Army Breaks "New" Ground Connecting Weapons Systems For War

By Kris Osborn, Warrior

Progression from high-speed target identification, analysis and verification to “rapid” lethal “attack” is now happening in milliseconds, due to Pentagon breakthroughs in AI-enabled Next-Generation Command and Control (NGC2) ....so the U.S. military services are now pushing technologies and tactics beyond current progress to break “new” ground in the realm of real-time, multi-domain command and control. 

Tanks, drones, artillery, armored vehicles, ships and fixed-wing fighter jets can all now connect with one another, almost seamlessly in real time, exponentially decreasing sensor-to-shooter time from minutes to seconds. These breakthroughs are ushering in a new era of Command and Control tactics, maneuvers and Concepts of Operation, things which the U.S. Army has been refining through ongoing live fire training operations. 

“So whether it's a drone or field artillery receiving a call for fire, it's all being done at higher rates of speed with more fidelity and accuracy than before,” U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ruben Rangel, Deputy Chief of Staff, Command and Control Support Element, 4th Infantry Division, told Warrior in a discussion of the service’s NGC2 training, testing and development effort. 

The initiatives, involving key elements of the Army’s 4th and 25th ID, involve live activations of advanced multi-domain networking, sensing and lightning-fast AI-generated information analysis. Yet …alongside the well-known and fast-evolving communications transport layer technologies, there is an increasingly advanced technical infrastructure driven by new software to propel command and control to even  newer dimensions of interoperability and speed. 

“The tools that we're employing are allowing the division at Echelon to move at speeds that we have not been able to do previously. From the top down, if it is the division Commanding General making a decision, it's based off of data and information that is being fed from multiple incoming sources, yet it's seamlessly put into a shared data layer that is accessible from all Echelons. The Commander is getting the rawest, most up-to-date data to make an informed decision. Then, it goes back to the tactical level, so it's a seamless cycle of information that we just haven't seen at that speed before,” Rangel said. 

Historically, disparate or federated pools of incoming sensor data would need to aggregate at a separate command and control center able to download, process, analyze and integrate critical information variables with one another. This not only creates data-transmission latency but also requires additional analysis to compare, link and synergize different sources of information relevant to a combat operation.  

Most recently, the U.S. military services have been working with the Pentagon to engineer gateways and interfaces designed to “translate” incoming data from otherwise incompatible transport layers or formats. These are often small form factor hardware and software using data-bus technology, IP Protocol and router systems to combine information which would otherwise exist in disaggregated pools of data. This kind of technological maturation has been happening for years, and the progress is being leveraged to transition into a streamlined, faster and more integrated series of interfaces operating at the forward edge of combat.  

Army weapons developers involved in this process cite partnerships with industry as a critical enabling element, saying it supports rapid “scaling” of technological processes and expedites lessons learned.

Curtiss-Wright’s TCG HUNTR 1.3, for example, uses a single interface to consolidate Tactical Data Link “initialization, C2 messaging and data manipulation.”  This not only supports higher speed data transmission but also greatly favors analysis because data variables from different sources can be integrated, compared and merged with one-another. Much of this is accomplished through advanced software engineering, designed to remove any need to re-configure hardware and leverage computer automation to integrate protocols at paradigm-changing speeds. 

“Integrating MAVLink into TCG HUNTR 1.3 brings unmanned aircraft system(UAS) position data into the broader tactical picture, helping operators safely deconflict crewed and uncrewed aircraft while allowing C2 platforms to issue mission commands directly to UAS,” a Curtiss Wright essay states. 

This kind of small-form-factor application can, in an operational sense, enable different communications layers such as data links, wi-fi, GPS or  incoming sensor information transmissions to function in a multi-domain sphere.  TCG HUNTR 1.3, for example, integrated LINK 22, LINK 16, JREAP, VMF into a single live operation across multiple domains for the first time during a German Air Force-led coalition exercise called Timber Express.  During the exercise, HUNTR 1.3 translated and routed tactical data across disparate networks. 

“By consolidating multi-protocol translation, data routing, and role-based access control in a single software-based solution, HUNTR reduces reliance on specialized hardware and avoids costly hardware overhauls. Its software-centric architecture also reduces size, weight, and power (SWaP) demands on aircraft and ground vehicles,” the Curtiss-Wright essay continued. 

TCG HUNTR 1.3 automatically routes, forwards, and translates data across Link16 J-Series, VMF K-Series, Cursor on Target, and CESMO, with Link 22 and MAVLink further expands interoperability. 

Army C2 weapons testers talk about these industry partnerships in terms of problem solving, as collaborative teams of engineers, computer scientists and weapons developers are increasingly positioned to make rapid adjustments and fixes as needed. 

“I think the magic of what we've been doing is, if we don't really like the initial functionality, we've had direct access with industry and direct input of the acquisition community that enables rapid improvement.  This has allowed us to knock down a lot of those friction points pretty rapidly, just by having proximity to the problem and having the authority to prototype rapidly with direct connection to the enterprise and to industry,”  said Maj. Carlos Melendez, Lt. Col. Rangel’s deputy with 4th ID Command and Control Support Element.