Project Convergence 21 Wraps, Informing U.S. War Strategy. Weapons Connectivity is Key

Related Video Above: Navy Connects Drones

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

The Army will now be assessing the results of seven “use cases” it put to the test in the Arizona desert during its recently completed 2021 Project Convergence exercise. 

Project Convergence is a “campaign of learning” put into effect by the service to establish much faster, paradigm-changing, AI-enabled “sensor to shooter” time able to locate and destroy targets in seconds.

The overall concept for Project Convergence, which began last year, is to generate high-speed, multi-domain connectivity between otherwise dispersed or disconnected nodes or points of contact on the battlefield. Not only does the overall effort seek to network air, ground, manned, unmanned and space platforms to one another with secure information sharing, but it involves an attempt to exponentially shorten “sensor-to-shooter” targeting time and wage war at the “speed of relevance.”

Project Convergence 2020

There are many technical elements to how this becomes manifest, yet Project Convergence 2020 arguably showed breakthrough progress linking mini-forward drones to larger drones, helicopters and ground combat vehicles in seconds. 

The sensor-to-shooter process, often referred to as a need to get inside of or ahead of an enemies decision cycle, has historically required as long as 20 minutes in some scenarios. Using a networked, AI-capable computer system called FireStorm, Project Convergence was able to gather information, process and organize time sensitive data, transmit it across the force and establish an optimal “sensor to shooter” pairing in a matter of seconds.