Despite years of effort from the military services towards achieving the Pentagon’s vision of an all-seeing, all-connected battle network, the situation within the Marine Corps is currently described as “very aspirational at best,” according to a senior Marine officer.
Brig. Gen. William Wilburn, Jr., Deputy Director for Combat Support, expressed concerns during a panel at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance summit, stating, “Within our own service, if we’re trying to get unit A to talk to unit B in the same organization, sometimes we struggle. When we have a joint exercise and we bring in a different service, the shortcomings are even more glaring. … It’s going to be even harder when we’re trying to talk to our coalition partners.”
Wilburn acknowledged that while the Marine Corps has made strides towards achieving their communication goals, the focus initially has been on ensuring effective communication within the organization itself. Currently, the Marine Corps does not have a public-facing role contributing to what the Pentagon refers to as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2). This contrasts with the progress made by the Army’s Project Convergence, the Navy’s Project Overmatch, and the Air Force’s DAF Battle Network. However, Wilburn indicated to Breaking Defense that the Marines are actively working on CJADC2 initiatives internally and learning from experiences shared with other services.
“The next big step is hopefully among the naval services, we’ll be able to talk, communicate, and sense together, and then we’ll expand out,” Wilburn added. “But we have to be very honest about the trajectory and how long it’s going to take to get there and the level of investment, because it’s going to cost quite a bit.”
Emphasizing that his remarks reflected his personal opinion, Wilburn aimed to illustrate the complexities associated with CJADC2 to an audience of military and intelligence officials, along with industry representatives.
CJADC2 aims to quickly connect any “sensor” to any “shooter” from anywhere in the world or in space among US services and, eventually, to international partners. Officials recognize that achieving this goal is an immensely ambitious endeavor, with some lawmakers suggesting that the Pentagon might need to scale back its aspirations.
Among the active CJADC2 experiments is the Army’s annual Project Convergence, which has included Marine assets previously. Andrew Evans, Director of the Army ISR Task Force, highlighted a significant challenge faced during their CJADC2 trials: integrating new systems with legacy systems.
“One of the challenge areas that we’re seeing is, we know we’re not going to go fight with all modernized kit,” Evans explained. “That would be great if we could simply architect the interfaces and data standards to be seamless across all services. But we’re looking at a combination of modernized and legacy equipment, and making it all connect seamlessly is extraordinarily difficult.”
He recognized the journey ahead as “complicated” for all services but expressed a strong commitment to achieving success, noting that failure to do so could lead to being overmatched. Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, Space Force intelligence chief and another panelist, pointed out that within the Pentagon, efforts are underway to streamline data sharing between services, a critical step for CJADC2’s success that often goes unnoticed.
In contrast, the Navy has remained largely secretive about its work on Project Overmatch. Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, acknowledged the focus on “resilient networks” and “resilient kill webs,” critical for decision-making support in operational scenarios.
“We don’t tend to talk too much about the details of it, but we are concentrating on closing in a denied environment while still being able to sense and support long-range fires,” he concluded.
