In the past, the service had outlined a fielding strategy that sought to equip certain priority brigades within divisions with the integrated tactical network, a combination of program-of-record systems and commercial off-the-shelf tools. This meant that other brigades and enabling units — such as sustainment, intelligence, logistics and engineering brigades — would still be operating on legacy equipment.

Now, as the Army is shifting to division as the main unit of action, it’s important to ensure all units can be compatible with modernized gear.

“Since we’re going to a more large-scale combat operation and division as a unit of action focus for the Army of 2030 construct, it’s imperative that we get all enablers and supporting units to be on the same exact [command-and-control] architecture as their supported brigades,” Maj. AJ Mangosing, assistant project manager for Program Manager Tactical Radios at program executive office for command, control, communications and network, said in an interview. “What that does is that improves the robustness of the PACE plan — the primary, alternate, contingency and emergency communications plan — and improves the overall lethality and survivability of the unit.”

The Army began to test this concept as part of Operation Lethal Eagle, an exercise with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. This year’s exercise sought to pull in the entire division, as opposed to just brigades, to test how a division as a whole would fight.

Officials said that last year, as part of events that lead up to 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division’s capstone training event, which included Operation Lethal Eagle, very few enabling units had the latest networking kit due to limited inventory.

“Now that the inventory has increased, we are now fielding to division enablers at scale. And we are now rolling that out during Operation Lethal Eagle to observe the enablers in action,” Mangosing said.

As the Army is looking toward developing a next-generation command and control capability in the future, it has begun fielding what it calls the C2 Fix architecture in the interim. C2 Fix seeks to use what the Army already has, along with commercial off-the-shelf technology, to enhance the network tools for soldiers’ so-called “fight tonight” capability.

Last year’s Operation Lethal Eagle validated the need for enabling units, officials said. It showcased how the Army can’t just be focused on maneuver elements, and there has to be unified communications across the division.

“The concept of C2 Fix works. Now we’re starting to enhance this with how the division fights,” said Lt. Col. Anthony Cato, the top communications and signal officer for 101st Airborne Division.

The exercise, and fielding to the entirety of the division, allows the organization to figure out how it will fight in the future enabled by new capabilities across all its units.

“We’re focusing on how does the division change along with the changes of its subordinate units … We have the responsibility to give feedback up to big Army in terms of the capabilities they’re asking us to either validate or just straight up critique,” Lt. Col. Paul Charters, chief of knowledge management and senior simulations officer at 101st Airborne Division, said on the sidelines of Operation Lethal Eagle. “That’s the other piece is we have to adapt as a division headquarters to a changing world in terms of technologies, in terms of challenges. As we identify how our brigade structure has to change and how to adapt how we manage the enablers, we’re also learning a whole lot about ourselves as a division headquarters. How can we better align ourselves to provide those capabilities to our division, make ourselves more survivable so we can do those things and also integrate new technologies that help us ideally be more efficient?”

Testing and validating new technology in the architecture

The Army has explained that it wants its future communications architecture to be open so it can import new capabilities rapidly as they become available without issue.

Across the service, units are looking for some level of customization and tailoring of network capabilities based on how they fight. Flexibility has been one of the bumper stickers for the integrated tactical network, providing baseline capability that allows units to tailor to what they need.

One example is how 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division at its capstone training event in Germany in January sought to test the commercial encrypted application Wickr to pass data, enabled by the internet connection from low-Earth orbit satellite constellations.

That was because they had a mixed formation of ITN and non-ITN units, opting to use Wickr as a primary collaboration tool. The 101st used that application to a lesser extent during Operation Lethal Eagle, instead, using other government and commercial products to experiment with.

“That’s why we’re at OLE because we’re trying to learn about these things. As units identify things or they have software built, we bring it in to test it in the architecture, see how it works, see what doesn’t work and we continue to iterate from there,” Maj. Timothy Ray, assistant product manager for Project Manager Mission Command at PEO C3N, said in an interview.

One such technology is a lightweight mesh device made by goTenna.

At a fraction of the size and weight of traditional multi-channel radios, the goTenna solution provides a mesh networking capability that enables chat functions. It’s especially useful for scout teams that want to conduct reconnaissance and be as light as possible.

Moreover, since it’s only producing smaller chat and text format messages as opposed to voice, it has a smaller electromagnetic signature than traditional radios, making it harder for the enemy to spot — revealing the scout’s position — and jam.

“What we’re working towards with this in particular, is pairing this small mesh network to something that is beyond line-of-sight communication, like a Garman inReach or something as small as that. We’ve worked it, we’ve used it with our HF radio, high-frequency radios that have big jumps,” said Lt. Col. Reed Markham, commander of 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment.

Another technology the Army has begun integrating more is the Instant Connect Enterprise, or ICE, essentially a voice-over-Internet Protocol capability that ingests radio signals and waveforms. So long as they’re connected via Wi-Fi or cellular, anyone with an end user device — essentially a military version of an Android phone — can push the radio button and talk over the radio network using any of the waveforms, serving as a many-channel radio wherever they go.

This means there’s now less hardware at the edge because it’s leveraging cloud services and applications, smaller dislocated footprints, and improved reach-back support and access to services. It also increases the number of users that can talk on the network without muddying it.

“It increases the maneuverability and our speed because you have access to a device where we’re connecting that software where you can access multiple bands. I think it increases awareness, it increases mobility because now you have the opportunity where an on-the-move soldier is not carrying around 15 batteries for X amount of radios, and so forth,” Cato said. “From a command post perspective, it allows us to increase our survivability as we can offset. So, you’ve heard the term ‘our antenna farms.’ It allows us to decentralize our signature and then to be able to manage that to manage multiple nets within a command post.”

The tech also has a language translation capability where one force can talk through using their native language, and it will spit out the native language of a partner military on the other end. This came about when 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division was conducting its capstone training event in Hawaii last October with partner forces. It was integral they communicate with the Japanese army, Philippines army and others.

The tool also aided the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment of 101st Airborne Division when they were in Europe helping to train Ukrainians.

The ICE capability also allows for greater integration of legacy, non-ITN or C2 Fix capabilities into the architecture.

“It allows us to incorporate legacy systems. We have new technologies on a new C2 Fix network or architecture, and we’re able to bring in some of our legacy beyond line-of-sight capabilities so it streamlines and simplifies at the on-the-move or at-the-halt at a command post perspective, where we have access and we can very quickly and easily integrate C2 Fix units and non-C2 Fix units,” Cato said. “What’s important is how do we integrate them into how we fight? It’s not about I have or I don’t have a piece of kit, because it’s not about the kit. It’s about how are we fighting as a division. And we’re fighting not just with our maneuver elements, it’s also with our enablers.”

To close that gap, the Army has also developed what it’s calling flyaway kits, including capabilities and personnel that accompany a unit to communicate with non-ITN units.

They were initially needed as part of 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division’s capstone exercise given they were an ITN-enabled brigade with a non-ITN-enabled division and they needed a solution to connect the two.

The goal is to ensure higher commands have the same capabilities to reach down to other units to maintain the C2 Fix architecture.

Overall, the C2 Fix architecture has allowed the division to see itself better and more holistically across the battlefield, officials said. But, where they need improvements are the ability for nodes to aggregate data at the right place and right time in a digestible way.

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The service began experimenting with — and eventually fielding — modernized network gear to light and airborne units roughly five years ago. Those units typically present less of an integration challenge given they don’t use large platforms that are space constrained. This allowed the Army to set a baseline for its network and architecture to continue to build upon with the integrated tactical network (ITN), a combination of program-of-record systems and commercial off-the-shelf tools.

Armored units, however, are much more challenging as they have size, wight and power constraints, requiring carful considerations for how systems plug into them as well as inter-program executive office cooperation with the platform community.

For one tanker, the key is figuring out how to keep pace with the technological change of the commercial sector and integrate that into heavy platforms that historically evolve much more slowly.

“We have integrated a lot of those capabilities within the systems, within these track vehicle platforms, but the problem that we’re running into now is the safety certification for any upgrades or changes that need to happen. That could take a very, very long process and a very expensive process,” Lt. Col. Joe Kaminski, the top network operations officer for 3rd Infantry Division, said at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting. “One of the things we’re pushing back up and identifying is how do we decouple, actually, technology that would change transformatively every three to five years on a platform that doesn’t change for 30 to 40 years? And how do we make it more of a bolt-on capability? Now what we’re able to do is integrate and enable that capability but allow for that transformative change to happen. That’s one of the constraints specifically, is integration into the central computer systems.”

Installing radios and equipment requires a long lead time for development and procurement processes. The Army needs to work with units to meet their needs and the needs of their specific platforms because not all tanks or heavy systems are created equal.

“There’s different types of armored vehicles here. Now, what’s the approach, really? Because the things they’re learning in the v3 Abrams, the SWaP, the size, weight and power requirements that that vehicle has, or the capability it’s got, is different from the v2,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, director of the command and control cross-functional team, said in an interview. “We don’t want to put something in there. If it’s a full install on the vehicle, what happens is the electrical systems now are dependent on each other and because that tank is heavily reliant on electronics, if you put something in there, it’s got to be fully tested. The conversation we were having was about, what does a bolt-on option look like? Can we do something less than full install? … Is it potentially could be a lower cost, it could be a little bit faster, and you can … move from platform to platform as you need it, as opposed to having to do a full installation?”

He noted that officials will be doing some experimentation on that at the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone 5 event that will take place in March.

Those heavy platforms also have longer lines of communication than other types of units within the Army. Kaminski wants to see the service reimagine those mesh networks.

Moreover, heavy platforms and units operate over large areas and long distances, meaning their forces are more dispersed, creating command-and-control challenges.

“We are more dispersed, also normally with our armor formations, so the dispersion of the CPs [command posts] and the movement of the CPs require network-on-the-move capabilities. When we’re looking at it, we’re looking at pLEO capabilities integration, but how does that then stand and integrate into a track vehicle that a lot of times our personnel don’t dismount, per se, in large quantities? How do I keep that network operational while also maneuvering on there?” he said.

Enabling on-the-move comms

To date, the Army has only fielded about 15 percent of the entire force with the ITN. The plan is to scale two armored units beginning with a brigade in 2025 and then a division in the near future, but that timeline is less clear at the moment.

As it begins to focus on armored units in 2025, the service is kicking off a pilot to test on-the-move communication equipment on armored units in January at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. This initiative follows the first pilot effort in 2022.

The upcoming pilot will include 1st Armored Division. It will feature newer and more mature capabilities from the first instantiation a couple of years ago such as beyond-line-of-sight capabilities, line-of-sight capabilities and variable high antennas.

The pilot and upcoming fielding will also help inform the larger C2 efforts across the Army as well as integration constraints.

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In a paradigm shift across several portfolio areas, the service is getting away from so-called pure fleeting, meaning the entire Army won’t get all the same gear. This is necessitated by differences in unit makeup, missions and environments that forces will be operating in.

Such is true for the network as well.

“I think this is just the next step in our journey to continue to iterate and build a really flexible network for our commanders to have options to employ,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control, communications and networks, said in an interview. “We learned a lot with the 101st [Airborne Division] and we’re going to learn even more with 25th [Infantry Division]. And then we’re going to continue on that journey as we get to new environments.”

The 2nd Brigade, 101st and 2nd Brigade, 25th are two so-called transforming-in-contact units that the Army has designated. This keystone initiative was set forth by Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, where the service is using deployments and troop rotations to test new equipment — mainly commercial off-the-shelf gear — that could allow units to be more responsive on a dynamic battlefield. It has initially focused on three main areas where officials say the Army needs to be faster and more adaptable when it comes to delivering equipment to forces, due to how challenging the threat environment is and the cat-and-mouse aspect of countering opponents’ moves: unmanned aerial systems, counter-UAS and electronic warfare. .

The concept saw its first major test with 2nd Brigade, 101st conducting a rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, over the summer. Now, 2nd Brigade, 25th has picked up that baton and is conducting a rotation at the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center in Hawaii.

“I just got back from the Pacific … What I saw in the 25th ID is that where we left the 101st on the backend of that rotation is where we started with the 25th,” said Maj. Gen Patrick Ellis, director of the network cross-functional team within Army Futures Command, adding that the same exercise controllers at Fort Johnson for the 101st and network personnel have gone to JPMRC to help clean up issues and assist in planning to make this current rotation more smooth for a continuous effort.

“I think we’re going to learn some new stuff out there in the Pacific, much more focused on the mission partner environment and how to incorporate allies, which is something that theaters are always very, very concerned about and how to better do that,” Ellis said. “I think we’re going to learn some really good lessons about that. We’re also going to learn a little bit about, I think, how to employ some of our technologies in the jungle.”

He noted that the TSM waveform for software-defined radios doesn’t work in the jungle like it does in more open environments given the dense foliage.

This is just one example for how the Army needs to think about tailoring certain capabilities to units and theaters and providing commanders with flexibility to employ capabilities the way they need.

“One of the great things is experimenting with these capabilities in the environments they’re going to employ them, so that we can iterate and identify what technologies will work versus what technologies still require investment, modernization or commercial industry engagement,” Kitz said. “I would say in terms of acquisition, we are trying to build programs or a portfolio of programs to give commanders options, so it’s not just one waveform in our tactical radio, that they have a portfolio of waveforms that they can employ … The key acquisition tenet is not building specific programs around specific technologies, but building programs around how we can have a portfolio of technologies to enable this option-based network, so that our network can adapt to the different environments that we’re in.”

The Army’s network team within the program executive office and Futures Command are looking at a variety of capabilities and portfolios from transport — such as proliferated low-Earth orbit satellite communications — to radios and waveforms to command-and-control tools.

As part of that, the team needs to understand how units will employ their capabilities and what they need the network to do for them. More challenging now is that the Army is moving to the division as the unit of action, as opposed to the brigade of the last 20 years during the Global War on Terror. In a potential future conflict against more sophisticated adversaries, units will be spread across much larger distances and need more capabilities resident within the division rather than the brigade.

As the Army began modernizing its network and developing things like the integrated tactical network, made up of commercial off-the-shelf and program-of-record equipment, it started with brigades. Now, it has to think about architecting for division and moving complexity out of brigade units.

“We are truly now engaging on a network with the division as the unit of action. How is the division enabling the down trace units in a holistic network? How do we conduct fires? How do we conduct intel operations? How do I ensure that I’m delivering the right equipment or the right material from a sustainment perspective? How do we envision that entire network from a division perspective is relatively new to the network,” Kitz said.

“That’s what we’re learning from engaging initially with the 101st and now at the 25th and really architecting a larger network that identifies that my down-trace units may not be direct report. They may have a different network component. They may require different network components. Building that flexibility from the division down, I think, is something we’re learning is what we need. And trying to apply these acquisition principles of a portfolio of capabilities is what we’ve been working with Gen. Ellis and the team,” he added.

Ellis noted that it’s all about operational employment of capabilities, using command posts and dispersion as an example.

Across the entire Army, units are trying to get smaller and more mobile to avoid being found and targeted by the enemy. But each unit and each theater is different.

“I talked to battalion commanders and brigade commander in the 25th out there. They are looking to get smaller. In most cases, these guys are going to be dismounted, walking into the jungle, so their command posts are naturally going to get very, very small. The smaller we can enable these guys, the better. Really, again, it’s all about options for employment,” Ellis said. “If they’re fighting the jungle, it’s one thing. If it’s large-scale combat operations in a different theater, they want to aggregate a little bit more.”

Newer technologies allowing more and faster data transport, such as Starlink, provide greater ability for units to disperse and get smaller.

Officials haven’t figured out yet how brigades and divisions will all fight, but they are continuing to communicate with them to make things more reconfigurable.

“The stuff we’ve observed from Ukraine is that if you have to have kind of most Lego blocks for command and control … is I just give you the tools and you can arrange them and rebuild them how you need to, based on the circumstances,” Ellis said. “Because it seemed to me that watching the Ukraine fight is that almost every 90 days, the Russians needed to reconfigure the command control because the Ukrainians have figured out the signature. They need to reconfigure. We’re looking to try and build something that’s inherently reconfigurable, as opposed to building a thing that you got to then destroy and take apart because it’s only good at doing one thing.”

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FORT JOHNSON, La. — The Army has been on a dual-track effort to improve command, control and communications capabilities in the near term, while devising a more long-term, materiel vision with new solutions.

The former — dubbed C2 Fix — is aimed at bolstering soldiers’ so-called “fight tonight” ability.

“Fix is we have a system, but it’s not acceptable that we’re just going to wait for the next thing,” Brig. Gen. Bryan Babich, director of the Mission Command Center of Excellence, told reporters during a recent visit to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana. “This right here is how we, in an integrated way, across the entire Army enterprise, focus on problems to deliver a C2 system that we could, God forbid, if we have to go out for the next fight in the near future.”

By contrast, Army Futures Command — along with program executive office for command, control, communications-tactical (PEO C3T) — is pursing a conception of what the future of command and control will be by breaking down silos between warfighting functions to provide commanders better situational awareness.

Previously, senior Army members outlined the inflection point the service finds itself in now where it’s seeking to alter the modernization effort it undertook roughly six years ago and move network complexity up to the division level and higher echelons.

Officials explained that the legacy capabilities and structures were too big and clunky to be successful on a future battlefield where formations will have to move rapidly or risk being targeted and killed.

“As we’re looking at C2 Fix, there are really three components that … we’re focused on for this. Number one, fixing the network. Number two, making our command post smaller and more survivable, though just as capable. Then third, moving simplicity to the edge,” Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, told reporters. “When you look at this configuration of this brigade command post with the large tents, multiple vehicles inside, you’ve got all these server stacks — and what that was a result of was that we had many systems that, in many cases, were stovepipes. You had an intel system that talked to itself, you had a fire system that talked to itself, you had a current ops system that was talking to itself, attempted to integrate these. The way that we overcame that was by making these large command posts with a lot of people inside them.”

To begin the “fix” initiative, the Army started with an ongoing assessment of the network. The Mission Command Center of Excellence established a team for field assessments of C2 systems that has been underway for roughly 15 months. The aim is to complete that work in the fiscal 2026-2027 time frame.

Part of this effort was spurred on by the determination by Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of I Corps, that the current C2 system isn’t survivable and will put victory into question against an advanced adversary, according to officials.

The JRTC rotation of 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division — a key modernization unit that’s testing new concepts for the Army — is part of that series of assessments. A previous one was Operation Lethal Eagle, a large-scale air assault that provided the opportunity to test new technologies, prototype reorganized structures and employ multi-domain fires, in April.

Now, the acquisition and operational community are working collaboratively together to drive solutions.

Such an integrated approach with operators is not new territory for the Army’s network community. Over the last six years as it sought to develop a modernized approach dubbed “capability sets” — a two-year process where each set builds upon the previous delivery for the Integrated Tactical Network made up of commercial off-the-shelf and program-of-record equipment — its program managers worked side-by-side with the operational community to test new capabilities and gain rapid feedback from soldiers to improve the delivery of new technology.

However, as the Army mapped out a more modernized approach, it realized the entire acquisition community needed to be integrated together — something the network team had also begun given the cross-cutting nature of the network and the need to be closely tied with others in the platform world to streamline integration of new kit and capabilities.

As a result, one person — Col. Shermoan Daiyaan, project manager for mission command at PEO C3T — is now in charge for leading the enterprise between eight program executive offices and 24 program managers to serve as the focal point of integration, something officials described as “fundamentally different.”

“It’s something that I’ve never seen in my career and it takes a level of cooperation,” Babich said of this integration across the Army.

As part of developing a “fix,” the service has created what it calls the “scroll,” a diagram rolled out across a series of tables measuring more than 10-feet long that details the traffic flow for any message that goes over the current architecture by echelon. The goal is to be able to visualize where the problems and gaps exist, isolate exactly what the Army wants to fix and provide a visualization for challenges and prioritization — because ultimately, officials don’t know what they don’t know.

This will allow the Army to be able to baseline the architecture for how units communicate and articulate to Army senior leadership where they might need to prioritize, because C2 Fix is about the near term and prioritizing the things that warfighters need in that time frame.

During experimentation and when upgrading these messaging and communications functions, officials can use the scroll for digital modeling and begin to take things out or add them without degrading the network before making the fixes.

The visualization also helps to transfer lessons across the rest of the Army, especially as other units are modernizing. The ambition is to take everything learned over the last four-to-five months with the 101st, render what that network looks like and pass on C2 Fix capabilities to other divisions. It provides the architecture the network team lands on and creates efficiencies so they don’t have several divisions in the Army trying to solve the problems individually in their own ways.

C2 Fix is serving as the bridge or “highway” for the next generation of command and control.

“C2 Fix is building the highway that will support next-gen C2,” Lt. Gen. John Morrison, deputy chief of staff, G6, said at the Defense News Conference Sept. 4. “The way I generally describe it is C2 Fix is getting after that network resiliency that will allow us to operate in a contested and congested environment, so that we can take a modern C2 apparatus that from the very basis that it’s been built has data integration built in, so we can operate at speed and at distance and make decisions faster than our adversaries — and putting that over this new, improved, resilient highway.”

He noted that C2 Next — the Army’s name for its next-generation capabilities — will be an integrated command-and-control apparatus that combines all the warfighting functions focused on data centricity, so commanders can have the information they need, when and where they need it, to act faster than their adversaries.

For C2 Next, the Army is working on developing an integrated data layer to connect all the systems for functions such as intelligence, fires, command and control, so it can be composed in a single place — which is a challenge because currently, many of these siloed functions are not connected to each other.

Officials want to pull in all the sensor data and information coming off of various platforms and put it on one screen.

The Army seeks to enable commanders to customize their dashboards, since every commander likes their own view and has different preferences.

Officials used the analogy of a smartphone where out of the box there are some stock applications but the user can download more apps that they want and customize their interfaces.

This, however, will be challenging under the developmental approach the Army is pursuing where it’s experimenting with three different vendors — Anduril, Palantir and Google — to build these dashboards that will display position and location information and provide much greater levels of situational awareness for commanders. Officials noted they are developing a governance structure to deal with the potential program management issues surrounding having more than one vendor from which commanders can choose custom dashboards.

“One of the things that we’re putting together in-flight is a governance system,” Col. Matthew Skaggs, director of tactical applications and architecture at Army Futures Command, said. “The difference between what we’re going to do now and how we’ve done it in the past as a federation of people that bring in different requirements, and it’s like a pyramid architecture … Setting the level playing field for what things look like, so then that’s getting kicked out [to] the industry and anybody can build to those specifications we’re welcoming.”

Officials noted the common data layer will provide the foundation for vendors that have cutting-edge technologies or solutions to pop them into the architecture — whereas now, there is no technical avenue to add new vendor capabilities to systems.

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FORT JOHNSON, La. — Networking capability upgrades are allowing Army units to fight in a more dispersed manner and at lower levels of classification.

A key tenet of future combat will be the need to move faster and scatter on the battlefield to avoid being targeted. Lessons from both Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in 2014 and Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022, have indicated conflicts will be much faster paced and the large static command posts that were used by the U.S. military during its recent counterinsurgency fights won’t be suitable. American forces must be more nimble to prevent adversaries from locating and attacking them.

The Army’s network team has been on a multiyear journey to modernize tactical communications and make units lighter, faster, smaller and able to pass and share more information. Those efforts were ahead of their time in many instances as they employed the rapid feedback loop that the so-called “transforming-in-contact” concept is striving for, with one official saying they are “very comfortable” with this tight linkage and feedback mechanism.

Capabilities for command, control and communication have allowed units to operate in much smaller command posts and even split their staff sections by function rather than all having to be in one command center that could be targeted and take them all out.

This was the case for both 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division and 1st Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment during a recent rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana. The later unit is known as “Geronimo” and serves as a highly capable opponent for units rotating into these centers.

“It’s the ability to do this app-based and a true common operating picture, because you can seamlessly move between applications,” Col. Matthew Hardman, commander of the operations group at JRTC that runs the opposing force, said during a recent visit to the base to observe 2nd Brigade’s rotation, a key unit as part of the Army’s transforming-in-contact concept. That vision calls for using deployments and troop rotations to test new equipment — mainly commercial off-the-shelf gear — that could allow units to be more responsive on a dynamic battlefield.

Hardman noted that the footprint of Geronimo’s command post is very small, using the Integrated Tactical Network to build out capabilities and applications.

Throughout the Army’s years-long process to upgrade its network, modernized equipment has significantly shrunk the size of command posts. Smaller, more mobile command posts pose more challenging targeting problems for adversaries.

One of the innovations that allows for that shrinkage — just a couple of trucks instead of instead of large, sprawling, and often relatively static outposts — and reduced electronic emissions, is what the Army is dubbing antenna farms. During the recent exercise at Fort Johnson, those so-called farms produced all the communications for the brigade command post, which was dispersed physically from the main command post, whereas before it was co-located.

While the farm did have a signature, communications capabilities such as directional radios and proliferated low-Earth orbit satellites made it difficult for the adversary to discover it in the spectrum, unlike other capabilities such as WiFi or high-frequency systems.

During the exercise, the opposing force wasn’t able to distinguish if this was a brigade command post or a lower echelon given the small footprint and lower electromagnetic signature. Now, the enemy has to be more discretionary in terms of deciding what to hit because they don’t want to waste artillery or give away their position to attack a smaller echelon. They’re looking for bigger payoffs like a brigade or division command post.

The antenna farm is much quicker to set up and take down than previous communications setups. Officials at JRTC noted that in the past it could take 30 to 45 minutes with no troubleshooting issues to establish the network. Now, it takes close to 10 minutes, with officials saying they are waiting on the brigade command post to plug their network in or drive away, a huge distinction from the past.

Officials also explained that command, control and communications capabilities have allowed the staff sections within the brigade to disperse even more. Historically, staff for current operations, intelligence, fires and many other functions, would all be housed within the sprawling command post to run operations for the fight. This contributed to the large size.

Now, those staff sections can be separated, resulting in smaller command posts that might resemble something like a company or battalion.

Crosstalk within the command post “was very human-based, very human-centric, using our various warfighting function capabilities and bringing those together,” Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said. “Instead of that massive humanity and all those computers … it’s a much more simple setup and a simple system, though just as capable as the one that it had, as we are integrating many of our network systems.”

While the technology is allowing that disaggregation, network officials have explained that it’s creating human problems because commanders now have to get used to communicating to all their staff sections dispersed on the battlefield as opposed to just walking up to them in the command post.

Moreover, as part of its rotation at JRTC, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne conducted a roughly 500-mile air assault from its home at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Fort Johnson in Louisiana to start the exercise.

During that effort, it had upgraded communications equipment that is part of the integrated tactical network, to include putting HMS manpack radios — the same that are used by dismounted soldiers — into helicopters, providing MUOS beyond-line-of-sight satellite comms. Previously, those aircraft only had chat functions and could only send position location information.

Those capabilities provided continuous and more robust communications tools to the unit for the entire 500-mile journey and entry into JRTC.

“If you were at JRTC, you would have seen for the first time both voice and data integration between our aerial platforms and our ground formations. And it was powerful. No more having to pick up a handset and say, ‘This is where I’m at,’” Lt. Gen. John Morrison, deputy chief of staff, G6, said at the Defense News Conference Sept. 4. “Everybody having common [situational awareness] of what is happening, whether you’re in the air or on the ground.”  

Network officials noted that with the commercialization and intuitiveness of tools now, there is less time needed to get equipment to units to become familiar with and train. Previously, with new capabilities or upgrades, the program office would have to give the technology to the unit ahead of exercises or events to allow them to familiarize themselves. That timeline is becoming shorter and shorter.

One of the other major changes for this exercise rotation was that most of the data used was unclassified. The Army has been on a push to lower the classification of communications and data on the battlefield to increase speed. Classification is often a barrier to sharing with international partners and slows down operations. But, by developing an unclassified-encrypted capability, or SBU-E, where perishable data can be lowered, network complexity is reduced.

The Army is simultaneously pursing a dual effort to provide improved capabilities to help soldiers be ready to “fight tonight” in the near term, while looking toward a future permanent solution. Those projects have been dubbed C2 Fix and C2 Next, respectively.

“One of the key tenets of both C2 Fix and next-gen C2 is this notion of using commercial encryption to provide sensitive but unclassified-encrypted communications. I will submit, as we fully implement that, that will be a game-changer for coalition interoperability, especially at the edge,” Morrison said. “The days of having to send a radio telephone operator over to an allied partner’s command post so that they can use your radio to talk back to you, will be a thing in the past. We are aggressively implementing that as a part of C2 Fix.”

Part two of this series will delve deeper into the C2 Fix and C2 Next initiatives.

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During a recent area defense operation, an Army unit had two possible paths it needed to take. With the opposition force closely following, the unit deployed around 50 decoys — commercial raspberry pi’s available for hobbyists on Amazon with SSID cards. The technology allowed the unit to load electronic signatures for anything from the brigade’s command post to a commander’s cell phone and mount it on small drones with a power supply, in an attempt to draw away the adversary.

As a result, the enemy spent about 50 percent of its artillery targeting what it thought was the Army unit, but in fact, was just dirt, making the foe not only easier to find for the Army forces given it exposed its position with its artillery, but it expended valuable munitions for naught.  

While the Army has an annual procurement budget that exceeds $20 billion, it was this type of jerry-rigged tech that created a tactical advantage on the battlefield, much to the surprise of senior commanders.

“The thing that surprised me was actually the effectiveness of the decoys that were put out … I underestimated, personally, the effectiveness that we would see out there. It really did create some real dilemmas for [the enemy] during this fight,” Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, commander of the 101st Airbourne Division, told reporters during a trip to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana. “A tactical advantage there, because he has to unmask his guns in order to be able to execute that fire mission.”

What made this such an impressive feat was that it was done successfully at a combat training center rotation — the most realistic combat scenarios the Army can create for units to train — against 1st Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment, know as “Geronimo” and serving as a highly capable opponent for units rotating into these centers, rather than just a home-station training event.

This type of bottom-up innovation is exactly what Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George is trying to foster with the so-called transforming-in-contact concept, where the service plans to use deployments and troop rotations to test new equipment — mainly commercial off-the-shelf gear — that could allow units to be more responsive on a dynamic battlefield.

According to George, there are three areas where the Army needs to be faster and more adaptable when it comes to delivering equipment to forces, due to how challenging the threat environment is and the cat-and-mouse aspect of countering opponents’ moves: unmanned aerial systems, counter-UAS and electronic warfare.

The concept has roots in the Middle East where troops weren’t getting the latest and greatest equipment, due to pre-determined unit fielding decisions. The thinking was, if a unit is deploying to a high-risk theater, they should be getting new equipment. Moreover, lessons from the war in Ukraine have demonstrated that the constant action-counteraction between both sides means forces must be more adaptable in contact with the enemy to innovate, especially given the rate of development of commercial technology.  

The transforming-in-contact units include: 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division — the first mobile brigade combat team — 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division and 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.

The concept was put to one of its biggest tests this month where 2nd Brigade, 101st conducted a rotation at JRTC. George called this transforming-in-contact 1.0, with 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division having a planned rotation in October in Hawaii and 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division having a planned rotation in January in Europe.

The goal is to continue to foster innovation from soldiers while testing equipment in different environments to ensure they work. George noted that technology the Army sent to the Middle East didn’t perform as well in the Philippines due to the high humidity in that region.  

Senior Army leadership is flipping the script and allowing bottom-up innovation to help drive change and traditional processes such as capability requirements and acquisition of new systems that to date have mostly been top-down.

Former officials explained that there was constant innovation during the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan because the terrain or the tactics the enemy was using would adapt rapidly. The Army is now allowing division commanders to let their units tailor themselves how they need to in order to prosecute the fight, either by creating new organizations, purchasing low-cost equipment to employ in new and creative ways or using different tactics.  

Officials explained that in the past, units would generate a requirement based on a gap, send that to the enterprise, which would work that in a lab and undergo a rigorous design-and-testing process before getting it back to the unit. Now, the Army is trying to take capabilities before full maturity, let soldiers use them and provide more accurate feedback regarding how it could be used or identify additional, better-informed gaps that need to be addressed.

“I’ve called it in the past a quiet revolution that we don’t have to field the same capabilities to every unit and that we can upgrade in different portfolios over time. Transformation-in-contact is designed to help us serve as a pathfinder to get there. It is giving us an opportunity to take a handful of operational units and experiment really with how they will use the new tech, whether it’s tactical UAVs, ground robots, other EW systems in an operational environment and what works, what doesn’t work,” Gabe Camarillo, undersecretary of the Army, told reporters in early August. That will help inform development of tactics, techniques, procedures, concepts of operation, requirements, solicitations and acquisition strategies, he added.

Camarillo noted that intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance is a good example of that because it traditionally required a lot of specialized training, but operations in Ukraine have demonstrated the ease of ubiquitous ISR with low-cost and low-training systems like small drones.

As technology evolves to become more intuitive and easy to use, the Army is finding that it doesn’t need to give soldiers new gear months in advance to test and train on it. Instead, they can give it to troops weeks ahead and let them innovate with it.

For example, new electronic warfare systems — namely the Terrestrial Layer System Manpack, the first official program in decades for a dismounted electronic attack capability that soldiers can use to conduct jamming on-the-move as well as direction and signal finding with limited signals intelligence capabilities — was given to soldiers about two weeks before JRTC, whereas in the past, those systems would require specialized training and take soldiers away from their units.

The same goes for newer network and communications equipment where more intuitive systems means the program office can give kit to units on a tighter timeline, whereas historically, they would have to provide a longer lead time so the units could train on it and get used to it before using it in an exercise.

The Army is also gaining valuable lessons from Geronimo, the opposing force at JRTC, as well as other similar units at other combat training centers. That organization is constantly sharing information back and forth to help the Army evolve, with one prominent example being the raspberry pi’s mounted to drones to serve as decoys and surveil electronic signatures in the battlespace.

“We get to do this every month. We get to do a rotation against the best free-thinking enemy in the world every month, the United States Army, against our own RTU teammates,” Lt. Col. Mason Thornal, commander of 1st Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment, said. “We get to implement capabilities and we get to develop tactics, techniques and procedures for new capabilities that are coming out in the Army. And we’re trying to share these things that we’re learning with our rotational unit teammates as we go along.”

He noted that his unit has had to make adjustments on the battlefield relative to 2nd Brigade, 101st and the new equipment they have as part of the transforming-in-contact concept.

For example, he said the unit now has a lot more sensing capability, meaning his opposing force had to serialize their movements on the battlefield so that it would be harder to identify its main efforts. This has made them slower and as a result, they missed some opportunities to isolate and destroy a battalion that they identified.

500-mile air assault

As part of its rotation at JRTC, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne conducted a roughly 500-mile air assault from its home at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Louisiana to start the exercise.

During that effort, it had upgraded communications equipment — part of the Army’s integrated tactical network, a combination of program-of-record systems and commercial off-the-shelf tools.

That included putting HMS manpack radios — the same that are used by dismounted soldiers — into helicopters, providing MUOS beyond-line-of-sight satellite communications. Previously, those aircraft only had chat functions and could only send position location information.

Those capabilities provided continuous and more robust communications tools to the unit for the entire 500-mile entry into JRTC.

The Army’s network team has been on a multiyear journey to modernize tactical communications and make units lighter, faster, smaller and able to pass and share more information. Those efforts were ahead of their time in many instances as they employed the rapid feedback loop that transforming-in-contact is striving for, with one official saying they are “very comfortable” with this tight linkage and feedback mechanism.

Throughout this years-long process, modernized equipment has significantly shrunk the size of command posts. A key lesson from Ukraine is the need to have smaller, more mobile command posts to avoid being targeted.

2nd Brigade’s command post was significantly smaller than those of the past with just a couple of trucks — instead of large, sprawling, and often relatively static outposts. The Army shrunk the number of people from about 30 in previous rotations — and in some cases 60 to 70 — to around eight people.

It also had a much smaller electromagnetic signature, near zero, thanks to the “antenna farm” that produced all the communications for the brigade command post and was dispersed physically from the main command post, whereas before it was co-located.

While the farm did have a signature, communications capabilities such as directional radios and proliferated low-Earth orbit satellites made it difficult for the adversary to discover it in the spectrum, unlike other capabilities such as WiFi or high-frequency systems.

The foe was not able to distinguish if this was a brigade command post or a lower echelon given the small footprint and lower electromagnetic signature. Now, the enemy has to be more discretionary in terms of deciding what to hit because they don’t want to waste artillery or give away their position on a smaller echelon. They’re looking for bigger payoffs like a brigade or division command post.

“The bottom line is, you put that antenna farm … well away from the actual command post and so then you are, if you’re disciplined with WiFi pucks and phones and watches and all that kind of stuff, then truly, that place where the — where all the humans are sitting is nearly undetectable when you have the snipers up above,” Sylvia said.

In fact, feedback that made its way to Army Cyber Command head Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett was that the brigade’s signature was the best seen in 38 rotations, she said at the TechNet Augusta conference in Georgia Aug. 22.

One of the key examples for commanders enabling subordinate soldiers to tailor to how they need to is the multifunctional reconnaissance company, or MFRC. It’s a prototype formation that grew out of both cooperation with Geronimo — which has a similar unit — as well as lessons from the Ranger Regiment. With the Army’s changes in force structure released in February, certain capabilities are being moved up to division. This unit is meant to retain some of those capabilities resident within the brigade.

It has “the task of being painfully light and disproportionately lethal in order to sense, kill and protect on behalf of the brigade. How we’re getting after those three lines effort: traditional reconnaissance, emerging technology, and then some homegrown EW capabilities,” Capt. Charles O’Hagan, the company’s commander, said.

Officials said the unit is a bit of back-to-the-future regarding how the Army used to do long-range reconnaissance, operating stealthily on the battlefield and acting as scouts to find enemy positions.

“The fact that the opposition force knew that they were out there and couldn’t find them, created some dilemmas for him in terms of his ability to be as aggressive as he would have liked. He had to be a little more timid, a little bit more deliberate and introduce his forces,” Sylvia said.

Making lasting change

Transforming-in-contact, while it has demonstrated many successes to date, still faces challenges given the Army is large and change takes time.

Top officials have explained the need for flexible funding authorities in order to purchase these lower-cost, smaller and more attritable systems.

“What I mean by agile funding is that we don’t have to buy one system. I talked about program of record. What we don’t want is to buy something and then say we’re going to have it for the next 20 years, because when I asked that question this morning they said, ‘Yeah, we got a new UAS this year because it’s better, more modular, longer endurance,’” George told reporters.

He noted that officials don’t want to always worry about quantities and they desire the ability to buy something new when it’s available.

George also addressed issues of scaling this across the entire force. Scaling these technologies and concepts will be much harder, to include how to do home-station training, because some capabilities will be challenged at home station to fully train with.

“We have to figure out how we’re going to train all of these systems at home station. We’re going to have to figure out how we can put UAS up and do all the things that we need to do to adapt,” he said.

George dismissed major concerns related to integration of these technologies, saying soldiers are innovators and will be able to figure out that part.

“This isn’t about just the tech. This is about the formations. This is about the people,” he told reporters. “Do we have the right people at the right locations, with the right skills?”

The Army wants to ensure the right expertise is resident in each unit and formation to enable the types of coding, quick fixes and technical innovation to instill the lessons being drawn out by these experimental units in the future.

Other key questions the Army is trying to answer related to scaling is what is the official number of low-cost technology — from small drones to even raspberry pi’s — that a unit requires and is authorized, something referred to in military parlance as Modified Table of Organization and Equipment, or MTOE.

“We need to have the flexibility of units [where] you have a certain number of UAS. That’s why we’re talking about low cost to be able to train. That’s why we’re talking about modular. It gets added and making those adjustments,” George said.

The ultimate goal is to become more modular in which sensors and systems can be taken off a piece of hardware and placed on another if there’s an advancement or a new platform is a better host for technology, with George offering the analogy to rails on an M4 rifle.

“We’ll have to be nimble. I think we can use tech to actually do that. I always think about Walmart that can inventory a huge, large, passively, that system that we can do that … You can train with a lot of this stuff and then have some of the higher-end stuff that you saw with what’s available,” he said.

Officials also need to ensure the lessons are captured for doctrine and training given this will have wide-sweeping implications for how capabilities are employed and how units operate on the battlefield.

“We had our G3 down here, G8 and everybody else is that we understand process-wise, in the building, what the frictions are at every level and everybody’s doing their piece to understand,” George said. “How is this going to impact this level of formation in the field — not what’s best for the program or all those other things or what’s easiest or what is going to make the biggest difference at this level. That’s our culture that we have to change here to match this culture down there.”

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The so-called aerial tier network extension concept envisions putting radios in the air to allow greater connectivity of forces that might be dispersed on the battlefield, or, in an Asia-Pacific scenario, thicken the network from dense foliage interference.

“It’s just another way to extend the network … Being out in the jungle and being in the Pacific, it’s probably one of the hardest places to really get the mesh network actually be robust,” Col. Shermoan Daiyaan, project manager for tactical radios at program executive office for command, control, communications-tactical, said in an interview. “These are just layers of PACE and tools for extending the network that we are working.”

PACE refers to primary, alternate, contingency and emergency forms of communication. Units must have multiple comms paths available in case one is thwarted by jamming or other challenges from a contested environment.

Project Convergence is hosted by the Army and provides an experimentation venue for the joint services and multinational partners to test capabilities and concepts associated with the Pentagon’s top priority called Combined Joint All-Domain and Control (CJADC2).

The CJADC2 concept aims to make systems across the entire battlespace from all the U.S. military services and key international partners, more effectively and holistically networked and connected to provide the right data to commanders for better and faster decision-making.

The Army’s network team, along with the future vertical lift cross-functional team, has been experimenting with the aerial tier network extension in the Pacific already with the 25^th Infantry Division. Officials said they’ve had success bridging the network over mountain ranges and through dense foliage.

One of the main systems tested at Project Convergence was the K1000ULE from Kraus, a Group 2 UAS. The drone is solar powered and can fly at 18,000 feet for very long periods of time.

For phase two of the Project Convergence Capstone 4 experiment, Army forces will be at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. Officials noted that with the K1000ULE flying at that height, the entire National Training Center — which is roughly the size of Rhode Island — can be covered, as the drone will likely be flying the whole time.

Capstone 4 will focus on increasing the aerial tier resiliency and range to enable freedom of maneuver as well as command-and-control on the move.

The ongoing experimentation is helping the Army figure out a variety of concepts associated with the technology such as what types of platforms work well, what distances have to be covered, how high to fly, who operates the systems and at what echelon they’re managed.

While the K1000ULE is one aircraft the service is experimenting with, there are other unmanned systems that could be used — such as the Altius-600 — that fly at lower altitudes, or even manned platforms such as helicopters.

There could also be a series of aircraft working together to extend and thicken the network, all of which may have access to different waveforms and satellite communication constellations.

“The beauty of mesh networking is every radio, every node becomes a retrans. You will use this when you are having difficulty or you’re going to need to extend your range from what’s expected. I think the bigger places when you have deep and dense foliage and need to maybe bridge two different networks as well, two different units,” Daiyaan said.

Daiyaan also noted that this capability could save soldiers’ lives because it reduces the need for troops to move to vulnerable positions to extend the network.

“When I was a private, you would be up on the hill because you needed to extend the network. You’d be up on the hill and that’s the first place that they bomb,” he said. “In this case, you can move the hill and move the network.”

However, the drone itself could also become a target for the enemy. As part of experimentation, officials are gaming when to send it up and how to also management the signature it puts out. Modern and sophisticated adversaries can now pinpoint forces based on their electromagnetic signatures — meaning the simple pushing of a radio could be a death sentence.

“Everybody’s been very conscious of their signature management. But in this case, the version that we experimented with out in 25th had multiple payloads. Each waveform has different characteristics and it’s configurable as well,” Daiyaan said. “Having multiple payloads on one aircraft helps with signature management and PACE.”

Ultimately, it’s about increasing resiliency and options for commanders. Daiyaan said the combination of these types of unmanned aerial systems — along with the tethered drones that forces can use to extend the network as they move around the battlefield and take them up and down quickly — provides more options.

Future plans include taking the capability to the 101^st Airborne Division for further experimentation, Daiyaan said, to continue to refine it, let units learn how to employ it and place it where they need it.

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In the industrial model that the military has traditionally operated within, programs and capabilities were mostly hardware based and in a fixed manner that took many years to produce with little room for adjustments along the way or once fielded.

Given the highly dynamic operating environment the military will find itself in against sophisticated threats – and the fact much of what the Pentagon is now fielding is underpinned by software — the Army wants more flexibility.

“I also want to say that we’ve got to look ahead to experimenting with different buying models. Here’s the problem we fundamentally have: Look back to 2016, 2017, where there was a lot of discussion about acquisition reform — it was about how do you get to production faster on new critical technology,” Gabe Camarillo, the undersecretary of the Army, said Thursday at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference.  

The challenge now, he explained, is what happens if forces must continuously upgrade that technology and shift gears after they get on an initial production contract.

“That presents some tension,” he said, “because the model right now, which is industrial, every company, every vendor is assuming a long production sale … But at the same time, we need to be able to pivot as quickly as we need to as the pace of technology changes.”

“We also need to figure out how do we reallocate the costs and risks associated with rapidly evolving hardware and software upgrades, especially as all of our weapons systems are now software defined?” Camarillo added.

The Army has exercised some of this flexibility in the past, most specifically beginning with its tactical network modernizations dating back to 2017.

At that time, the Army determined its network was not survivable against sophisticated threats, stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and it unveiled a new paradigm that sought to be more iterative and flexible. As it moved to modernize its network — called the integrated tactical network, which consisted of a combination of program of record and commercial-off-the-shelf tools — it developed what it described as capability sets, as a means of providing technologies to units every two years, each building upon the previous delivery.

Under these capability sets, the Army heavily leveraged middle tier acquisition and sought a flexible approach where as newer, more affordable or more flexible capabilities became available, the Army could pivot its approach to insert those new technologies.

Camarillo noted they are looking at exploring more as-a-service models across the Army. He referenced enterprise software as a prime example as well as satellite communications as-a-service — for which the Army inked a contract recently — and a potential radio as-a-service effort.

“Buying that and experimenting with that as a service where we don’t necessarily have to buy the same terminal and the same piece of hardware equipment, but we can essentially provide a revenue stream over time and share that risk with industry,” he said.

Camarillo told reporters on the sidelines of the conference that while he doesn’t need new authorities from Congress, the key is being clear with industry.

“We just need to make sure that where we are very transparent with industry is in those portfolios, can we come up with a buying model that makes the most sense?” he said. “I’ll just point out SATCOM terminals. That’s a great example. There are significant amounts of investment. But there’s also a lot of customers in that supplier base … Can we just provide you an as-a-service revenue stream and you guys provide us the upgraded hardware and software over time?”

This transparency is important as industry develops investment strategies and production models based on the government’s approach and contracting model. The Army must ensure industry can support that and isn’t caught off guard, otherwise it potentially won’t be able to meet the demand or provide the capabilities that soldiers need.

In line with these efforts, the Army is also looking at its ability to reprogram funds.

“In the absence of flexible funding, the mechanism we have is a reprogramming, which we do a lot of over the course of the year to be able to meet those adapting requirements and emerging technologies. We do a lot of that and we’ve been doing a lot of that for many, many years,” Camarillo told reporters. “How effective it can be, I think just depends on, again, it’s on us to be able to explain what the needs are.”

Lack of proper funding from Congress is what hamstrings the Army the most, he suggested.

“What challenges us more than anything is when you’re in a [continuing resolution] for more than half of the year, you can’t reprogram. You can have the most flexible funding you want to have, but if you can’t use it, or you don’t have it at the right levels, it’s a conversation that really stops dead in its tracks,” he said.

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As the Army transitions from the global war on terror to great power competition and large-scale combat operations, the division will be the main unit of action as opposed to the brigade.

Up to this point, the Army’s integrated tactical network — a combination of program-of-record systems and commercial off-the-shelf tools — had been tested with brigades and below.

The recent event took place with the 25^th Infantry Division at the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center in Hawaii. Officials noted that the unit liked the equipment and employed it in ways that had not been anticipated.

“They employ the ITN different than anybody has employed the ITN to date,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control, communications-tactical, told DefenseScoop at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting Dec. 12 in Savannah, Georgia. “They had employed their ITN in a really, really unique way.”

Officials explained commanders at various echelons took the technologies within the ITN and employed them based on their specific priorities.

“What they did differently was … the brigade commander said, ‘I want to be able to choose where I put my capabilities. I don’t want someone telling me where to put my capabilities,’” Col. Shermoan Daiyaan, project manager for tactical radios at PEO C3T, told DefenseScoop. “What they did is they would shift capabilities exactly where they needed them, not necessarily where we designed them. Then when we issued the capabilities to the division, they controlled the capabilities and put them places where they needed them, not necessarily where we thought. Maybe the capability isn’t with a company commander because in that particular phase of the fight, it needed to be more capability with the platoon leader.”

The key, officials stressed, is that nothing about the core architecture or capabilities provided from the ITN changed, but the ITN allowed the flexibility for commanders to fight the way they need to — a feature of the modernized design.

“The commander said, ‘I want to fight this way. Let me make my network work in how I want to fight.’ To me, that’s the kind of flexibility that we need to have in our network that was kind of baked into the ITN program,” Kitz said. “The division commander at 25th had his way of employing. I think every division commander is going to have their own way. How do we make that more simple and enable that?”

Forces were generally pleased with the capabilities they received and the flexibility they provided, according to officials.

“What we got everywhere we went resoundingly was, ‘I like my ITN, I wish I had more.’ That was a common theme of what they said: It is doing what I need it to do,” Daiyaan said.

In addition to the added flexibility the ITN affords commanders relative to the legacy capability that was primarily at the halt, it provides significantly more power in terms of redundancy, transport options, reduced complexity and speed to establish comms.

“Non-ITN units are still really at the halt and do not have this flexible, robust radio infrastructure to allow them to communicate both voice and data,” Kitz said.

Daiyaan said in some cases, from a radio perspective, between the single- and two-channel radios, ITN provides four to five times the capability of the legacy technology.

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The service is moving away from nomenclature for its integrated tactical network — a combination of program-of-record systems and commercial off-the-shelf tools — that was used in the past with capability sets. These capability sets sought to provide technologies to units every two years, each building upon the previous delivery. While the multi-year network modernization effort undertaken by the Army around 2017 has always been an iterative approach of sorts, the service is shifting the vernacular and perception.

Part of it is due to the fact the Army as a whole is moving to divisions as the main units of action rather than brigades, as was the case for the last 20 years of the counterterror fight. The initial capability sets were very brigade focused.

Additionally, the mindset shift is to emphasize the more iterative approach.

“I think it’s little bit of a difference, but I don’t think it’s significantly different and here’s why: We identified those two-year cap sets as target points. And I think unfortunately, the narrative kind of was: we’re not iterating over those two years, we’re just looking at that one point in time. That wasn’t true,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control, communications-tactical, told DefenseScoop during a September interview. “I think …part of this is some messaging. Those programs were iterating … I think this narrative of we’re touching you every two years, that to me was too parochial.”

Kitz said the paradigm change is each of the programs that are part of the integrated tactical network will iterate more rapidly in the future.

He stressed that he doesn’t want to take a one-size-fits-all approach to the network. There are some slices that will have to be treated differently than others.

“Something that’s implemented in the cloud that can take updates more easily is going to get updated more rapidly. Some capabilities that have to get touched directly, HMS radios, they’re going to get updated at a slower rate. But we’re going to think critically about each of those programs and how they iterate,” he said.

On the flip side, the cloud can’t be the end-all and be-all approach for solutions either.

“The cloud doesn’t work for a company commander who can’t access the cloud. We can’t just be parochial and say, ‘We’ll access the cloud and that’s how you’ll get your capability,’” Kitz said. “That one-size-fits-all approach is not going to work for our network. We have to think critically about okay, what are the options we can provide so that you can implement the network in a way that’s more flexible?”

Through this iterative approach, and as the Army is maturing the way it modernizes its network, it is looking at more coordination across the PEO and portfolios and with other organizations.

Several of the modernization efforts are reliant on each other creating a reinforcing strategy. For example, as the Army is looking improve communications on the move for armored units, those efforts must be tied into modernizing command posts that must be more mobile as well. Data from one pilot must be fed to the other to inform the effort, and vice versa.

This iteration of design with pilots and assessments must become more rapid in order to crate that reinforcing approach, according to officials.

“Sometimes, I would say maybe in the past 15, 20 years ago, you have stovepipes of excellence. We’re getting away from that and we’re talking to our fellow PMs to make sure that we [look at other people’s] requirements and then of course, our requirements for providing an on-the-move capability to the armored formations,” Col. Stu McMillan, project manager for tactical network at PEO C3T, who is leading the on-the-move comms pilot for armored formations, told DefenseScoop.

There are technologies that several offices could be experimenting with that can have applications across portfolios.

“Secure Wi-Fi, connecting dispersed mobile command posts — secure Wi-Fi is one of those systems that’s in my net mod portfolio. And then also look at the on-move kit as well, that informs our [armored formation network] on the move,” McMillan said.

This coordination is also spanning across PEOs and other organizations in the Army as well. The network team does not own the platforms for which they must be outfitting with new radios and communications gear. Outfitting new radios and comms equipment presents integration challenges given space constraints on platforms and power issues.

PEO C3T has begun partnering with the ground vehicle and aviation communities early on in design to mitigate integration challenges.

Additionally, there is more coordination between the requirements community to ensure that new vehicles and network requirements jive. The Army doesn’t want to run into an integration challenge given the platform community and network community designed systems that work by themselves, but now can’t be put together.

The Maneuver Center of Excellence is beginning to host PEO-level summits to align requirements across these various communities.

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