ARLINGTON, Va. -- “To succeed during periods of competition, crisis or conflict, we need to aggressively work towards this notion of a unified network,” Lt. Gen John Morrison, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-6, told an audience during his keynote address at this year’s Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Associations’ TechNet conference in Augusta, Georgia.
Morrison is responsible for the planning, strategy, network architecture, and implementation of command, control, communications, cyber operations, and networks for worldwide Army operations.
More than 3,600 attendees listened as Morrison outlined the Army’s ongoing network modernization efforts. Morrison stated that the Army is one step closer to strengthening its efforts due to the Unified Network Plan. This operational plan brings together a reliable, secure architecture that will enable global end-to-end connectivity.
The Unified Network will link command posts to an array of sensors, such as satellites, drones, aircraft, vehicles, and even individual soldiers. This will enable commanders to make well-informed, rapid decisions using up to the minute intelligence securing the entire network end-to-end from hacking, interference, and other threats. This connectivity will be crucial to supporting multi-domain operations as part of the joint force: Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines which are crucial defeating near-peer adversaries capable of contesting the U.S. in all domains -- air, land, maritime, space, and cyberspace -- in both competition and armed conflict.
“It must be considered a shift in our approach,” Morrison said. “Everything we do in the cyber domain must start with what we need to enable from an operational perspective.”
Morrison said, in the end, aligning architecture, people, organizational structures and increasing capabilities will be essential to enabling a Multi-Domain capable force.
“This thought pattern will enable us to conduct multi-domain operations at speed.” Morrison said. “Quite frankly we can do multi-domain operations today, but it just doesn't happen at the timing, speed and tempo that we will need in the future,” he added.
Although progress has been made, Morrison says there is more work to be done.
“To deliver the strategic, operational, and tactical effects required to transform for MDO, we must optimize the network we have while synchronizing our modernization efforts across the entire Army network. We have to build from the tactical edge back, safely and securely.” Morrison said.
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For more information, please visit the DCS G-6 public website at this link.
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