military communications secure through zero trust security frameworks. The forthcoming demonstration will be conducted with nations including Norway, France, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand, incorporating lessons learned from Project Olympus 2024.
“We’ve historically looked at security as the antithesis for information sharing. The security folks come in and want to sort of clamp down. With zero trust and data centric security, they are security mechanisms, but they are enabling information sharing,” according to U.K. officials.
This represents a fundamental shift from perimeter-based security to credential verification at all access levels, enabling secure data sharing while maintaining operational security across multinational forces.
Adversary Countermeasures and Adaptive Responses
Sophisticated adversaries understand CJADC2 concepts and develop countermeasures that exploit integration vulnerabilities. They target communication nodes that enable data sharing, jam frequencies that support network operations, and conduct cyber-attacks against cloud platforms that provide processing power. The more integrated CJADC2 networks become, the more attractive they appear as high-value targets for enemy action.
Chinese and Russian military doctrine emphasizes disrupting American command and control systems as primary objectives in potential conflicts. They develop electronic warfare capabilities specifically designed to exploit CJADC2 dependencies on continuous communication and data processing. When networks become too complex to operate without constant connectivity, they become vulnerable to adversaries who can deny that connectivity through targeted attacks.
CJADC2 strategy must account for degraded network operations rather than assuming continuous connectivity. Systems must operate effectively when communication links fail, processing power becomes limited, and data sharing networks become compromised. This requires designing resilience into CJADC2 architecture rather than treating network failures as temporary inconveniences.
The solution lies in distributed processing capabilities that function independently when necessary while integrating seamlessly when connections permit. Anduril’s Lattice Mesh provides this functionality, enabling local decision-making that contributes to global situational awareness without depending on continuous network connectivity.
Mission-Driven Implementation Strategies
Mission drives outcomes, not technological elegance. CJADC2 success depends on delivering operational advantages to warfighters rather than demonstrating technical sophistication to acquisition officials. This requires prioritizing capabilities that enhance mission effectiveness over solutions that satisfy bureaucratic requirements.
The minimum viable capability represents “largely a connection of existing capabilities that we have today that have shared data in new ways — and have brought together a combination of new applications and new data services, with users, to create better workflows.”
CDAO’s Global Information Dominance Experiment (GIDE) series continues every 90 days to iteratively test, measure, optimize, and field CJADC2 solutions, building toward “the ultimate example” of CJADC2 by the end of 2025.
The key is identifying mission-critical bottlenecks where CJADC2 integration provides immediate operational advantages. Rather than attempting comprehensive network transformation simultaneously, military organizations can target specific kill chain segments where integration delivers measurable improvements in speed, accuracy, or effectiveness.
What is CJADC2 if not a practical solution to operational challenges? The concept succeeds when it enables faster target engagement, more accurate threat assessment, and better resource allocation. It fails when it creates additional complexity without delivering corresponding operational advantages.
The Path Forward: Scaling Success
CJADC2 requires embracing commercial innovation cycles while maintaining military operational standards. Rather than imposing a single universal data standard and mega-network, the military is moving toward a “federated” approach that allows different systems for different niches while making them all compatible.
Cloud-native architectures provide the foundation for scalable CJADC2 implementation. They enable rapid deployment of new capabilities, automatic security updates, and the global connectivity that multi-domain operations require. Rather than building proprietary networks from scratch, military organizations can leverage commercial cloud platforms designed for large-scale data processing and real-time analytics.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities developed for commercial applications can accelerate CJADC2 decision-making processes. Commercial algorithms that detect fraud, optimize logistics, and predict market trends can adapt to military applications for threat detection, resource allocation, and operational planning. The key is leveraging existing commercial intelligence rather than developing military-specific solutions that duplicate commercial capabilities.
CJADC2 strategy must prioritize interoperability standards that enable commercial technology integration rather than proprietary systems that resist change. Open architectures, common data formats, and standardized interfaces allow military organizations to adopt commercial innovations as they emerge rather than waiting for military-specific versions that arrive years later.
Measuring Success: Outcomes Over Outputs
CJADC2 success metrics must focus on operational effectiveness rather than technical compliance. JFN’s success at Valiant Shield demonstrated SAIC’s ability to enhance integrated decision-making in coalition operations, benefiting American warfighters and allies who can fight in better coordination to be more effective.
The upcoming worldwide joint activity will test how “a carrier strike group that the Brits are going to take and cross three different U.S. Combatant Commands and four different international partners” can maintain connectivity and operational effectiveness.
The ultimate measure of CJADC2 success is adversary behavior modification. When enemies change their tactics to account for integrated American kill chains, CJADC2 achieves its strategic objective of compelling adversary adaptation rather than allowing them to operate with impunity against stove piped American systems.
From Concept to Combat!
The CJADC2 journey has moved decisively from concept to operational reality. The minimum viable capability delivered in 2024 represents “low latency and extremely reliable” connectivity that enables faster decision-making across all domains. Major industry partnerships through Open DAGIR, the $100 million Anduril contract, the APFIT program award and the $19 million dollar contract given to CenCore by the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL) to build the first of its kind mobile Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs) at the TS/SCI level for the USMC’s Project 7/11, demonstrate sustained investment in tactical data sharing capabilities.
What is CJADC2? It’s America’s recognition that future warfare demands integration over isolation, speed over process, and outcomes over compliance. The successful deployment of JFN in multinational exercises and its transition to program-of-record status prove that CJADC2 capabilities work in operational environments, not just laboratory demonstrations.
Mission drives outcomes, and the mission demands CJADC2 capabilities that work in combat rather than demonstrations that impress in briefings. The “ultimate example” demonstration planned for end-2025 will test whether integrated kill chains can operate effectively across multiple combatant commands and international partners simultaneously.
America’s defense industrial base possesses the commercial technologies necessary for comprehensive CJADC2 implementation. The question is no longer whether the technology works—it’s whether military organizations can adapt quickly enough to maintain the technological superiority that underpins American security in an era of great power competition.
About CenCore
CenCore is a leading provider of cleared staffing solutions, advanced technology modular platforms and proximity-based services to the defense, enterprise business and intelligence communities. With deep expertise in supporting critical national security missions, CenCore connects top-tier cleared professionals with organizations driving innovation in defense technology, cybersecurity, and intelligence operations. Our commitment to excellence ensures that America’s most vital programs have access to the skilled workforce, and secure platforms in time and on-site to maintain technological superiority and operational readiness for the warfighter.
