Air Force deploys cloud-based C2 capability to all NORAD air defense sectors

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md — The Air Force has delivered its cloud-based command and control (CBC2) capability to all of the air defense sectors within the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), according to the official leading the effort.

The service began deploying CBC2 as a replacement for legacy command-and-control systems used in air defense missions in October 2023, beginning with NORAD’s Eastern air defense sector. The Air Force has since finished fielding the capability to all of the air defense sectors across the United States and Canada, Maj. Gen. Luke Cropsey, program executive officer for command, control, communications and battle management (C3BM), told reporters Wednesday at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference 

Now, Cropsey said he’s been tasked by Air Combat Command — the Air Force’s lead major command for C2 — to scale the capability from a tactical level up to the operational level.

“When you look at a DAF Battle Network, end-to-end perspective and you look at where and how you need to build out that resilient decision advantage, you quickly realize that the historical echelons that we’ve created between tactical, operational and strategic are getting blurred more and more as the speed and the scale of conflict accelerates,” he said.

CBC2 integrates hundreds of critical air defense radar and data feeds under a single cloud-based interface, allowing operators to develop courses of actions from which leaders can quickly make decisions. Multiple companies have been contracted for the effort, with Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) serving as the program’s prime integrator and operator.

The capability is a key component of the Air Force’s DAF Battle Network, which is the service’s contribution to the Pentagon-wide initiative known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2). The new warfighting concept seeks to connect the sensors and shooters from across the U.S. military and international partners under a single network, enabling faster and more effective decision-making and employment of forces.

Scaling CBC2 to the operational layer involves extending its core, cloud-based capabilities up into additional systems, such as those at air operations centers, controlled reporting centers and other elements of the Air Force’s larger command-and-control architecture, Cropsey said.

“When we start talking about what that looks like as we’re moving forward into the future, now we start talking about a common battle management interface capability that’s taking that core UI/UX that’s been built inside CBC2, and now starts to extend it into that operational layer,” he added.