The military wants to improve cooperation between branches to help increase the United States’ tactical advantage on the battlefield. Through mutli-domain operations and building better command and control infrastructure, their goal is within reach. LTG Eric Wesley, director of the Futures and Concepts Center at Army Futures Command says that building interoperable weapons system data will allow for better decision-making and targeting across the military.
“One of the things that’s hindered us in the past is that a lot of these things are service stovepiped. We have weapons systems and capabilities that are unique to the service or unique to a weapons system. The challenge will be to pool all that data into a common database so that anyone can access it,” Wesley said. “Ultimately, we want to get away from these proprietary weapon systems or proprietary capabilities. It even goes to the national level. We want to have access to national assets. So at NRO, using our satellite capabilities, we want to be able to tap into that data and pull it into a common infrastructure. That’s why this is going to take awhile. This is a campaign.”
Wesley told Government Matters that it’s important for the people leading the Department of Defense to guide these implementation efforts, as they have unique insights into how each service can complement each other.
“In the past, we relied oftentimes on the separate services building their own concepts based on how they can optimize their own capabilities. As we’ve already asserted here, Multi-Domain Operations isn’t effective or capable if it doesn’t start at the top. We have a common view of how the battle will unfold, a common view of how the services will fight together.” Wesley said. “This initiative by OSD… to drive us to a joint concept is fundamental in operations for all of the services. Once you have an understanding of how you’re going to fight, then you can go create the command and control methodology on how to achieve that. It is really preeminent that we have that up front.”
