The US Army is rushing to close the dangerous gap between how fast technology evolves and how slowly the military usually moves.
The service’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) system is being developed with soldiers and developers fixing problems in real time instead of waiting months for upgrades, Army officials said.
It’s a different, faster approach to developing weapons than the service is used to; it’s a process officials said is essential for preparing the Army for a potential high-intensity future conflict.
NGC2, has been a leading new development in the Army’s broader transformation initiative that’s focused on new weapons and technologies like uncrewed capabilities and artificial intelligence, and the service is leaning hard on soldier feedback for faster development.
“What soldiers are really enjoying is having the ability to talk to the developers,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, commanding general of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, told reporters at a recent media roundtable.
Ellis said that while industry likes this setup, the soldiers really like it because it’s not the usual “I’ve offered my opinion, and six months later another engineering release comes out.”
“It’s much more a case of, ‘I’ve offered my opinion, and tomorrow, what I asked you to fix has now been fixed,'” he said.
Ellis said soldiers and developers have been in constant conversation about how to use this new technology during the Army’s Ivy Sting exercises at Fort Carson, Colorado. The Army has completed two rounds of testing so far, with a third set for next month and a larger event next year that will pit NGC2 against simulated cyber and electronic warfare threats.
Each Ivy Sting has seen incremental upgrades to NGC2, including the number of Howitzers connected, the use of drones to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance feeds, AI models for identifying targets, and more diversified systems for commanders to make decisions.
NGC2 marks a major shift from the command and control technologies the Army has long relied on. It’s a more centralized system relying on open architecture, data, and software. The development team behind it, including Anduril, Palantir, and other companies, has been working with the Army on its specific capabilities.
Ellis said that the Army is staying deeply involved in the project from start to finish, rather than serving as a temporary stop for contractors who build something and move on.
Army leadership has been emphasizing the need for a new approach to buying, developing, and fielding weapons, as well as more collaborative relationships with industry partners. They’re prioritizing agile and adaptive development of new systems, a more Silicon Valley approach.
Joe Welch, the Army executive overseeing the NGC2 program, said the system is one example of a “totally different relationship with industry than what we have previously been doing within our historic acquisitions,” noting the service’s goal to avoid past pitfalls and build technology that can be updated and improved quickly.
Getting input from soldiers into the development of new technologies isn’t new, but there’s an effort to move faster as warfare evolves. For instance, that feedback has been useful in the swift development of the Army’s Mid-Range Capability, or Typhon, missile system.
During an exercise in the Philippines earlier last year, soldiers tweaked Typhon in the field, reducing reload time and stress on its components. User input was collected during and after the deployment in the region.
In a report earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency, said the Army’s MRC program reflected “an iterative product development approach” with flexible requirements and regular user feedback. The focus was getting a “minimum viable product” into the hands of soldiers and letting that drive iterative development.
The iterative design approach has been a growing interest for the Army and is present in work on NGC2 as well. What the Army’s doing with NGC2, Welch said, “is really changing how the institutional Army behaves.”
“It’s showing we can move not just in acquisition more quickly, but in all the aspects of what we do,” he said.
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