On August 29, SAIC announced that it contributed to the success of Valiant Shield 2024, a multilateral military exercise led by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) in June that tested the Joint Fires Network (JFN) with Canadian, Japanese and French partners in the western Pacific Ocean. JFN, for which SAIC serves as the lead system integrator, is a battle management system connecting the information systems and networks of USINDOPACOM, the intelligence community and partner forces, designed to enhance data-sharing and decision-making in neutralizing threats.
JFN is serving as a pathfinder for the Department of Defense’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) effort to speed dynamic decision-making by digitally connecting its armed services, combatant commands and partners. From June 7 to 18, a U.S. joint force, consisting of the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group, along with Air Force, Marine Corps and Army units, combined with counterparts from the Royal Canadian Navy, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and French Navy to conduct an exercise in the South China Sea and Philippine Sea that validated JFN-based integration of operations and C2 processes.
The CJADC2 strategy entails linking all combined and joint force participants, working across battle domains that include sea, subsurface, air and land, in a singular communications network that combines intelligence and operational data across all C2 levels of warfare. This interconnection will more effectively allow participants to contribute to a shared common operating picture and coordinate joint fires and effects, closing the so-called kill chain. JFN and other CJADC2 solutions in development will fuse and transport tactical, operational and intelligence data of different classifications over one network, allowing commanders to access and disseminate data necessary for effective C2 to the tactical edge in various domains.
In the Valiant Shield exercise, JFN successfully connected live data feeds from the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to USINDOPACOM. The Air Force’s Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management was able to patch in its software-defined wide area network for advanced communications capabilities over multiple data transport paths.
The JFN network’s nodes integrated and operated seamlessly, transporting tactical data to and from nodes operated by Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and Army units with zero downtime. The system was said to perform exceptionally well on naval vessels, transmitting real-time tactical data reliably and at a high level of quality.
Source: SAIC
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