WASHINGTON-- Interoperability and security of allied partners is key in an era of competing military powers. The Army of today is faced with the challenge of resource optimization as it moves into the modernized force of tomorrow-- cARMY is a key answer to that challenge.
cARMY provides an opportunity, where military competition is defined, through rapid integration of partnered forces, continuous understanding throughout the deployment process and flexibility to fight technology how the commander sees fit. The Army Cloud Plan 2022 demonstrates this as it lays out the Army cloud ecosystem.
“We are looking at ways to optimize resources as we collectively invest in our future defense,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Maranian, commanding general of 56th Artillery Command.
The resources Maranian refers to are the limited amounts of artillery and other fires platforms that have integration challenges across the alliance.
An answer to Maranian’s challenge is to leverage cARMY across all impact levels (classification of networks) and the incoming mission-partner environment (MPE) offerings.
“The current concept would be to group nation capabilities into fires task forces based on regions or systems, said Andrew Spiess, Enterprise Cloud Management Agency Warfighter Mission Area Liaison Officer. “The idea is logical but limits the possibilities planners and commanders have to integrate fires, an already limited resource.”
This challenge is not an unrealistic goal to be pushed down the road, but a current focus of the Army Cloud Plan.
The new plan describes an ecosystem as a global-hybrid cloud, using cARMY common services, to support overseas forces from the Army Service Component Command to the tactical edge.
cARMY will champion colorless transport and software defined wide-area networks, taking advantage of commercial low/medium/geosynchronous earth orbit satellites and mounted and dismounted solutions. This ultimately reduces the complexity of networking configurations across the warfighter network.
The 2022 plan also provides a strategic approach to the actions the Army takes to scale and operationalize the cARMY cloud in support of the warfighter. This approach extends from rationalization and optimization of data centers in the continental U.S. to tactical deployments abroad in a way that is secure, resilient and scalable.
Interoperability is crucial in areas where U.S. forces, partners and allies are limited in fires platforms, airspace management systems, counterfire radars and ammunition, explained Spiess. Interoperability enables the fires enterprise to mass-distribute capabilities across a coalition to fulfill the goals of the land component commander.
“The Army will continue to fight in coalitions in the future, just as we have in our recent past. The Army Operating Concept stresses this facet of operations and considers multinational interoperability one of the critical warfighting challenges we will face,” said Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, commanding general of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.
“Some formations would leverage the Artillery Systems Cooperation Agreement (ASCA) software to link digital systems, but this only works with a dozen or less nations in Europe,” said Spiess. “It also does not account for hybrid forces or countries without a digital fires capability that may need to support these improvised multinational-fires task forces.”
The use of cARMY allows a commander to build an architecture for the rapid integration of multinational fires across several classified networks. Countries that cannot operate on MPE could have an environment with fires software made available to them. This enables the senior fire support coordinator (FSCOORD) to dictate levels of access, software capabilities and digital topology changes based off task-organization requirements.
Currently ASCA is the only software used to talk between multinational-fires applications that are systems of record. In the cloud, the FSCOORD can use application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable communications between any system they believe to be critical to fulfilling the role of the Force Field Artillery Headquarters and the Counterfire Headquarters in a multinational fight.
“Another issue with ASCA is that U.S. formations deploying into theater still need to test digital connections before departing reception, staging, onward movement and integration,” added Spiess. “The senior FSCOORD could leverage cARMY to integrate an incoming organization’s cloud environment before they have ever left the US, enabling the incoming unit to download configurations to support planned task organization. The same flexibility applies to units that change task organization during the fight, only requiring them download new configurations before changing the architecture.”
The Army Cloud Plan 2022 will enable regionally aligned and rapid-deployment forces to integrate networks enroute to an area of operations. The current model has units arriving and integrating once the on-premises servers arrive in theater.
Interoperability is not a future development, but a process to start now within the cloud. All future systems in multi-domain operations will be cloud dependent using civilian infrastructure, mesh networks, edge computing and traditional military transport.
“The Army Cloud Plan addresses potential concerns of intermittent-network access in future combat operations through the cloud ecosystem, leveraging a multitude of on-demand capabilities in transport, as well as compute-and-storage, not just traditional Army tactical communications,” said Spiess.
If the Army desires interoperability, then they are only one click away from My Army Cloud to achieve this mission.
To learn more, visit www.army.mil/ecma
WASHINGTON-- Interoperability and security of allied partners is key in an era of competing military powers. The Army of today is faced with the challenge of resource optimization as it moves into the modernized force of tomorrow-- cARMY is a key answer to that challenge.
cARMY provides an opportunity, where military competition is defined, through rapid integration of partnered forces, continuous understanding throughout the deployment process and flexibility to fight technology how the commander sees fit. The Army Cloud Plan 2022 demonstrates this as it lays out the Army cloud ecosystem.
“We are looking at ways to optimize resources as we collectively invest in our future defense,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Maranian, commanding general of 56th Artillery Command.
The resources Maranian refers to are the limited amounts of artillery and other fires platforms that have integration challenges across the alliance.
An answer to Maranian’s challenge is to leverage cARMY across all impact levels (classification of networks) and the incoming mission-partner environment (MPE) offerings.
“The current concept would be to group nation capabilities into fires task forces based on regions or systems, said Andrew Spiess, Enterprise Cloud Management Agency Warfighter Mission Area Liaison Officer. “The idea is logical but limits the possibilities planners and commanders have to integrate fires, an already limited resource.”
This challenge is not an unrealistic goal to be pushed down the road, but a current focus of the Army Cloud Plan.
The new plan describes an ecosystem as a global-hybrid cloud, using cARMY common services, to support overseas forces from the Army Service Component Command to the tactical edge.
cARMY will champion colorless transport and software defined wide-area networks, taking advantage of commercial low/medium/geosynchronous earth orbit satellites and mounted and dismounted solutions. This ultimately reduces the complexity of networking configurations across the warfighter network.
The 2022 plan also provides a strategic approach to the actions the Army takes to scale and operationalize the cARMY cloud in support of the warfighter. This approach extends from rationalization and optimization of data centers in the continental U.S. to tactical deployments abroad in a way that is secure, resilient and scalable.
Interoperability is crucial in areas where U.S. forces, partners and allies are limited in fires platforms, airspace management systems, counterfire radars and ammunition, explained Spiess. Interoperability enables the fires enterprise to mass-distribute capabilities across a coalition to fulfill the goals of the land component commander.
“The Army will continue to fight in coalitions in the future, just as we have in our recent past. The Army Operating Concept stresses this facet of operations and considers multinational interoperability one of the critical warfighting challenges we will face,” said Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, commanding general of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.
“Some formations would leverage the Artillery Systems Cooperation Agreement (ASCA) software to link digital systems, but this only works with a dozen or less nations in Europe,” said Spiess. “It also does not account for hybrid forces or countries without a digital fires capability that may need to support these improvised multinational-fires task forces.”
The use of cARMY allows a commander to build an architecture for the rapid integration of multinational fires across several classified networks. Countries that cannot operate on MPE could have an environment with fires software made available to them. This enables the senior fire support coordinator (FSCOORD) to dictate levels of access, software capabilities and digital topology changes based off task-organization requirements.
Currently ASCA is the only software used to talk between multinational-fires applications that are systems of record. In the cloud, the FSCOORD can use application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable communications between any system they believe to be critical to fulfilling the role of the Force Field Artillery Headquarters and the Counterfire Headquarters in a multinational fight.
“Another issue with ASCA is that U.S. formations deploying into theater still need to test digital connections before departing reception, staging, onward movement and integration,” added Spiess. “The senior FSCOORD could leverage cARMY to integrate an incoming organization’s cloud environment before they have ever left the US, enabling the incoming unit to download configurations to support planned task organization. The same flexibility applies to units that change task organization during the fight, only requiring them download new configurations before changing the architecture.”
The Army Cloud Plan 2022 will enable regionally aligned and rapid-deployment forces to integrate networks enroute to an area of operations. The current model has units arriving and integrating once the on-premises servers arrive in theater.
Interoperability is not a future development, but a process to start now within the cloud. All future systems in multi-domain operations will be cloud dependent using civilian infrastructure, mesh networks, edge computing and traditional military transport.
“The Army Cloud Plan addresses potential concerns of intermittent-network access in future combat operations through the cloud ecosystem, leveraging a multitude of on-demand capabilities in transport, as well as compute-and-storage, not just traditional Army tactical communications,” said Spiess.
If the Army desires interoperability, then they are only one click away from My Army Cloud to achieve this mission.
To learn more, visit www.army.mil/ecma
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