US Area Power getting ready to decommission legacy command and management system

WASHINGTON — By the tip of this yr, the Area Power hopes to have absolutely transitioned from its legacy house catalog system to a modernized command and management functionality — a milestone years within the making.

The service is within the technique of decommissioning the Area Protection Operations Heart (SPADOC), which was fielded in 1979, and changing it with the brand new Area Command-and-Management (Area C2) system that may deliver collectively operational-level C2 capabilities into one built-in system. Together with creating an enterprise infrastructure, this system will ship purposes to decision-making hubs — just like the Nationwide Area Protection Heart, Mixed Area Operations Heart and the 18th Area Management Squadron – that may assist course of knowledge from ground- and space-based sensors.

The Area C2 program follows a collection of SPADOC modernization makes an attempt courting again to the Nineteen Eighties. Whereas upgrades have been fielded, most haven’t delivered as promised and have struggled to remain on schedule and inside their authentic price range. The latest effort, the Joint Area Operations Heart Missions System (JMS), set out in 2009 as an incremental alternative for SPADOC. Solely certainly one of three increments was in the end fielded, and in 2018 the Air Power stopped improvement on this system, which was three years not on time and about $139 million over price range.

Col. Rhet Turnbull, director of the Cross Mission Floor and Communication Enterprise at Area Techniques Command, informed C4ISRNET in a current interview the Area C2 program has been making good progress and has, up to now, delivered 11 purposes to U.S. and allied coalition operations facilities.

Within the final yr, this system has additionally delivered key capabilities to allow the transfer away from SPADOC. Nonetheless, Turnbull mentioned the end-of-year goal to decommission the system is “an aggressive schedule” and is essentially contingent on the well timed fielding of a brand new Superior Monitoring and Launch Evaluation System (ATLAS) and connecting it with the service’s numerous house area consciousness sensors, together with people who make up the Area Surveillance Community.

“In the present day, the Area Surveillance Community, in addition to another sensor sources, feed knowledge into SPADOC and SPADOC processes that knowledge to supply the house catalog,” he mentioned. “We have to feed those self same knowledge connections into ATLAS in order that ATLAS can do that very same job.”

Turnbull mentioned the staff has had success making these knowledge connections, partly as a result of an software referred to as Warp Core, which connects the Area Power’s Unified Knowledge Library to the house area consciousness purposes, permitting customers to get the info they want on the applicable classification stage. Fielding Warp Core, which was developed by Palantir, allowed this system workplace to totally shut out the remaining JMS capabilities in late January.

This system can also be on its strategy to delivering the primary ATLAS minimal viable functionality in September, which can permit the system to obtain, course of and analyze sensor commentary knowledge and use it for house area consciousness. L3Harris is the prime contractor and lead integrator for ATLAS and in January was awarded a $49.7 million process order to develop and combine the suite of command and management instruments that may allow the SPADOC decommissioning.

The primary ATLAS functionality not too long ago moved via what Turnbull referred to as a “soak interval,” throughout which this system observes the software program in motion to ensure it’s working as designed. He famous that the preliminary software is essentially the most troublesome element of ATLAS. As soon as it’s accomplished, this system will ship further ATLAS capabilities within the coming months.

Whereas this yr’s focus is on delivering the minimal necessities wanted to exchange SPADOC with the core Area C2 and house area consciousness capabilities that come via ATLAS, this system will proceed to construct on the ATLAS purposes as soon as that’s completed. Turnbull mentioned this system has a roadmap that broadly lays out long-term Area C2 functionality wants and might be knowledgeable by operator suggestions and rising necessities.

“We’ll proceed to get suggestions and that may then go right into a prioritization course of,” Turnbull mentioned. “We now have a strategy to evolve with the software program, to evolve with operator necessities. And we now have a course of that’s agile and nimble sufficient that as we uncover what these new necessities are, we’re capable of shift this system and ship these capabilities.”

That suggestions course of is a function of this system’s designation as a pathfinder for DoD’s software program acquisition pathway — certainly one of six tailor-made acquisition choices created in 2020 as a part of a serious reform to the division’s acquisition system.

“It’s been form of a two-way avenue the place the acquisition technique is knowledgeable by the pathway, but additionally among the lessons-learned we had over the previous couple of years as we developed this system, we fed that into the software program acquisition pathway to change into a part of the method,” he mentioned.

Turnbull mentioned the largest lesson this system discovered from JMS is the significance of “strong” person suggestions. Beneath the pathway, this system is on a schedule to ship new capabilities each 90 days, acquire suggestions on these deliveries after which make changes primarily based on the suggestions. This course of, he mentioned, implies that any operationally accepted functionality has been examined by a person.

“We wish to have the ability to incorporate that suggestions after which reply very, in a short time,” he mentioned. “We don’t wish to go on creating for a very long time solely to seek out out we had been creating one thing that customers didn’t really need.”

Area C2 customers embody worldwide companions, and Turnbull mentioned this system works to ensure the capabilities it delivers might be built-in into coalition house operations facilities, which suggests they want to have the ability to work throughout a number of classification ranges. Turnbull mentioned Area C2 purposes are utilized in operation facilities in the UK, Canada and Australia.