An official website of the United States government
Here's how you know
A .mil website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
A lock (lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

New Hanscom team developing roadmap for ABMS

  • Published
  • By K. Houston Waters
  • 66 Air Base Group Public Affairs

HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. – A small Hanscom team is working with Air Force and Space Force acquisition directorates to leverage current programs of record for use in the Advanced Battle Management System, or ABMS.

In summer 2021, the Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, headquartered in Washington D.C., stood up the ABMS Program Executive Office Integration Team here. Previously, in November 2020, the Air and Space Force’s acquisition chief, then Dr. Will Roper, named the RCO as the ABMS Integrating Program Executive Office. 

ABMS is the Department of the Air Force’s contribution to Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2, which is a Department of Defense effort to digitally connect all elements of the U.S. military across all five warfighting domains: air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace.

“As the integrating PEO for ABMS, the RCO is committed to collaborating with multiple PEOs across the Air and Space Force, and to utilizing enterprise solutions as the foundation of ABMS,” said Randall Walden, director, RCO. “To that end, this new team is dedicated to bringing together subject matter experts and key stakeholders to build partnerships with program managers across the Air and Space Forces.”

According to Col. Brian Vesey, chief, ABMS PEO Integration Team, the mission of this new team is to develop and maintain an integration roadmap, which will serve as a collaborative tool to align requirements and integration schedules with partner programs. Their work will also enable the RCO to deliver modernized operational capability to joint and coalition warfighters.

“Our office will partner with acquisition program managers and leverage their developed capabilities to the fullest extent for use in ABMS,” he said. “The vast number of command and control and battle management command and control programs managed at Hanscom make it the best location for our main office. Operating here allows us to interface regularly with senior materiel leaders and their teams in the Digital Directorate and the Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence and Networks Directorate.”

The RCO is also closely collaborating with other Air Force Life Cycle Management Center directorates headquartered at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Both the Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Directorate and Mobility and Training Aircraft Directorate are key partners in enabling the delivery of ABMS Capability Release #1, or CR1, said Walden.

CR1 is an airborne edge node that connects select tactical air assets and command and control functions to the ABMS cloud at the tactical edge, enhancing situational awareness and decision making at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels.

Additionally, the Architecture and Integration Directorate, also headquartered at Wright-Patterson, provides personnel and physical infrastructure to support the ABMS program.

The RCO is also working with several program offices from Space Systems Command, headquartered at Los Angeles Space Force Base, California. The Space Force will contribute awareness and effects-based data to the secure cloud environment that underpins ABMS, said Vesey.

Earlier this month, the ABMS PEO Integration Team began bringing acquisition professionals together for working group discussions on topics like connectivity, digital engineering, secure processing, and data management.

Members of the ABMS PEO Integration Team include personnel from the RCO and AFLCMC, with subject matter experts in systems integration, test, security, and other areas, as well as program managers and engineers who operate out of Hanscom and other key acquisition sites.