An infrared view of the CSIS simulated hypersonic glide body, displaying temperature differentials across the upper and lower sides. (CSIS Missile Defense Project)

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s official watchdog is turning its investigative attention to the military’s ability to defend against hypersonic threats, as well as where exactly the Department of Defense is in its pursuit of the global, next-generation uber-battle management system known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2).

The Defense Department Inspector General announced the reviews on July 8 and July 15, respectively, amid a flurry of other new review projects, including one covering US Cyber Command’s relationship with the National Security Agency and how well the Pentagon would maintain C2 in the event of a nuclear attack.

In a July 8 letter related to the hypersonics defense review, the DoD IG notified senior Pentagon officials and the director of the Missile Defense Agency that the “objective of the evaluation is to assess the DoD’s ability, using existing U.S. weapon systems, to defend against a hypersonic missile attack.” Beyond that, the letter is short on details. The IG had listed “hypersonics” as a topic in its fiscal 2024 “oversight plan,” [PDF] in a section dedicated to “Building enduring advantages for strategic competition.”

US officials have been concerned about the progress adversaries like Russia and China have purportedly made in their development of hypersonic missiles, the danger of which comes from its increased maneuverability at very high speeds that make the missiles hard to shoot down. The Missile Defense Agency has been rushing forward with plans for a Next-Generation Interceptor that’s meant to be able to take out the new threat with the aid of new space-based missile trackers being developed by the Space Force — so much so that some lawmakers have expressed concern the agency is moving too fast.

Simplified flight paths of traditional ballistic missiles, hypersonic boost-glide missiles, and hypersonic cruise missiles. (GAO graphic)

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The July 15 letter on CJADC2 — sent to senior military officials at the Pentagon, in each service and at three combatant commands — identifies the IG’s objective there as assessing “the effectiveness with which the DoD developed and implemented the [CJADC2] line of effort to modernize mission partner information sharing.”

Mollie Halpern, a spokesperson at the IG’s office, said that CJADC2 is a “DoD priority” and therefore was included in the agency’s oversight plans for 2024.

“The DoD OIG has not looked at the DoD JADC2 Strategy since it was published in 2022,” Halpern told Breaking Defense in an email, adding that the review will be “narrowly scoped” on the info-sharing aspect.

Information sharing is perhaps the key element of a program that at its most basic is meant to get the correct data from the right “sensors,” no matter what or where they are in the world, to the right “shooters,” no matter what or where they are in the world as quickly as possible so they can take action. The “Joint” part of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control refers to the ability to share between US military services, but the “Combined” part makes the mission that much more complicated as it means sharing between US and allied militaries.

Due to the sprawling nature of the initiative and the separate lines of effort on which the Army, Navy and Air Force have embarked, CJADC2 has sometimes been a challenge for even Pentagon officials to explain in any great detail.

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