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The United States' Central Command (CENTCOM) has highlighted Airspace Command and Control (AC2) as an area where national ISAF, and NATO systems can deliver enhanced benefits to forces in the Afghanistan theater of war through leveraging a new CENTRIXS-ISAF (CX-I) Afghanistan Mission Network (AMN). There is a need to streamline AC2 procedures and find the right mix of battle command systems to most effectively and efficiently perform AC2 planning and execution in a coalition environment on CX-I/AMN. The Coalition Attack Guidance Experiment (CAGE), conducted in May 2010, took the constructs developed by a CENTCOM Operational Planning Team AC2 Working Group and experimented with solutions that can have a direct positive operational effect in the near term; CAGE also focused on future capabilities and potential solutions. This manuscript will identify how CAGE contributed to evolving coalition AC2 operations toward Dynamic Airspace Management - a mission-execution centric approach - versus today's planning-centric processes. The efficacy of the U.S. Army's Tactical Airspace Integration System (TAIS) Dynamic Airspace Collaboration Tool (DACT), as demonstrated during CAGE, will be analyzed as one tool available today to improve coalition AC2 processes on CX-I/AMN., Special Issue: Integrating Air, Land and Sea Operations: C2 Teams and their Technologies.

The 1993 policy to promote the consolidation of the United States defense industry began a series of acquisitions and mergers that went beyond the intent of the policy and left the Department of Defense (DoD) in a monopolistic environment. This sweeping reform produced unintended consequences that remain in the market today. There are essentially five major defense contractors who wield tremendous power. These companies account for nearly 70% of defense product sales annually. Defense consolidation has diminished the flexibility required for surge capacity, diminished competitive innovations in products, and reduced competitive pricing based on multiple sources for products. Research indicates that the defense acquisition system can be analyzed on a three part strategic framework comprised of the military, the economy and politics. An understanding of the interrelationship of these three components within the context of the strategic framework can not only provide us insight into how the system will behave given certain inputs, it can also help us to shape the future acquisition system. Recommendations are provided to adjust the current DoD acquisition strategy in order to increase both the effectiveness and efficiency of the defense acquisition system.