image shows a plane
image shows a plane

DIGITAL MODERNIZATION

Air Force Distributed Common Ground System Advances Global Joint Operations

OUR INDUSTRIES

Learn more about GDIT, Department of Defense practice.

For more than 20 years, GDIT has supported the United States Air Force Distributed Common Ground System (AF DCGS) and the decision makers who depend on it every day. This powerful weapon system is the only intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) system developed to scale to support Air Force and Joint operations globally. Importantly, it ensures weaponized and secured data gets to the right people at the right time.

AF DCGS is a strategic system that supports the Air Force globally. It not only manages sensitive data, but it also allows for the fusion of data from other weapon systems such as high-altitude and medium altitude ISR platforms to support rapid, and in most cases, real-time decision making. Its interoperability with other ISR-networked systems allows the Air Force to fully leverage its data assets to enhance U.S. and allied national security interests. The system is a critical element of what the Air Force calls the “sensing grid,” which enables agnostic sense-making – i.e., deriving intelligence that’s not oriented to a specific sensor or weapons system.

GDIT ensures that a total force integration of Airmen – across 27 geographically separated, networked operational sites globally – have access to the data and information they need to make decisions, mitigate threats, and anticipate surprises.

GDIT facilitates successful ISR missions daily and support more than 2,000 high-altitude missions every year with zero mission data loss. We help the AF DCGS operation centers to provide worldwide command and control and our support allows active-duty Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units to work as an integrated combat capability.

Andy Torelli

ISR Director, GDIT

Perhaps most important, GDIT enables Airmen to do what they do best – maintain their focus on the mission. Through government and commercial-partnered collaboration, we provide resilient and reliable data that Airmen need to develop analytics-based answers to hard questions. We help prioritize requests from analysis exploitation teams (AETs) and provide the system engineers that allow AF DCGS to integrate and interface with key projects involving artificial intelligence, autonomy, and automation.

Today, we are moving AF DCGS data from “dial-up to 5G” level of speed. Our focus on AF DCGS modernization, such as Open Architecture and Network Modernization, ensures GDIT is prepared to manage new improved IT capabilities to ensure current and future Airmen have decisive data for advantage in a contested and denied environment. Taken together, all of this maintains AF DCGS’s position as a major cornerstone for the Advanced Battle Management System – the Air Force’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept to connect sensors from all the military services.

GDIT’s decades of ISR experience in contested environments uniquely positions us to advance IT integration and transformation of the AF DCGS system with new AI, machine learning and digital engineering capabilities. This will further advance essential information sharing across multiple Department of Defense and Intelligence Community networks to support Joint operations and further accelerate sensor to shooter timelines. Additionally, the application of these technology solutions enables continually transformative results, such as the modernization of support for hundreds of classified servers, which has reduced manpower and cost.