The traditional acquisition system can take years from initial requirements to fielding meaning that by the time units received it, the capability could be outdated or didn’t work as intended.

“The American politicians over 30 years have harmed the American soldier, not necessarily intentionally in all instances, but they have let rational decision-making decay. They have a lot of calcified bureaucracy get in the way of doing what’s right,” Secretary Daniel Driscoll told reporters Thursday at the Pentagon. “We are changing that. From this moment forward, we are going to make every decision, and the only thing we are going to weigh is this good for the American soldier, does this make them more lethal, when we send them around the world to fight and kill on our behalf, does this increase the odds of them succeeding at that mission and coming home to their community safely?”

This comes on the heels of a memo signed Wednesday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth charging Driscoll to transform the Army by making it leaner through combining and slashing certain headquarters elements and changing how the service purchases capabilities, all in the name of prioritizing homeland defense and deterring China in the Indo-Pacific.

Driscoll noted that the Army going forward will eliminate obsolete equipment that continued to show up in motor pools despite soldiers wanting to get rid of them.

“All of these parochial interests and all of these lobbyists that crawl around this building and crawl around Congress, they have succeeded for far too long. The first thing is, we are going to start to cut the things we don’t want or need,” he said.

Gen. Randy George, chief of staff, noted how the Army last year canceled the RQ-7 Shadow drone program, a capability he said wasn’t very good when he was a brigade commander in Afghanistan in 2009.

“We just have to stop spending our money on things that we know are not going to make us more lethal,” George said.

Key to that effort is modular and open systems, something George has been pushing for the last year-plus. Officials didn’t outline any specific metrics they’d use to evaluate whether a program wasn’t meeting lethality standards, but they stressed they want to rely on commercially available, dual-use systems to get out of the game of custom-built systems as much as they can.

A prime example is the GM Defense-designed Infantry Squad Vehicle, an expeditionary vehicle based off a Chevy Colorado, with a special off-road kit that enhances capability across complex terrain.

“It’s already got consumer buy-in, it’s got a consumer demand signal that the company can build out manufacturing. It can model out what it needs. In the years where the United States Army has funding constraints or when it gets caught up in Congress, they’re not relying on us to keep their lights on,” Driscoll said. “That is the perfect kind of model for most. And much of our equipment should be these dual-use purposed vehicles and assets so that we’re capable of being a better partner. The things we’re going to try to avoid is being the sole customer of a business, because it’s not fair to us and it’s not fair to the business.”

George said officials want systems that can be easily modified and upgraded. The ISV provides a template to mount different sensors and systems that aren’t produced by GM Defense, a key aspect going forward for modularity.

He said any vehicle, for example, will need an active protection system, but some companies will be better at building them than others. The platform builder doesn’t have to be the one to develop the active protection system as well.

“We should be looking at acquisition in terms of what we can adopt. You have a program manager that says, ‘okay, I can adopt this technology because it’s out there and it’s dual use,’” George said. “There’s others that you could modify. ISV is an example. It’s dual use, but you can modify it.”

Driscoll pointed to the startup and venture capital world, which has in the last few years come booming into the defense sector. Many top officials in the Trump administration have private equity and venture capital backgrounds, so it’s no surprise the military would be looking to prioritize those types of avenues.

Notably, Secretary Hegseth early in his tenure signed a memo directing components to leverage the software acquisition pathway. In his memo last night, he directed the Army to expanded use of other transaction agreements. The Army has typically been the service with the most OTA use in the past.

“Startups in the venture capital community have solved this for a very long time. You create a minimum viable product, you get it into the hand of your customers, and you get market feedback, and you tweak and pivot,” Driscoll said. “We, the Army, can and should, and we are doing that now too, to hold ourselves accountable and tighten the feedback loop in our manufacturing process.”

He cited an example from an unmanned company that makes autonomous software for commercial cars, or what Driscoll called the “brains” of commercial vehicles. While that company had never worked with the military before, the Army provided them with an ISV and Humvee and gave them 10 days to see what they could do.

According to Driscoll, the technology allowed the vehicles to be controlled autonomously and synchronize with drones, among other things. The Army sent those vehicles to soldiers to play with in the field to figure out what worked and what didn’t.

While Driscoll said he’s not sure if the Army will work with that company again, he cited that as a key example of how the service wants to operate in the future.

“This would have taken five-to-eight years in any other instance. And we’ve done it in under three weeks so far,” he said.

George also noted that much of this modularity begins with the network. In order to be able to share information and move data rapidly, there needs to be a robust communications backbone.

Much of these lessons have been and will continue to be learned through the service’s transforming-in-contact effort, which aims to speed up how the Army buys capabilities and designs its forces by injecting emerging capabilities into units and letting them experiment with them during exercises and deployments.

“The drones that we had for the second brigade were different than the first, so on and so forth,” George said of transforming-in-contact. “It’s the bottom-up feedback. That’s what we need to continue to do for everything we have.”

Editor’s Note: This story was updated May 5 with clarifying information from GM Defense, the contractor for the Infantry Squad Vehicle.

The post Army looking to cancel legacy systems, pursue dual-use capabilities appeared first on DefenseScoop.

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.”

The post Army puts its ‘transforming in contact’ concept to biggest test yet appeared first on DefenseScoop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Army chief of staff: We don’t need a drone branch appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Part of the effort stems from lessons learned during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We’re learning that the EW landscape is changing everywhere between three weeks and three months, and so that we need to be more flexible in our approach … The battlefield is changing really, really rapidly,” Gen. Randy George, chief of staff of the Army, said during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in April.

As a result, the force must become more agile.

“This forces the Army to design for agility — EW payloads (techniques and software) must be dynamic and reprogrammable so they can be delivered from a variety of independent platforms” like drones, tactical vehicles and manpacks, among others, David May, a senior advisor at the Cyber Center of Excellence, said in response to questions from DefenseScoop. “Consequently, the Army is shifting its EW paradigm, moving away from inflexible, tightly coupled solutions and towards a more adaptive and responsive approach. This involves developing and integrating new technologies within an Army Reprogramming Enterprise.”

The Army has not fielded any program-of-record electronic warfare systems used for jamming or defense since the war on terror, delivering only quick-reaction capabilities to forces in response to threats they’ve encountered in their regions.

Over the last several months, George has discussed an emerging concept dubbed transforming in contact, in which the Army plans to use deployments and troop rotations to test new equipment — mainly commercial off-the-shelf gear — to allow units to be more responsive on a dynamic battlefield.

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

May stated that the reprogrmaming enterprise changes software within the EW payloads — described as electronic warfare sensing and effects delivery — that can be customized based on the size, weight and power limitations of the platform.

That payload is then employed according to a scheme of maneuver, May said, adding that in order to maintain advantage, changes must be made in a timely manner — less than 48 hours.

What has been less clear in recent months is the extent to which the Army will have reprogrammers at the tactical edge to make these adjustments in near real-time.

“EW requirements should be synchronously coordinated with this paradigm shift (Platforms to Modular Mission Payloads), ensuring that they align with the proposed changes and prioritized appropriately within the Reprogramming Enterprise,” May said.

George has maintained that the Army will not be going back to foreign service representatives or contractors that accompany soldiers to war zones that maintain equipment.

“I want to not have FSRs. For everybody out here, I mean, we want to develop easy-to-use things that can be repaired or you take a tablet or something that can be exchanged, because we’re not going to have these big [forward operating bases] like we’ve had in the past and doing these things,” George said at a conference in March. “We have very technically savvy troops that can do a lot of these things.”

That leaves soldiers to performing the reprogramming. The Army’s 17D designation are coders and developers both in the cyber and electronic realms.

In 2021, the service embarked on a pilot effort dubbed Starblazor, to place coders and software developers at the tactical edge to reprogram electronic warfare and radio frequency systems.

The Army has continued to recognize the need to have coders at the edge.

“Everything from a concept of platform and payload disaggregation, let’s design a platform and then let’s apply payloads to it from an electronic warfare perspective. Starblazor was key in helping us develop those insights,” Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, told reporters during a conference in October. “Understanding the right physics problem also was a major outcome from Starblazor — at what range and what distance, within what frequency band do we want to be able to operate. It also helped us understand the agility needed in the development and potential manipulation of our payloads. We recognize that the enemy has signals of interest. We also recognize that the enemy signals of interest will change. We’ll see new things on the battlefield that we did not anticipate and we have to be prepared for.”

Stanton recognized that the Army must have tactical engineers capable of tweaking a payload in accordance with a modification or a previously unseen event in the electromagnetic spectrum.

May said the results from Starblazor are providing the starting point for a new pilot.

Army Cyber Command and CCoE “are embarking on an EW Data Pilot that serves as a campaign of learning for a conceptual Army Reprogramming Enterprise,” May said. “The Pilot will focus on enhancing the understanding and implementing EW data needs supporting the rapid reprogramming of modular mission payloads. This learning is necessary to enable the future approach to EW effects on the battlefield supporting the operational force’s scheme of maneuver.”

The ultimate goal of the pilot effort is to develop capabilities using advanced EW concepts throughout the next year of learning based on a series of events from division and theater exercises, May said.

While the focus of the pilot is on the data and defining requirements for a data platform, architecture and standards, the effort will also help the service align polices and procedures, refine organizational structure and outline a governance strategy to enable a reprogramming enterprise, May added.

“Ultimately the pilot will help inform how the Army can augment its current capability and capacity to execute effects in the EMS at the speed and scale necessary to provide the Army and joint force an edge in Large Scale Combat Operations,” he said.

The post Army embarking on electronic warfare data pilot to help inform rapid reprogramming appeared first on DefenseScoop.

In October, the service’s Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George first told DefenseScoop about how he’d charged a team of Army Software Factory technologists to prototype such a tool — dubbed then “My Army Post” — in a bid to improve soldiers’ and their families’ lives with support from technology. 

Following that, the Army now “requires development of an enterprise mobile application that portrays a responsive, user-centric solution to address the specific challenges and demands faced by soldiers, dependents, retirees, Department of the Army Civilians, and installation visitors entering and exiting military installations,” and is tailored for each specific post, according to a new contracting document.

“An initial version of the mobile app, ‘My Army Post,’ was developed by the Army Software Factory (ASWF). It is undetermined if this requirement will incorporate use of ASWF efforts or if a new app will be requested to be developed by industry. Feedback from industry could assist in shaping any related technical requirements,” officials wrote in the sources sought synopsis. 

That 7-page document outlines a variety of features that Army leadership envisions for the final product, including information about local housing, spouse employment and child care options; senior commander messaging capabilities; map navigation and real-time gate traffic alerts; and more.

Officials confirmed that “this requirement may be set aside for small businesses or procured through full and open competition, and multiple awards may be made” based on responses they receive to this request. 

Notably, they also state explicitly that the “requirement will necessitate servers capable of handling Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) materials, Federal Employees and Contractors Only (FEDCON) shared with Department of Defense (DoD) contractors.” 

Those interested in providing feedback to the Army are asked to address 7 questions in their responses. Among other topics, officials want input on pricing and the contract types that could make the most sense for this pursuit — and on appropriate data and software rights. 

Responses are due by Dec. 6. 

The post Army questions best route to launch a new app that can alert troops about their posts appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Gen. Randy George, the service’s chief of staff, unveiled the status and vision for this in-the-works tool — dubbed My Army Post — during a meeting with reporters at the annual AUSA conference this week. 

“What we’re trying to do is do things that will help improve the lives of our soldiers and families, and a big part of that is also making sure that people are welcome to a new installation. I remember going to a new installation many years ago and it’s daunting to show up there. And so we just want to make sure that they have access to the resources there,” he told DefenseScoop at the media roundtable. 

George said he and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth both “wanted to make sure we can communicate with our soldiers and families” — so, they recently tasked two captains from Army Future Command’s software factory to build this new tool. 

“For about the last two weeks, they’ve been making updates. Right now, they’ve been focused on Fort Cavazos. And I would describe what they’re doing as really developing the requirements for the kind of app that we really need,” George explained.  

The digital tool is essentially being iteratively designed in a way that it will incorporate different details and elements to properly reflect each Army post.

Broadly though, the technology will inform troops who opt to use it about things like the most commonly used gates and notices about traffic and road closures, local weather, and hours of operations for gyms, restaurants, hospitals and PX/commissary.

“In just weeks, Army Software Factory soldiers already have a beta version in place that they are using to bring the power of a modern DevSecOps approach to soldiers, families and garrison teams. We use this as the ideal tool for rapid, user-centered feedback as we continue to refine both this beta version as well as the ultimate Army requirement,” Col. Vito Errico, the software factory’s director, told DefenseScoop on Thursday.

Throughout the development and design process so far, officials on his team have worked deliberately to gain insights and suggestions from potential future users of the app that can inform its making.

“The novelty of employing soldiers to gather the data like a commercial software company has helped us get fast, candid feedback. This includes several hundred survey responses, interviews with key personnel like garrison commanders and public affairs teams, and site visits to various base service providers in close partnership with” Army Installation Management Command, Army Materiel Command and the chief of staff’s office, Errico noted.

Army leaders also hosted an event during AUSA to gauge recommendations from military spouses on features they’d like to see incorporated into the app.  

During a media engagement at the conference, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer told DefenseScoop that the app makers’ goal is to make sure the tool will have enough flexibility to adjust to the requirements of each individual installation.

“One of the pieces we’ve noticed in the feedback we’ve received is that what works for Fort Wainwright is a little different than [Forts Irwin, Johnson or others]. So, those garrison command teams out there can have the ability to make that app unique to their needs at that location,” he said.

Maj. Jeffrey Lee, spokesperson for the Army chief of staff, told DefenseScoop that My Army Post is in line with a message George has been emphasizing in his many engagements and visits with commanders: “Providing timely and accurate info delivers predictability to soldiers and families — and tech needs to help that, not hurt that.”

The post Army leaders preview smartphone app that will inform troops about what’s happening at their posts appeared first on DefenseScoop.

George, who previously served as the vice chief, was confirmed for his new role last month. He and other senior officers want to adapt how the service fights, organizes, trains and equips. That includes developing new human-machine integrated formations. Related concepts and technologies are being tested through exercises and experimentation venues like Project Convergence.

When Army Futures Command was established a few years ago to help drive modernization with cross-functional teams, the network was fourth on the list of priorities. Since then, it’s been getting even more attention.

“Our number one priority when it comes to transformation is the network. Command and control is foundational to how we fight. Frankly, a lot of the systems that we have today just don’t support effective C2,” George noted during a keynote address at the annual AUSA conference.

Officials want to equip soldiers with easy-to-use tools, including common controllers for robotic platforms.

“On today’s battlefield a commander … should be able to C2 a fight with simple tech — a tablet, for instance — equipment that is agile, mobile and updatable,” George said.

Emerging technologies like machine learning and autonomy will be important enablers to help the service better manage data and employ its forces, he noted.

The next Project Convergence experimentation event will focus on establishing “kill webs” across the joint force and with allies and partners, as the Pentagon pursues its new Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) warfighting construct to better connect sensors and shooters. “I know that we will learn a great deal,” George said.

Managing electronic emissions to make it harder for adversaries to target U.S. troops, is also top of mind.

Things like antenna farms and “endless server stacks” are easy to detect and generate too much electromagnetic signature, in George’s view.

“If we slog around the battlefield with massive operations centers, which are difficult to set up and often contractor-supported, we will get pounded,” he said. “The Russians are learning this lesson several times a day [in Ukraine]. And we will not learn the hard way.”

The post Army will get ‘pounded’ by adversaries if network doesn’t improve, new chief of staff warns appeared first on DefenseScoop.

George is currently serving as vice chief of staff of the Army.

If his nomination is confirmed by the Senate, George would take over as Army chief of staff at a time when the service is undergoing a major transformation effort and is pursuing an ambitious modernization agenda that includes new systems for long-range fires (including hypersonic missiles), next-generation combat vehicles (including optionally manned and robotic combat vehicles), future vertical lift, the network, air-and-missile-defense, assured position navigation and timing (PNT), synthetic training environment, and “soldier lethality.”

After nearly two decades of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army is trying to acquire new high-tech equipment to better position itself for competition with advanced adversaries such as China and Russia.

George’s nomination was referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 20, according to the notification.

George rose through the ranks as an infantry officer after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1988. He has deployed in support of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He also served on the Joint Staff and holds a master’s degree in economics from the Colorado School of Mines, according to his Army bio.

He took on his current role as vice chief of staff in August 2022. Prior to that, he served as a senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

DefenseScoop has reached out to the White House, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Army and the Senate Armed Services Committee for comment on George’s nomination. This story will be updated when comments are received.

It’s not immediately clear when the SASC will hold a confirmation hearing for George.

Biden’s nomination of George is the president’s latest move in selecting a new member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Last year, Biden tapped Gen. Chance Saltzman to be the Space Force’s chief of space operations. Additional nominations for new service leaders are expected in the coming months. In addition to McConville departing as Army chief of staff, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday are also approaching the end of their terms this year. There may also be an opening for a new Air Force chief of staff if Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown is nominated to succeed Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as many national security observers anticipate.

The post Biden selects Gen. Randy George to succeed McConville as Army chief of staff appeared first on DefenseScoop.