NGC2, one of the Army’s top priorities, is a clean-slate design for how the service communicates on the battlefield and passes data for operations, providing commanders and units a new approach to information sharing and C2 through agile and software-based architectures. The Army plans to spend almost $3 billion on the effort over the next fiscal year across procurement and research and development funds.

The $99.6 million other transaction authority agreement will span 11 months and cover Anduril’s work to prototype a system for 4^th Infantry Division, which will scale the capability all the way up to the division level. Prior, it was outfitted to an armored battalion, as well as higher headquarters elements, and tested at Project Convergence Capstone 5 at Fort Irwin, California, in March.

Anduril’s partners on the contract include Palantir, Striveworks, Govini, Instant Connect Enterprise, Research Innovations, Inc., and Microsoft, the company said in a statement Friday.

The OTA requires the team to provide an integrated and scalable suite of command and control warfighting capabilities across hardware, software and applications, all through a common and integrated data layer, the Army said.

The Army has pushed teams of industry partners to work on the NGC2 effort, calling for “self-organized” teams.

Anduril had been working previously on the NGC2 effort to produce a prototype that was tested at Project Convergence, along with other vendors.

The prototype award is not the end of the road for other vendors seeking entry into the NGC2 program. The Army said additional vendors can seek to participate through an open commercial solutions offering with additional OTAs expected to be awarded later in fiscal 2026 for prototyping with other units such as 25^th Infantry Division and III Corps headquarters.

“NGC2 is not a one-and-done contract, but a long-term effort of continuous contracting and investment in the technologies that will deliver needed overmatch for our force,” said Brig. Gen. Shane Taylor, program executive officer for command, control, communications and networks.

Army Futures Command has been in charge of the prototyping effort to date, testing a proof of principle and then a proof of concept to demonstrate what is possible, while the program office has been working on the eventual program of record, devising a contracting strategy and seeking vendors.

Army officials have maintained they want to inject and maintain a high level of competition within the program. If contractors aren’t performing, they will seek to build in mechanisms to offboard them and onboard new vendors.

Similarly, the constant competition is also aimed at avoiding vendor lock-in where one partner holds the bulk of the program for an extended period.

The commercial solutions offering allows the Army to maintain a continuous open solicitation with specific “windows” for decision points, the service said, providing opportunities for industry teams aligning incentives and continuously onboarding new vendors as the capability evolves.

“NGC2 uses a combination of flexible and innovative contracting techniques. This is a completely non-traditional, unbureaucratic way to equip Soldiers with the capabilities they need, using expedited contracting authorities,” said Danielle Moyer, executive director of Army Contracting Command – Aberdeen Proving Ground.  

The prototype OTA will allow the Army to continue its momentum toward delivering a solution for units while the commercial solutions offering enables the service to keep looking for capabilities to add to the NGC2 architecture in the future, the service said.

4^th Infantry Division will take the NGC2 system to Project Convergence Capstone 6 next year to test it out in a division holistically, to include the headquarters and enabling units, which have typically been neglected with communication network upgrades.

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Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, who heads program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, is retiring July 24, according to a post on LinkedIn. In his place, Brig. Gen. Kevin Chaney will be taking over. Chaney is currently the acting program executive officer for command, control, communications and networks.

Barker has held the role since April of 2023, having been the deputy for two years prior, capping off a 34-year military career that started as an enlisted soldier.

PEO IEW&S is perhaps the most expansive and diverse organization of its kind, responsible for delivering, among other things, electronic warfare; biometric systems; intelligence capabilities that span ground and air domains; position, navigation and timing gear; space systems; and offensive and defensive cyber tools for both the Army and the joint cyber mission force at U.S. Cyber Command.

Chaney comes to IEW&S with a long history in the acquisition community, most recently as the program manager for Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft.

Brig. Gen. Shane Taylor will take his place at C3N, a familiar face there. Taylor will take over effective June 30, according to a spokesperson.

C3N is currently delivering on the chief of staff of the Army’s number one priority, Next Generation Command and Control, which aims to provide commanders and units with a new approach to manage information, data, and command and control with agile and software-based architectures.

Taylor comes to the job having just been chief of staff for the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. He’s had multiple stints at the PEO, previously serving as program manager for Tactical Network and product manager for Tactical Mission Command.

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A request for information, released Monday, seeks vendors’ input that aligns with NGC2 contracting priorities.

NGC2 is a top modernization priority for the Army. As the service transitions from over 20 years of operations against technologically inferior enemies to preparations for large-scale combat operations across vast distances against sophisticated adversaries, the current systems and architectures for command and control are not suitable for success, senior officials contend.

The forthcoming program aims to provide commanders and units a new approach to information, data and command and control through agile and software-based architectures.

Top Army officials have stated they are approaching the program differently than others in the past, looking for a more collaborative process with industry to help guide where to go — an acknowledgement that the government doesn’t always have the right answers and needs help from those at the tip of the latest and greatest tech. The service is also looking to tailor the contracting strategy differently than previous efforts.

“Market research and industry feedback is key to shaping smart contracts,” Danielle Moyer, executive director of Army Contracting Command, said in a statement. “We not only want to make sure we have the appropriate criteria to select the best affordable solutions, but that we are really keying in on post-award. By appropriately aligning incentives and disincentives to drive the right behaviors and competition from the awardees long-term, we’ll ensure that we’re not only getting the best deal, but the best solutions.”

The awards the Army is planning are structured to enable multiple iterative and competitive opportunities for contractors to provide technology to NGC2. The Army notes that no one company can provide a total solution for the initiative, and thus it will need to onboard vendor teams for additional components and layers available after the initial prototyping awards.

“The government’s actually not really good at building escape hatches into our contracts, and we need to be. As much as we’re talking about bringing on the right players, hey, we’re going to get rid of the wrong players. If we aren’t being good teammates and you aren’t being good teammates, or somebody out there isn’t being a good teammate, we don’t want to team with them,” Alex Miller, chief technology officer for the chief of staff of the Army, said in December at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting regarding the approach the service will be taking with industry on NGC2. “There are differences of how we’re approaching this, not only to make sure that taxpayers get the value for their dollar, but also soldiers get what is actually useful to them.”

Officials want industry to weigh in on a draft prototype statement of objectives and a draft indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity performance work statement. Draft requests for proposals will follow this RFI, slated for late January, with a final RFP planned tentatively for February.

“Contracting and delivery of Next Generation Command and Control capabilities will be deliberate and iterative, geared toward commander needs and dependent upon the innovation of industry,” said Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control, communications and network. “This RFI is another step in continuous iteration with industry and operational users, so that as the Army responds to changing missions, we can rapidly bring in the right capabilities to deliver operationally relevant solutions.”

While the program office will be running the eventual program of record, for which contracts are expected to be awarded by May 2025, the C2 cross-functional team and Army Futures Command have been running prototyping efforts to help inform what’s needed. Those efforts will culminate at the Project Convergence Capstone 5 event later this year.

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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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“I think that’s what’s coming next … I think the next part of this network journey is really our investment strategy around tactical radios and tactical voice and data, and what does that look like for the Army,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control, communications and networks, said in an interview at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting. “How do we diversify? I would love to have a really diverse set of tactical infrastructure where I have multiple companies working in a really diverse environment, so a division may implement three different companies’ technologies, because that’s what’s the best network for them. Today, we’re too brittle in our approach to the tactical echelon in order to do that.”

He noted that the Army will likely always be on a journey with regard to who gets what radios, be it single channel, two channel, or sensitive but unclassified-encrypted.

Efforts such as Command and Control Fix — an initiative aimed at bolstering soldiers’ so-called “fight tonight” ability by using commercial and existing Army gear differently as a bridge before Next Generation C2 capabilities come online — taught the service important lessons on who needs what types of radios at what level.

“SBU-E and C2 Fix taught us we need a lot less exquisite radios in certain places. But [other communities], like aviation, needed more exquisite radios,” Kitz said. “We learned a lot about the distribution. I think over the next year, our focus now on the radios is: what is the right investment strategy in radios?”

He acknowledged that the Army in the past has been myopic when it comes to purchasing radios and radios acquired for a specific purpose or platform. But going forward, the service must be more flexible and better forecast its needs to industry to make the investments to stay competitive.

Officials in the program office over the next six months will be undergoing a collaborative effort with industry for the right investment strategy on radios. They’ll also be conducting an as-a-service pilot with 3rd Infantry Division, with the goal of getting two vendors on contract in first quarter of fiscal 2026 — a type of effort the Army has embarked on before.

“Radios-on-demand makes sense for the Army. Having the right radio with the right training when I need it is a whole lot better than a radio sitting in a room for two years,” Kitz said. “It’s absolutely worth us giving it a full go to see if this will work for the Army and working with these radio companies on — they need to make money, we need to be in a positive business relationship — how can they make money? How can we be in that relationship? We’re going to give it a go with the pilot in early FY ’26.”

The service wants to ensure soldiers have modernized radios that also make sense for their job roles.

“More cheaper radios in the end gets a lot more radios and all the best to the guys [who] are using, as opposed to buying really high-end radios that can [do] a whole bunch of things. In [the post-9/11 Global War on Terror] that may have made sense, but in a lot of cases today, it doesn’t,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, director of the C2 cross-functional team, said in an interview.

It ultimately comes down to radios and capabilities that enable soldiers to effectively communicate, be it via voice or text chat.

“Commanders want options,” Ellis said. “Commanders are looking for options for command and control.”

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As the Army continues to modernize for large-scale combat operations — shifting away from the global war on terror against technologically inferior enemies in relatively confined spaces to competition with sophisticated nation-states that operate over vast distances — it’s looking for more survivable and modular capabilities.

Part of that effort is folding portfolios under the purview of what the Army is calling configurable C2, a guiding document that will help the government and industry understand the service’s needs. Rather than being very prescriptive, as similar documents have been in the past articulating the exact parameters that a certain capability must possess, this document is more capability-focused rather than zeroing in on specific technologies or specifications.

This is meant to allow commanders flexibility.

“What I find is that as I talk to commanders, that every division commander has a different vision for how they’re going to fight their division. Actually, I’ve talked to division commanders that commanded the same division at different points, and their vision for what a command post should look like was entirely different,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, director of the command and control cross-functional team, said in an interview at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting. “I don’t want to say it’s purely personality driven, but part of the approach is, let’s give commanders the building blocks for command and control and let them assemble them how they want, what makes sense to them, because their missions change, their personalities change, the task. They could go from one large combat here in the Pacific to Europe. It’s an entirely different fight.”

The Army has been trying to introduce more flexibility into systems, not outfitting everyone with the same gear given each unit fights differently and in a different part of the world, which is somewhat of a paradigm shift.

If the service needs to get more specific about its needs, there will be annexes in the configurable C2 document that can be added or subtracted over time.

Chief among the new or updated capabilities are command posts. The Army is doing away with its Command Post Integrated Infrastructure (CPI2), and looking for something more flexible and tailorable.

CPI2 was too focused on specific capabilities — initially the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles variants, which are very large — and that was too rigid, according to officials.

“We are reimagining this program around modularity and options,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control, communications and networks, said in an interview, calling the new effort “modular command post.”

“Gen. Ellis is going to talk about how he’s reworking the requirement document to give me flexibility to go to commanders and give options around: If they’re an ISV unit, what are the options that they get? If they’re a Stryker unit, what are the options to get armor information on the move? What is your options in a Bradley, in an Abrams, in a Humvee, in a JLTV? You name the combat platform? Or what is the modular solution with 101st [Airborne Division]?”

The Army is thinking about configurable and modular command posts in many ways, to include power sources and survivability against a variety of threats.

“It’s not a new and novel technology, but it’s really important for how they configure their CPs and what batteries they’re carrying,” Kitz said. “I think survivability is another. I keep hitting this, how that CP is survivable, whether that’s in their network, whether that’s their EMS, whether that’s how they run security. Like, all of that is related into their command post. Having a generic document so that I can provide those technology options, I think, is absolutely key.”

The Army will keep working with units and gaining feedback to continue to make improvements as needed.

In the near term, the funds that were previously allocated for CPI2, which weren’t a lot, will be folded into the new effort and the Army will be working with Congress on how to reestablish the reimagined program.

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Historically, aerial platforms only had chat functions and could only send position location information. But this summer, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division conducted a 500-mile air assault from its home station at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Fort Johnson, Louisiana, to kick off its Joint Readiness Training Center rotation. For that trek, the Army’s network team outfitted helicopters with new communications equipment — such as putting HMS manpack radios, the same that are used by dismounted soldiers, into helicopters, providing MUOS beyond-line-of-sight satellite communications — that yielded levels of data and connectivity not seen before.

“What we’re working on right now is taking that particular set and looking at possibility of deploying it downrange, so we can continue to get feedback. Also, we’re looking at ruggedizing and then potentially coming up with a core set of kit that will go to all of our [transforming-in-contact] units,” Col. Shermoan Daiyaan, project manager for mission command at program executive office for command, control, communications and network, said in an interview at the annual AUSA conference last week. “We’re trying to get to where we will provide all of the [transforming-in-contact] units enough capabilities to where we can continue to get feedback, to include somebody to be able to take it downrange.”

Daiyaan was referring to the aerial defense kits that were outfitted to the aircraft that could possibly be deployed outside the U.S.

Transforming-in-contact refers to the Army’s plan 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. 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.

So far, the experimental units include 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division — the first mobile brigade combat team — 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division — experimenting as the light brigade combat team — and 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division.  

Officials explained that these capabilities provided an unprecedented level of communication and situational awareness from the air picture that wasn’t previously possible.

“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 in September. “Everybody having common [situational awareness] of what is happening, whether you’re in the air or on the ground.” 

Updated capabilities allowed forces to maintain a solid common operating picture to effectively make decisions at the speed of need, officials said.

“The commanders at echelon were able to make decisions without picking up a radio because they had the awareness and understanding of where they were in time and space, because of all the data they had at their fingertips that they could do that,” Maj. Brad Anderson, assistant product manager for helicopter and multi-mission radios, said. “Where, traditionally, somebody [would] have to pick up a phone or pick up a radio and say, ‘Hey, you, this is me,’ and they’d have to respond to get a SITREP [situational report]. Commanders now with this capability, with the aerial tier, we’re able to synchronize effects to deliver those close combat forces into the box during that period of darkness.”

One of the key lessons the Army learned through this process is the TSM waveform for software-defined radios worked very well in the air.

“Our data speaks to the ability to talk across the tyranny of distance, in a long-range, large-scale air assault. [It] provides for its commanders and effectively provides them with a continuous data stream and means to communicate across time and distance so that they can effectively make those decisions,” Anderson said.

This unprecedented level of situational awareness didn’t mean there weren’t challenges, however.

The software used to underpin those command-and-control tools was spread across three different programs that live within various program executive offices.

“One of the friction points … one of the challenges we had was our TAK [Tactical Assault Kit] baseline. Within that, just in the back of an aircraft, you had Air Warrior, Nett Warrior devices on soldiers and you had Mounted Mission Command. All three were on different baselines and had interoperability challenges,” Daiyaan said. “We got all these different systems on different program offices, different PEOs, different budget lines. We need to get this under control so we can work more seamlessly for a commander. That was one of the big friction points that we experienced.”

As the Army is working to modernize, officials have come to the realization that the entire acquisition community must be integrated together. Daiyaan is now in charge of leading the enterprise between several program executive offices to serve as the focal point of integration.

Officials also noted that some of the feedback from troops included there needs to be better antenna placement optimization on the helicopters in order to enable stronger signals, particularly MUOS.

Some of the other soldier feedback included various communications options for forces, something the military refers to as PACE, or primary, alternate, contingency and emergency communications.

“Leaders have a lot of PACE. It’s like double PACE, PACE squared,” Daiyaan said. When “the commander had a couple of dead spots that he would hit on the tactical systems, then he was able to leverage the [in-case-of-emergency] capabilities provided to do radio over IP. When the radio was struggling, he was able to pick up his phone and hit the radio net and go up and over [mobile broadband kit] and back out … We have really evolved away from transport agnostic to really transport diversity.”

Elsewhere within the aerial tier of the network, the Army is continuing to experiment with its aerial tier network extension concept, which 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.

This differs from other efforts previously to use tethered drones given these systems — particularly the K1000ULE from Kraus, a Group 2 UAS that is solar powered and can fly at 18,000 feet for very long periods of time — can go much higher.

Daiyaan said that went out to the 25th Infantry Division in the Pacific, and “with the TSM in it continues to win” because it can get above the canopy and is another tool in the commander’s inventory.

Questions the Army is looking to answer through continued experimentation on that front include: Who owns the drones? Is it the network staff section at a particular echelon? Is it an operational commander that can choose to put other payloads on them?

A commander might have to be the owner given operational considerations when deploying them, such as electronic signature, their likelihood of being shot down or if they’ll be contested.

“Those are all part of the decisions that we’re trying to work through,” Daiyaan said, adding PEO Aviation owns the asset, and project manager for tactical radios within C3N is supporting the effort with the radio.

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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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The efforts surround what the Army calls “Next Gen C2,” a top priority of the service’s highest leadership to include the chief of staff and Futures Command.

Officials have stated that current capabilities are not adequate to dominate on the modern battlefield against a sophisticated adversary. Thus, the service is attempting to overhaul how its systems are architected to improve data sharing and communications.

The organization held an industry day for Next Gen C2 on Sept. 16 and released a request for information Sept. 30 for input on the acquisition approach, contracting strategy and possible scope for a minimum viable product. The feedback from the RFI is expected to shape a draft request for proposals that the Army hopes to have ready by mid-November.

Both officials and industry sources have indicated they want to have an open dialogue to inform what the future capability looks like.

To set the foundation of Next Gen C2, the Army is initially focusing on a data layer.

“We think that’s centered around a data architecture, a data layer. We think that the initial foray into that would be some applications around fires and collaboration and some common services across the data layer for chat, for PLI, for graphics,” Mark Kitz, the program executive officer for command, control, communications and networks, said in an interview. “These are really just some initial ideas that we’re exploring with industry, but we really want this to be informed by industry.”

One of the challenges that Futures Command and the acquisition teams are trying to solve is that currently, data and applications aren’t standardized. They’re also siloed and can’t necessarily share seamlessly.

“What we don’t want to have happen is every different specialty in the Army has their own box and they’re trying to make the boxes communicate,” Col. Matt Skaggs, director of tactical applications and architecture at Army Futures Command, said in an interview.

Capabilities such as the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System and the Army Intelligence Data Platform, along with others, don’t necessarily talk seamlessly to one another, Skaggs said, adding: “What we want to build is with the integrated data layer, applications that have all those warfighting function workflows baked in, so we don’t have to have boxes talking to boxes, and all of those applications that I mentioned before are converged onto one user interface.”

In trying to do things differently this time around, the Army is taking lessons from its Command Post Computing Environment (CPCE), a program that began around seven years ago. It’s a web-enabled capability that sought to consolidate mission systems and programs into a single user interface at command posts to provide a common operational picture.

Officials and industry sources noted that with CPCE, the Army tried to do too much and the technology was not mature enough yet. While successful at delivering a C2 situational awareness tool, the infrastructure was not built in a way to share data across different functions such as intelligence, fires, electronic warfare and sustainment, among others.

“The technology of today will allow us to more robustly build a data layer that our applications then can sit on without us molding into one data model and molding into one application or one commercial infrastructure,” Kitz said. “One of the big lessons learned here is ensuring that these applications, these disparate capabilities, these warfighting functions can innovate within their domain area, but sharing data across a common layer, across a common data mesh … We’re doing this very differently by stimulating a dialogue with industry and using their input along with experimentation, along with the lessons learned of CPCE, and really more smartly looking at Next Gen C2 in terms of what is the art of today and the art of the possible.”

Officials noted that the CPCE architecture had to have a data translation device in the middle of all functions to make sure data models could talk to other data models — a cumbersome and unreliable process.

“That’s fundamentally what we’re trying to solve with our integrated base data layer,” Skaggs said. “There’s no more data translation. We have integrated data ingest point where all the data is coming to one place. It’s being curated, normalized, correlated and then pushed up to the applications equally. Then those applications equally feed that data layer, so everyone’s talking to one another.”

Also, as part of the effort, the Army is working on mitigating dependencies on the cloud.

“From the network perspective is edge compute, placing a lot of emphasis on how do we and the vendors that we’ve worked with there … best process data at the edge so we’re minimizing the amount of data that needs to reach back to the cloud,” Col. Mike Kaloostian, director of transportation and network security for Army Futures Command, said. “It’s like our transition from being completely dependent on the cloud to being too enabled by the cloud. Just once again, understanding if an adversary takes our connectivity or at least reduces our connectivity to the cloud at a certain phase of an operation, per se, and we’re still going to be able to process the data that we’re going to need, our commanders will still be able to see and visualize and collaborate with his or her teams and subordinate units, so we can still do that. That’s been really our focus is thinking about that a little bit differently than the Army has done in the past.”

The service wants the Next Gen C2 efforts to have open competition from the beginning and through the lifecycle of the program.

As part of that approach, there will be multiple contract efforts, vehicles and portfolios as opposed to a single, monolithic award.

“This is going to be a portfolio of contracts, SBIRs, whatever we determined for this limited prototyping. But we are going to absolutely look at all of the tools available to us in terms of contracting,” Kitz said. “We see this very much as a multiple award. At industry day, we made it very clear, even in the limited prototyping, we expect to award to two or three vendors so that all three of those vendors have opportunities with units to deliver capability and prove that they can get after this data layer with a diverse application set sitting on top of it. We anticipate, even in the very early stages, of carrying multiple vendors. And we hope that we get proposed very different approaches to how they would solve the problem, so that we can learn about it and as we go to minimum viable capabilities with units, we can learn and iterate over time.”

C2 Fix and the bridge

As it eyes next-generation command and control, the Army is also pursing an effort dubbed C2 Fix, which focuses on so-called “fight tonight” capabilities, essentially improving the current systems in preparation for a more permanent next-generation capability.

This initiative will serve as a solutions bridge until future capabilities are developed and fielded to soldiers.

A key aspect of both efforts relates to transport, according to officials. That includes things like proliferated low-Earth orbit transport for satellite communications, latency requirements and how to obfuscate in the spectrum.

“We need to understand, and our commanders need to understand, what his or her signature looks like. That’s a survivability thing, so it’s important … that they understand what they look like. We give them the capability to understand what they look like from a spectrum standpoint, the EMS. But how you obfuscate, how you use decoys to be able to fool an enemy [is important] as well,” Kaloostian said. “To me, it’s related to Next Gen C2. It’s not at the data layer and all the stuff that Matt’s working on to make this really a data-centric C2 capability, but it is helping us think through areas that we’re making gains as an Army right now, what needs to carry over in the future, just knowing what the future fights could potentially look like.”

C2 Fix is also providing critical lessons for disaggregating forces and command posts across the battlespace to make them more mobile, and thus harder for enemies to target.

Getting to the next generation

While the Army has begun the process of reaching out to industry to set up an acquisition approach, it has also done much experimentation and science-and-technology efforts.

These activities have sought to define what the art of the possible is while developing ideas for what an architecture could look like or is needed.

The service has contracted out to a few companies such as Anduril, Palantir and Google to test multiple different options for mission command applications and provide commanders options for different viewpoints of data.

The recent NetModX experiment at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in September allowed the Army to test tenets of the network in a contested environment.

“At NetModX, we took the real network and contested that environment, … put that architecture in a much more scaled version of it that put that architecture on the real networks, and then jammed and pushed off waveforms and learned a whole bunch about what was working and not working,” Maj. Gen Patrick Ellis, director of the network cross-functional team, said. “I think industry, our industry partners are learning a ton as well because they got to see that this is what happens on an unstable network and things that just is not part of the normal business development process.”

The next step will be putting these Next Gen C2 concepts to the test at the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone 5 experiment in March 2025.

“That’s the proof of principle event. This is our Super Bowl from an experimentation standpoint. This is where everything’s going to come together,” Kaloostian said. “We will push more data than we have to this point and we will go through a more realistic scenario than we have done to this point. We will be contested in the spectrum as well. It is going to be very complicated. But the intent or what [AFC commander] Gen. [James] Rainey and [Chief of Staff] Gen. [Randy] George — the intent here is, when we get done with this proof of principle, that it validates that we’re at that prototype level, that minimum viable product. That’s where … Mr. Kitz and the team takes over.”

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The organization previously known as program executive office for command, control, communications-tactical (PEO C3T) has been rebranded as program executive office for command, control, communications and network, or PEO C3N.

The redesignation is in line with the Army’s vision for a unified network that eschews the historical tactical and enterprise distinctions. Historically, the service has siloed its network from enterprise and tactical and across each theater, which has limited its ability to share information and conduct operations.

In October of last year, the Army placed all of its network capabilities, tactical and enterprise, into PEO C3T from PEO enterprise information systems, with officials noting an expected name change for the organization.

“Today is a chance to come home and be part of a very significant and pivotal moment for this organization,” Lt. Gen. Rob Collins, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army, Army acquisition corps, said at Wednesday’s ceremony. “This is deeper than just a simple rebranding. This event signifies and recognizes the changing environment and how we must evolve, and the importance of our network and command and control capabilities.”

Moving enterprise capabilities over yielded a single organization across the entire Army that’s now responsible for all network procurement.

“With the addition of the enterprise network portfolios, we are now even better postured to provide enhanced high-speed, high-capacity voice, data and video communications for the force – all powered by a secure, holistic unified network,” Mark Kitz, PEO for C3N, said. “Over the past two years, we have already seen incredible progress towards this critical effort, including moving networked capabilities to the cloud and establish common data standards.”

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