DOD looks to move beyond ‘fragmented’ CJADC2 deployments with $2B budget request

Tucked into the Pentagon’s budget materials for fiscal 2027 is a request for more than $2 billion to purchase command-and-control technology licenses and engineering support for the U.S. combatant commands, Joint Staff and National Guard Bureau. That total includes more than $1.5 billion to expand defense users’ access to Palantir’s Maven Smart System in support of the Defense Department’s “Joint Force AI-Enabled Headquarters initiative” and $60 million for the “Virtual Joint Operations Center (VJOC) initiative.” Little has been disclosed publicly about those two efforts to date, and a Pentagon spokesperson declined to share more information about them with DefenseScoop this week. However, the budget documents indicate that the department is looking to swiftly consolidate “software-centric C2 onto a single pane of glass” over the next fiscal year. The DOD’s foundational concept for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which broadly involves breaking down long-standing boundaries between the military services to enable a unified network where all sensors and shooters can seamlessly connect, started to take clear shape in the early 2020s.

A House subcommittee will hold an open hearing next week on how frontier artificial intelligence models are shaping the cybersecurity landscape, for good and for ill. The June 4 hearing will be the second the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection has held that was focused at least in part on the subject, following a similar hearing held in December. But unlike at that joint subcommittee hearing, where members also examined other emerging technologies, AI takes center stage next week. It caps a series of closed-door meetings of the Homeland panel where members and staff have been evaluating the intersection of AI and cyber.

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