DISA moving out on Mission Network-as-a-Service effort in 2026

This year, the Defense Information Systems Agency will prioritize an effort to unify all of the combatant commands’ networks worldwide into a single, cloud-based platform to improve security and interoperability.

The Mission Network-as-a-Service program aims to break down disparate, geographically-siloed networks used by individual COCOMs into a unified network known as Combatant Command Net (COCOMNet). The effort was first teased by the Pentagon’s chief information office in September, and will remain one of DISA’s main IT modernization focuses throughout 2026, according to DISA Deputy Director Chris Barnhurst.

“We want to provide on-demand network services. We want a standard security baseline based on a zero-trust architecture — in our heads that’s our Thunderdome architecture for zero-trust network access. And we want global reach with local mission agility,” Barnhurst said Thursday during a speech at an event hosted by AFCEA.

Under the Defense Department’s current network architecture, users are segregated by geographic location and unable to see the entire environment — making data sharing and command-and-control between different combatant commands inefficient.

The Pentagon envisions COCOMNet as a cloud-based secret fabric with federalized transport that transcends geographical siloes — meaning personnel at any specific combatant command could have access to any network across the globe.

“Combatant commanders need to be able to communicate globally. So what they plug into, it’s got to work and it’s got to be able to get data across different regions of the world,” Barnhurst said.

The network would follow zero-trust cybersecurity standards and be supported by a federated identity, credential and access management (ICAM) capability that will manage user identities and keep track of credentials needed to access specific parts of the unified network.

A key challenge, however, will be making sure that collapsing disparate networks does not prevent combatant commands from executing on their respective local mission requirements, Barnhurst noted. DISA plans to take lessons learned from its ongoing migration to DODNet — a similar unified network for defense agencies — as it works through the problem.

“In the defense agency world as we deliver DODNet … they have certain mission applications that they need to be able to access through their common IT,” Barnhurst said. “So locally, we have to make sure that even though we have a standard architecture and baseline that we’re delivering in DODNet to all of those components, we’ve got to have little tweaks in the agility and the ability to let them do their mission with their mission apps in a secure way.”

Overall, COCOMNet could prove to be a key component to the Pentagon-wide effort known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2). The new warfighting concept aims to connect sensors and weapons from across the U.S. military under a single network, enabling rapid data transfer between commanders and their systems.

Barnhurst noted that the Mission Network-as-a-Service program will require tight collaboration with combatant commands and service CIOs, as well as industry.

“We’ve got to work with the commands themselves and put this in priority order and start to execute on those changes over the next 12 months,” he said.