The U.S. Air Force has concluded the second field test for the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) to assess the platform’s capacity to thwart adversarial threats through space and ground infrastructure.
The Air Force, along with the U.S. Northern Command and Space Command, conducted the on-ramp assessment from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3, the service branch said Thursday.
During the week-long exercise, operators used ABMS to ingest, analyze and transmit data across remote stations to simulate tactical operations across the air, ground, sea, space and cyber domains. The on-ramp exercise follows an initial assessment in December and saw participants from 70 industry teams and 65 government groups.
Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics and a 2020 Wash100 Award recipeint, said the test was meant to demonstrate “a dizzying array of information” that ABMS will synthesize in real-life operations.
“This compelled commanders and operators to trust data analytics and artificial intelligence to understand the battle,” he added.
Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations and a fellow 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said that maturing concepts such as ABMS and the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) is “necessary to fight and win in the information age.”
ABMS, which is based on an internet of things concept, is part of the broader JADC2 effort and a “top modernization priority” for the Air Force, the service noted.
