The Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office and the Navy Strategic Systems Programs conducted the highly anticipated test Thursday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, according to the Defense Department. The event marks the first live-fire test for the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) — also known as Dark Eagle — with a battery operations center and transporter erector launcher.

“This test builds on several flight tests in which the Common Hypersonic Glide Body achieved hypersonic speed at target distances and demonstrates that we can put this capability in the hands of the warfighter,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement.

The event also marked the second successful end-to-end flight test of the AUR in 2024, according to the Pentagon.

The Common Hypersonic Glide Body is a collaboration effort between the Army and the Navy to develop and field a hypersonic missile for each service. The Army intends to integrate the system into ground launchers for Dark Eagle, while the sea service plans to integrate it into a ship-launched hypersonic capability called Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS). 

As adversaries like China and Russia tout their own advancements in hypersonic missiles, the U.S. military has raced to field systems of their own and will soon move into the next phase of development — dubbed “hypersonics 2.0 and 3.0.” The high-speed weapons are able to maneuver through the atmosphere at speeds of Mach 5 or greater, making it difficult for enemy air defenses to detect and defeat them.

The successful AUR test for the Common Hypersonic Glide Vehicle comes after a series of prior aborted and failed events that have delayed fielding for both hypersonic weapons. The services previously called off tests due to problems with the system’s launcher, after which the Army and Navy revised their testing plans and schedule. 

Following a successful end-to-end flight test in June, Army acquisition chief Doug Bush told reporters on multiple occasions that the services would conduct one more key AUR test before the end of 2024 in order to decide whether to field the system next year.

The Army has already delivered the first LRHW capability — without the all-up rounds — to the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force, 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade unit at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. Meanwhile, the Navy is planning to field CPS aboard Zumwalt-class guided-missile destroyers and Virginia-class attack submarines in the next few years.

Data collected from the recent test will support plans to deliver the common hypersonic AUR for both ground- and sea-based fielding, according to a Pentagon news release. The Defense Department declined to provide any additional details regarding fielding timelines and expectations for both programs.

“This test marks an important milestone in the development of one of our most advanced weapons systems,” Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said in a statement. “As we approach the first delivery of this capability to our Army partners, we will continue to press forward to integrate Conventional Prompt Strike into our Navy surface and subsurface ships to help ensure we remain the world’s preeminent fighting force.”

Leidos is the prime contractor for the Common Hypersonic Glide Body, while Lockheed Martin serves as the prime contractor for both the Army’s LRHW and the Navy’s CPS.

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Members of a House Armed Services subcommittee are proposing that the Army establish a Drone Corps, and it included a provision in its mark for the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill that would mandate its creation.

“For us, this is a capability that’s going to be, I think, resident in every formation at every echelon. So … we see this as integrated into our formation, not some separate piece. And I think we need that kind of flexibility. We’re actually doing that right now with our formations … We selected three units to kind of work this out and start to transform in contact and doing this. But I don’t think it would be helpful to have a separate drone branch,” Gen. Randy George said Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Defense hearing.

George isn’t the only senior Army leader to throw cold water on the idea of a Drone Corps. Last week, Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo also suggested it would be counterproductive.

The service is rebalancing its aviation portfolio and pursuing next-generation drones. That includes a so-called Launched Effects family of systems and future tactical unmanned aircraft systems.

UAS, counter-drone weapons and electronic warfare tools are also key elements of George’s “transforming in contact” concept.

The Army is looking across the industrial base at technologies that are out there, with an eye toward having flexibility with platforms, payloads and other components.

“There’s a lot of great small companies out there that are really moving quickly with unmanned systems. And what we’re trying to do is build a modular open system architecture where we can put different systems and sensors on them. And I think that we will be able to adapt to that rate of change … if we take that model,” George said.

Drones have been featured prominently in the Ukraine-Russia war and in conflicts in the Middle East in recent years, including one-way attack drones. The U.S. military is pursuing new tools to defeat those types of weapons.

When it comes to force structure growth, counter-UAS batteries are a top need for the Army, George noted.

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said officials have been reassessing the total minimum requirements for munitions such as the Coyote interceptor.

“I think there’s a general recognition that, given what we’re seeing in Ukraine, that we need to increase our stockpiles of munitions and counter-UAS capabilities. So, we are working on that right now. I think Gen. George and I both believe that we need to invest more in counter-UAS capabilities, which is why you see some of that on his unfunded priority list,” Wormuth told lawmakers at Tuesday’s hearing.

The service is trying to push additional capabilities into the field to protect U.S. troops.

“We are basically taking everything that we have available and putting it in the Middle East … We actually have soldiers that are on the systems, the developers and the testers that are all right there. And we have our directed energy that’s over [there]. We just directed that high-power microwave system that we’re doing is going to go over there immediately because I think we have to spin this a whole bunch faster,” George said.

He made a pitch for lawmakers to give the Army more flexibility with funding, noting that threats and technologies evolve quickly and continuing resolutions have hampered the service’s ability to adapt quickly.

“I think flexible funding — and I know sometimes that can be a bad word — but within counter-UAS, UAS and EW portfolios would really help us. The battlefield is changing very, very rapidly, and I’m talking days and weeks — sometimes you’re lucky to get, you know, things changing in a month. But as it changes, we need to be able to, you know, go back to — we have the best industry in the world — to go back and say, ‘Hey, we need to change this, we need to up the quantity,’” George told lawmakers.

“I think we have to be more flexible in our funding approach so that when we have something that’s research is working well and we know we need to procure more of those systems … that we wouldn’t have to wait,” he added. “We could come over and notify the committee and then, you know, do a certain wait period and then go ahead and do that. And we would love to work with you on that. But I think we have to turn the wheel a lot faster on counter-UAS.”

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The far-reaching policy — which addresses requirements, testing, procurement, sustainment and personnel — immediately went into effect, and it comes amid a broader push for accelerating digital modernization across the U.S. military.

“We’re learning from current conflicts — including in Ukraine — that the Army’s success on future battlefields will depend on our ability to rapidly update software and disseminate it to the operational force,” Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement. “Software development must be a source of our military advantage and the Army’s new software policy will ensure we have the right processes in place to inject innovation quickly and achieve a digital transformation of our warfighting capabilities.”

Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo added that traditional approaches aren’t up to snuff.

“This policy represents a significant effort to comprehensively adjust our legacy software development processes in line with private sector best practices,” he said in a statement.

According to a release summarizing major elements of the new directive, software-based systems “will no longer follow the traditional process in which a system transitions to sustainment once development is complete. In line with industry best practices, these systems will instead plan for continuous improvement and development over the entirety of the lifecycle. This change recognizes that modern software development is never complete.”

The policy also calls for maximizing use of the Pentagon’s software acquisition pathway — which was instituted in 2020 by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord — flexible strategies such as “modular contracting,” and contract types that allow for “refinement of the requirements as the software evolves and user needs change.”

Soldiers are expected to have major input in the development of those requirements, which are to be written as “high level needs statements” rather than “prescriptive requirements documents.”

The Army intends to streamline testing of new capabilities and cybersecurity validation processes, including for obtaining authority to operate on the service’s networks.

Meanwhile, the service is looking to boost its organic software development know-how and make it more widely available across the department.

To that end, the Army is standing up a new Digital Capabilities Contracting Center of Excellence at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, that is expected to be fully operational in September.

According to a release issued last year by the program executive office for enterprise information systems, the new center of excellence is expected to serve as a model for agile procurement of digital tools and be tasked with “sharing playbooks” on best contracting practices with other contracting organizations.

Additionally, a new “software management and response team” at Army headquarters will aid enterprise-wide efforts.

The Army also has a software factory in Austin, Texas, which is a pilot effort that allows soldiers to train other soldiers in coding.

The service will explore additional ways to recruit, retain and upskill people with software talent, according to the policy announcement.

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“I do think that we have a number of areas that would be right for Replicator, and that would include [unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs] of all sizes,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told DefenseScoop Monday during a press briefing at the annual AUSA conference. 

First unveiled by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks in August, Replicator is meant to help the U.S. offset China’s recently intensifying efforts to bolster its military, while simultaneously accelerating the Defense Department’s capacity to unleash American-made drones at-scale for operations in the next 18 to 24 months. 

However, details regarding exactly how the Pentagon will fund and facilitate this new initiative — and how the individual services and contractors will support it — have largely remained sparse since Replicator was announced. Senior officials have expressly stated their intent to keep those associated plans mostly close to the chest to prevent China from being fully informed on the pursuit.

“[Replicator] is a fairly new initiative that the deputy secretary has just announced — so we’re still exploring how the Army can fit into that,” Wormuth said during Monday’s briefing. 

In response to DefenseScoop’s questions, the secretary hinted at some of the service’s existing uncrewed capabilities that could make sense to underpin Replicator. 

“Using [drones] as sensors and as deliverers of payloads, and then also defending against them, is key on the battlefield — so, UAVs of all sizes. I think, also, some of the loitering munitions that we have could be candidates for Replicator. And then, finally, perhaps some of our ground robots. But we’re still in dialogue with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] on that,” she said. 

Relatedly, Wormuth also articulated her desire to deliberately “emphasize the theme of the need for the Army to innovate and transform,” during this year’s conference. That theme was threaded throughout her morning keynote to kick off the three-day event.

For example, Wormuth confirmed that this year the Army “started fielding our first robots outside of the” explosive ordnance disposal community for the first time. Separately, the service has also recently launched a new integrated formations effort, she noted, to ultimately bring robotic systems into units alongside humans — “with the goal of always having robots, not soldiers, make first contact with the enemy.”

“New systems and technologies — paired with a robust digital transformation, incorporation of autonomy, [artificial intelligence], machine learning and advanced computing — will all contribute to the transformation of today’s force into the Army of the future,” Wormuth said. 

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While the MDTF was created, in part, to provide the Army long-range fires capabilities, the service’s secretary said their non-kinetic weapons are sometimes overlooked and can be an important facilitator. In U.S. military parlance, the term “kinetic” generally refers to missiles or other traditional types of weapon systems that physically engage targets, whereas non-kinetic tools can include cyber, electronic warfare and other means of attack.

“What I think is starting to come together, from what I saw, is the possibility of using the non-kinetic effects to be able to sort of open up windows in time in a very anti-access, area-denial environment where we can then use kinetic fires. That was sort of a connection that I hadn’t seen us make up until recently,” Christine Wormuth said Tuesday during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, describing observations from this summer’s Talisman Sabre exercise. “There’s a tendency to focus on the fires function of the Multi-Domain Task Force — thinking about the battalion that will have [the Precision Strike Missile], for example, or the long-range hypersonic weapon. And I think sometimes that comes at the expense of the non-kinetic capabilities that the Multi-Domain Task Force has.”

The MDTF was created in 2017. There are now three in existence with one focused on Europe and two on the Pacific. The organization was designed to be in constant contact with adversaries during the so-called competition phase of conflict. It is capable of deep sensing and long-range precision fires and focused primarily on the strategic level.

The task force has a non-kinetic unit that possesses cyber, electronic warfare, information and space capabilities. It was formerly called the I2CEWS because it included intelligence, information, cyber, electronic warfare and space capabilities and personnel. It’s now known as the Multi-Domain Effects Battalion.

Wormuth noted that these non-kinetic capabilities can help obscure friendly units.

“What I am talking about is, speaking of sensing, for example, so obviously, if an adversary is out there trying to sense where we are to presumably target us, for example — if we are able to use cyber capabilities or EW capabilities or space capabilities, for example, or some combination to be able to block that view of what we’re doing, that can then open up a window in time for us to launch a kinetic effect,” she said. “That’s, I think, what we’re trying to get to. Given how contested the environment is going to be, we can’t assume that we’re going to have an open window all the time. We have to find ways to open those windows so that we can bring our fires capability.”

Previously, officials have noted that the MDTF will play a key role for the joint force when it comes to targeting — both with kinetic and non-kinetic weapons – by using its deep sensing capabilities, which can also extend into kinetic and non-kinetic spaces.

For example, long-range electronic warfare and sensing capabilities can help cue forces to be able to locate enemy assets.

“The Multi-Domain Task Force is the task force that is going to continue to do the target development for the joint force. And it’s going to be able to fuse together information at speeds and then be able to share that with other joint assets and other joint capabilities, which puts the Army and the Multi-domain Task Force as a central and critical role in joint targeting,” Gen. Charles Flynn, commander of Army Pacific, said last year.  “The joint advances that are made by the Multi-Domain Task Force are critical in land contributions to the joint force for targeting.”

Sources have indicated in the past that the Army’s Pacific-focused Multi-Domain Task Forces will work to enable its sister services to poke holes in adversary defenses, commonly referred to in military parlance as anti-access, area denial— which refers to the combination of long-range sensors and weapons that threaten friendly forces and force them to operate from farther away.

Capabilities they’ll possess, once fully developed and fielded, include the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool, a command-and-control planning capability that allows forces to visualize the potential effects of these types of weapons and chart courses of action to prevent their forces and systems from being jammed during operations; Multi-Function Electronic Warfare, an airborne pod that’s designed as the first brigade-organic airborne electronic attack asset and can provide limited cyberattack capability; and the Terrestrial Layer System-Echelons Above Brigade, a capability that will be designed for higher echelons that will need to monitor and sense the battlefield across greater distances.

Gen. Randy George, the Army’s vice chief of staff and acting chief of staff, noted that beyond cyber and electronic warfare, the Army is looking at directed energy as a non-kinetic enabler.

“These are things that we’re experimenting with and trying to move forward. But again, if you get to a way where you have magazine depths with that, at a much cheaper for cost per round, so to speak, I think that will help as well,” he said at the CSIS conference.

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The IVAS program is one of the Army’s highest-priority modernization initiatives for its soldier system portfolio. The technology includes a ruggedized augmented reality and heads-up display system based on Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 device. The company won a contract worth up to $21.9 billion contract in 2021 to develop and manufacture the tech for the Army, which plans to acquire more than 100,000 systems over the coming years.

The augmented reality headsets are expected to give troops the ability to see through smoke, around corners, and in the dark using advanced sensors; leverage holographic imagery; and display 3D terrain maps and project a compass into a soldier’s field of vision. The Army hopes to be able to use them in training environments and on the battlefield.

The Army received IVAS 1.2 earlier this week and it plans to start conducting “soldier touch points” beginning next month to give potential end users the opportunity to put the capability through its paces and provide feedback.

Soldiers had complaints about an earlier version, IVAS 1.0, after testing last year.

“The results of the Ops Demo show user acceptance remains low. Soldiers prefer their current equipment … to IVAS. The majority of soldiers reported at least one symptom of physical impairment to include disorientation, dizziness, eyestrain, headaches, motion sickness and nausea, neck strain and tunnel vision. Soldiers cited IVAS 1.0’s poor low-light performance, display quality, cumbersomeness, poor reliability, inability to distinguish friend from foe, difficulty shooting, physical impairments and limited peripheral vision as reasons for their dissatisfaction,” according to a report from the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation.

The Army awarded a task order to Microsoft earlier this year to start developing version 1.2 to address problems with previous iterations.

“The new version of it, if you try it on, I think it’s definitely in the right direction. We’ll know more though once soldiers get a hold of it and actually wear it,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said on the sidelines of an Army Futures Command technology display on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. “Wearing it like this [at an indoor demo] is one thing, but when you have everything else on, it has to work there too. So again, we’ll know more. We’re gonna go test it out.”

The upcoming experiments involving soldiers will be “a very important data point for us,” he said.

“However, it’s not an operational test, it’s a soldier touch point. So, some of what we get back sometimes is anecdotal or you know, I would call it a little bit more subjective … feedback. But that’s OK. But that’ll give us a good initial read like if we’re headed in the right direction. And then we have to go to more and more difficult tests … as we get more prototypes,” he added.

DefenseScoop was able to try on an IVAS 1.2 headset Wednesday and play around with the heads-up display features, including night vision and thermal sensing. That aspect of the technology was impressive, but the system — which still weighs more than 3 pounds — felt heavy and seemed like it could cause neck strain for soldiers who wear it for extended periods of time.

If the tech ultimately doesn’t pan out the way the Army hopes it will, other vendors could be tapped, Bush suggested.

“We have a requirement for a capability. So, I think this is on a good track. But were it to not work out, we would likely just do a new competition, perhaps with somewhat different requirements to see what else is out there, if there’s other companies that could come to the table,” he told DefenseScoop. “I think there are other companies in this space … There’s a lot of companies doing, you know, augmented reality and wearable tech. So, if we can’t [go with IVAS], if it comes to that, I think we’d have a competitive environment to take advantage of.”

The Army currently has enhanced night-vision goggles that it can continue to field while it pursues IVAS or something else like it, he noted.

The service is looking to potentially field an improved IVAS by the end of fiscal 2025.

“We can keep fielding [other] good things, you know, if we need to take longer to get that one right,” Bush said. “We’ll see. But the requirement I think is still valid to have wearable tech beyond just night vision, at some point, for infantry soldiers. So, I think the infantry community still wants the capability one way or the other.”

It’s ultimately up to the secretary of the Army to decide whether the service should pull the plug on IVAS, he noted.

In May, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told lawmakers during a hearing that the service will use funding provided by Congress in the next fiscal year to work with Microsoft “to get the system to a place where our soldiers will want to use it. And if Microsoft isn’t able to do that, we will not develop the program further … We’re not going to spend $22 billion on a system if it doesn’t work.”

If the Army ultimately ditches IVAS, Bush doesn’t expect that to be the end of its pursuit of a new high-tech visual augmentation system.

“It’s ultimately up to the secretary but, you know, like I said, we still need the capability, we still want it. So a normal thing to do if an effort has to wind down … [and] the Army still wants that capability, you know, another market survey and a competition to see what’s out there would be kind of your standard steps,” Bush said.

“But right now, we’re committed to this [IVAS program], getting this one right the best we can. So, we’ll see. But I think like you said, there’s other companies in the space, which is good. There’s a lot of private investment in this space because you know wearable tech and that augmented reality is something that’s coming in the commercial sector. So, I think if we end up in that place, I think hopefully we’ll have some choices. But Microsoft has performed well on [IVAS 1.2]. I think we’ve got a much, much better system. But we’ll see through testing,” he added.

On Friday, DefenseScoop received the following statement from a Microsoft spokesperson: “Microsoft is collaborating closely with the US Army to develop the next iteration of the IVAS headset that improves on earlier variants with a slimmer, lighter and more balanced form factor to greatly improve soldier comfort and performance. Our delivery of the initial set of IVAS 1.2 devices this month is three months ahead of schedule and part of our commitment to move with speed to deliver on this critical program.”

Updated on July 28, 2023 at 12:20 PM: This story has been updated to include a comment from a Microsoft spokesperson.

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For fiscal 2022, the service fell about 25% short of its goal of onboarding 60,000 new active-duty troops.

“I think the only real significant dark cloud on the Army’s horizon is obviously the recruiting challenge that we face. We are very, very focused on that,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters during a media roundtable at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Service leaders set a “stretch goal” of recruiting 65,000 new soldiers in fiscal 2023, but “I don’t think we’re going to meet that,” she noted.

A number of factors have coalesced to make recruiting more difficult.

“Ensuring the United States has a sufficient number of qualified active-duty military personnel is a matter of national security … However, DOD is facing its most challenging recruitment environment in 50 years,” according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.

“According to DOD, only about one in four people in the United States between the ages of 17 and 24 are able to meet the recruitment requirements for military service. These include, for example, education and physical fitness standards,” per the report.

A variety of factors affect an individual’s potential as a recruit, the watchdog noted, including age, aptitude, citizenship, education, private sector employment opportunities, criminal history, medical qualifications and substance abuse, physical fitness, physical characteristics such as height and weight, and their interest in serving.

The outcome of the war in Afghanistan, and political rhetoric criticizing the military for being “woke,” may also be contributing to recruitment challenges.

The Army has taken steps to revamp training for recruiters in the hopes of boosting their productivity, a move that Wormuth said is starting to pay off. The service is doing better this month than it was at this time last year, she noted.

“We really need every single one of our great recruiters to, you know, be as productive as possible, obviously, given the challenge we’re facing,” Wormuth told reporters.

She sees opportunities for cutting-edge technology to lend a helping hand.

“I’d like to use artificial intelligence to help us with recruiting,” she told DefenseScoop at the roundtable. “As we look to new ways to improve our recruiting enterprise, there may be ways artificial intelligence can help us, you know, identify quality leads for prospects in ways that you know human beings are not as skilled to do.”

Wormuth didn’t provide details about how AI could potentially do that. But Pentagon officials and other tech experts have noted that artificial intelligence can be used to sift through large amounts of data, detect items of interest and flag them for human users of the technology.

Meanwhile, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville highlighted other ways that AI can help the service, including with talent management, predictive logistics and targeting.

“Certainly with targeting, and we get a lot of data, and bringing all that together and getting it to the right arrow, if you will,” McConville told reporters at the roundtable. “But I believe [there should be] a person in the loop. And what I mean by that is, it may not be the person that’s actually doing all the work, but we’re going to see artificial intelligence help us do our jobs better — but at the same time, we want to have somebody that’s saying, you know, ‘Fire this weapon system,’ or at least be thinking about that.”

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Since the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, the Army has been collecting observations associated with contemporary deterrence dynamics and the possible complexities of future fighting landscapes, Wormuth explained during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

“I do think the Russians have performed pretty poorly on the battlefield … At the same time, I don’t think we can count [Vladimir] Putin out by any means. But, I don’t think we have the luxury of being able to focus exclusively on the Indo-Pacific, frankly, as much as we might like to,” she said.

Putin’s past actions — and previous invasions in 2008 and 2014 — demonstrate that even if “the war in Ukraine resolves itself in the next year or two,” Wormuth noted, “I think we have to think very seriously and be very concerned about the possibility that Putin will try again to retake territory in Ukraine.”

Though Russia’s military will confront challenges to rebuild from losses it has already faced to date, Putin “is doing everything he can,” in Wormuth’s view, to get material support from other nations, “whether it’s North Korea, Iran or other places.”

Wormuth’s comments come as U.S. leaders have been expressly discouraging China from arming Russia in the conflict — and as Chinese leaders are reportedly considering providing the Russian military with lethal aid. 

Amid the current conflict in Ukraine, the U.S. Army is also continuing to mature its own concept of integrated deterrence — a key concept in the National Defense Strategy — and how to best posture its forces down the line, in that context. 

Wormuth noted that, to the Army, integrated deterrence has really been about fusing all its diverse tools together across domains and geographic theaters to have the greatest effect in deterring adversaries. A lot of the work associated with that has involved connecting and coordinating capabilities spanning different teams and domains. But now, the service is also thinking more broadly about ways to plan its exercises and activities across time and geographic spaces to enable deterrence.

“I think it’s an advancement of, you know, we spent a lot of time over the decades thinking about engagement and building partner capacity, but we haven’t always necessarily synchronized our activities from one theater to the other. So, now we’re looking at, not just for U.S. Army Pacific, what are we doing in that region and what kinds of messages does it send to China — but how does that integrate and synchronize with what we’re doing back here in [the continental U.S.], to try to develop new weapons capabilities to try to create the greatest deterrent effects?” Wormuth said. 

Another one of the big lessons the Army is learning from the combat in Ukraine is how conflict will likely be much more transparent in the future — making it harder for forces to hide.

“Some of that is about the ubiquitousness of sensors and the ability to fuse open-source information. It’s going to be a lot harder to hide our formations on the battlefield than it has been in the past,” Wormuth said.

Part of this is due to the proliferation of commercial off-the-shelf sensors, like drones, that can be easily deployed by small units to track enemy troops, collect intelligence or improve targeting.

Low-cost loitering munitions that were utilized in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in Azerbaijan have demonstrated the ability of small forces to establish some level of air superiority, or at the very least, contest forces using commercial drones. Sophisticated nation-states also possess advanced aerial and satellite capabilities that can track formations and stockpiles.

Moreover, the military has been on a recent trend to utilize open-source information, in many cases, as a first indicator before its exquisite collection capabilities. Last year, the Defense Intelligence Agency was charged with being the defense intelligence enterprise manager for open-source intelligence for all of the Department of Defense.

Additionally, sophisticated tactics employed by top adversaries such as Russia have enabled them to track forces based on their electromagnetic signature.

One of the major takeaways from Russia’s first incursion into Ukraine nearly a decade ago was their ability to locate Ukrainian command posts and fire upon them, just based on their signature.

The Army’s infamous Russia New Generation Warfare study in 2017 spurred several modernization efforts still ongoing today to improve signature management, reduce the size and complexity of command posts and develop better electronic countermeasures and jamming capabilities.

It emphasized the notion that conflict will be much faster and the large static command posts of the counterinsurgency days would not be suitable. Forces must move much more quickly to avoid being located and targeted.

Wormuth also explained that moving forward, soldiers must also be more mindful of their own digital footprints they might leave behind — namely, on social media.

“Our soldiers are going to have to be a lot more concerned about their own signatures. Part of the way the Ukrainians have been able to target the Russians is when the Russian soldiers get on Facebook and post pictures,” she said.

The Army has previously exercised the dangers social media presence and posting can have on a unit deploying. In one example from a few years ago, soldiers deploying from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Fort Irwin, California, were told to stay off social media a month prior to the exercise.

On the first day of the exercise, troops were shown how many people the unit had deployed, what base they came from, where they were going, what their mission was and where their families lived, all based on their digital footprints.

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This year’s capstone Project Convergence experiment saw improvement in standardizing data compared to last year’s event, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said.

“This is a point of continuity, I would say, from Project Convergence 21, is we still need to keep working on how do we standardize the data so that we’re all able to access it and we’re all able to share it across services, across platforms. I think we’re making progress on that, but there’s still work that has to be done,” Wormuth told reporters during a media roundtable on Wednesday.

Project Convergence is an annual experiment put on by the Army to test the interoperability of systems across the service as well as the other services and multinational partners. It is the Army’s contribution to the Pentagon’s push for Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace could be more tightly networked and connected to provide the right data to commanders on faster timelines.

Turning the Army into a data-centric service is one of Wormuth’s top priorities as secretary. This essentially means starting with data as the foundation for operations as opposed to platforms.

“My second objective is to ensure the Army becomes more data-centric and can conduct operations in contested environments, which will enable our ability to prevail on the future battlefield,” she said in February in a memo to the force. “Doing so will allow us to embrace emerging technologies to become a more effective and efficient force that can project power in cyberspace and defend our networks, weapons, and data from cyber threats.”

JADC2 will require getting data to commanders faster so they can make better informed decisions more rapidly than their adversaries and close kill chains quicker.

“It’s about speed, range and convergence and how quickly can you make a decision on targeting is where you get the decision dominance and the overmatch that we think we need [in] the future battles,” Gen. James McConville, chief of staff of the Army, told reporters.

Part of the issue is standardizing and understanding data so that it can get to the right sources. Wormuth said the Army, and the Department of Defense writ large, is awash in data, so the challenge is determining how to make it more actionable.

“A lot of the challenge is going to be figuring out, how do we process that as quickly as we can? And I think we did see some real … improvements in terms of how quickly we were able to take information and change it into what I would call more actionable knowledge,” she said, regarding the experimentation at Project Convergence 22.

Wormuth noted that another aspect of that challenge is getting commanders trained to understand data.

“Commanders are going to have to figure out what are the critical information requirements that they need so that they’re not overwhelmed by that data. To me, that’s something we’re going to have to be thinking about,” she said. “How are we training future commanders to think about what are those [commander’s critical information requirements] so that they can not be overwhelmed by the data?”

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With aims to “embrace the challenge of contested logistics,” Wormuth said Monday at the Association of the United States Army’s annual convention in Washington, the command will soon leverage experimentation, war games, and exercises in new ways. 

“This effort will bring together our logistics community with the commercial sector to look at our requirements and focus on the opportunities presented by autonomous distribution, energy-efficient combat systems, and predictive data analytics,” she explained. 

Wormuth’s comments Monday came as the Army recently announced big plans to become a more data-centric force operationally by the end of the decade. 

Some progress has been made in prototyping and building new technologies with military and commercial partners over the last year, in particular, according to the secretary. She noted that her team is “already signing contracts to begin low rates of initial production” on some emerging technologies associated with logistics. 

During a media briefing after her keynote, Wormuth provided reporters with more details on this new command-led work. 

The Indo-Pacific “is the most demanding theater” for the military currently, she noted, “because of the distances involved, and all of the, you know, obvious reasons,” she said, likely referring to the evolving conflict landscape and tensions with China. She sees room for better collaboration with industry and a need to explore how automation and predictive analytics can support such logistics and sustainment operations. 

“We are doing more and more every day to use data more effectively,” Wormuth told DefenseScoop during the briefing — but she confirmed that she is not yet satisfied with how the service is using data as a strategic asset.

“I see it in all sorts of ways. Army Materiel Command, I think, has done a tremendous job to really improve our ability to see our inventory of infrastructure, for example, using data. I was just over in Germany with the 18th Airborne Corps, and the way that we’re using data and [artificial intelligence] there is tremendous,” she noted. “But, you know, we have so much more to do, especially when you compare us to the private sector.” 

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