Air Force taps Cropsey to lead new information dominance center
Maj. Gen. Luke Cropsey has been chosen as the inaugural leader of the Air Force’s forthcoming Information Dominance Systems Center, according to a Wednesday announcement.
If his nomination is confirmed, he’ll pin on his third star and take charge of the new organization.
Cropsey has been leading the Department of the Air Force’s command, control, communications and battle management program executive office for the last two years, serving as the point person for DAF efforts related to the Pentagon’s top priority for how it will fight in the future: Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). That effort envisions how systems across the entire battlespace from all the U.S. military services and key international partners could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster.
The new Information Dominance Systems Center was created as part of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s so-called re-optimization for great power competition initiative, announced in February, that seeks several reforms and reorganizations to better posture the service to combat an advancing China.
The Air Force, much like the rest of the armed services, is still emerging from over 20 years of counterterror operations in the Middle East against a technologically inferior enemy. The advent of great power competition against more sophisticated actors such as Russia and China will require large shifts in organizations and capabilities.
The new center, which will be housed at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, will sit under Air Force Materiel Command and serve to elevate the service’s focus on C3BM to include specific disciplines of cyber, electronic warfare, information systems and enterprise digital infrastructure.
Four program executive offices will realign from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center to the new Information Dominance Systems Center to include C3BM, cyber and networks, electronic systems and business enterprise systems.
Moreover, the new three-star commander will also be dual-hatted as the Department of the Air Force’s command, control, communications and battle management program director.
Cropsey is primed to come to the new leadership role having served as the point person for the C3BM office, a position that Kendall has previously described as the “most difficult job I have ever given anybody.” In that capacity, he’s been responsible for developing the DAF Battle Network and combining several initiatives — to include the Advanced Battle Management System — for a more streamlined CJADC2 type of solution, by taking smaller, bite-sized chunks at a time in pursuit of transformation.
In September, the Air Force announced that it, through the C3BM office, was selected as the executive agent for Indo-Pacific Command’s Joint Fires Network, a prototyping effort that served as a battle management platform displaying real-time, fused, actionable threat information to joint and partner forces.
Cropsey’s nomination must be confirmed by the Senate.
