ABMS

ABMS, the Advanced Battle Management System, is the US Air Force’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) effort — a programme to link sensors, shooters and command nodes across the services into a single, cloud-connected fighting network. It was launched in 2019 under then-Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett and Chief of Staff David Goldfein, and initially pitched as the replacement path for legacy battle-management platforms such as the E-8 Joint STARS ground-surveillance aircraft — the intent being to move those functions off dedicated airframes and onto a distributed mesh of satellites, aircraft, ground nodes and commercial cloud.

Technically ABMS is less a single product than an architecture. Its first chief architect, Preston Dunlap, publicly described it as an “internet of things” for warfighting. The programme’s public demonstrations, a series of “onramp” exercises run from 2019 through 2021, tested pieces of that architecture: passing sensor data from an F-35 or an unmanned aircraft into a cloud backbone, running fusion and target-recommendation software in that cloud, and cueing tracks back down to shooters. The software layer, according to Air Force briefings, draws on commercial cloud infrastructure from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, with development handled by service software factories including Kessel Run and Platform One. Kubernetes -based containerised microservices and open messaging standards feature heavily in the public architecture material; specific model and algorithm details remain undisclosed.

Contracts have flowed to a wide industry base rather than a single prime. In 2020 the Air Force awarded ABMS “digital infrastructure” indefinite-delivery contracts to a pool that included Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon alongside dozens of smaller firms, under a $950 million ceiling reported by Defense News. Northrop Grumman was subsequently selected to build the Battle Management Command, Control and Communications (BMC3) core, tying ABMS to the ground segment of the Space Development Agency’s proliferated satellite constellation.

Congressional reception has been mixed. Lawmakers cut ABMS research funding in the fiscal 2021 defence bill, citing unclear objectives and few measurable deliverables, and the programme was subsequently restructured — narrowed around specific “capability releases” and folded into a broader Battle Management Command and Control portfolio under Air Combat Command. The underlying ambition, connecting the Air Force’s sensors and shooters into a single decision network, remains the service’s principal contribution to JADC2 and its most-watched software programme.