The Joint Staff J-6 hosted its annual Command, Control, Communications and Computers, dubbed C4, Cyber Global Summit at the Pentagon last week, convening representatives from the 11 combatant commands, Defense Information Systems Agency, Office of the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, and Joint Staff to further efforts in enhancing the Joint Force’s C4/Cyber capabilities.
Designed to underscore recent guidance from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., to the Joint Staff, the summit included discussions that spanned from readiness of the joint force and risk mitigation to modernizing and aggressively leading with new concepts and approaches in preparation for the future.
Army Lt. Gen. David T. Isaacson, director for C4/Cyber and chief information officer for J-6, Joint Staff, emphasized the value of collaboration between the Joint Staff, combatant commands, military services and intelligence community in accelerating joint force C4/Cyber design and development. Largely focused on advocating for the warfighter, the Joint Staff aims to balance the needs of the readiness-focused combatant commands with requirements of the military services, which have a responsibility to organize, train and equip.
“As members of the Joint Staff, we assist the Chairman in accomplishing his global integration responsibilities,” Isaacson said. “Forums such as this one allow us to level set with the combatant commands and focus on things we can tackle collectively.
“Our adversaries are modernizing; they’re not defending their homelands differently than we,” he said. “They’re buying more capability, not less; they’re buying smaller capability, not larger; they’re going faster than ever before, not slower; and they’re maneuverable and not predictable. And because of this, we want to maximize our strategic partnerships and optimize capabilities that allow the joint force to defend, deter, modernize and prevail in conflict when necessary.”
The summit focused on the current and future state of C4/Cyber and aimed to support the development of advanced operating approaches, expedite the acquisition of innovative capabilities to address critical gaps, and position the joint force to maintain competitive advantages. Keynote speakers further stressed the need to provide agile, dependable, technologically advanced and combat-ready C4/Cyber capabilities to the joint force rapidly and on a large scale to build a resilient defense ecosystem and achieve global integration objectives.
