Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey Chosen to Lead New Air Force Office

Andrew Hunter, a U.S. Air Force service acquisition executive, has appointed Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey to lead the Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management office as its first integrating program executive officer. Cropsey will report to Hunter and Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary for space integration, and will oversee C3BM program integration throughout the Air Force, contributing to service-wide efforts to support Joint All-Domain Command and Control.

As part of the service’s JADC2 efforts, Cropsey will also handle the Advanced Battle Management System, a disaggregated sensor network facilitated by artificial intelligence.

According to Hunter, a past Potomac Officers Club speaker, Cropsey will be responsible for establishing an organizational path to address systems engineering obstacles to C3BM integration, adding that the new PEO is well-qualified to spearhead Air Force modernization and integration initiatives. To that end, Hunter is preparing to announce a new chief of engineering who will serve under Cropsey and is reallocating resources from the Air Force chief architect’s office to the C3BM office, the Air Force said.

Frank Kendall, secretary of the Air Force, said that the service needs to implement a C3BM architecture that enables more resilient battle management and the decentralization of C3BM, minimizing individual weak points for the system. Kendall, a three-time Wash100 awardee and former POC speaker, underlined the complexity of current pacing challenges.