PHILADELPHIA — The Army Network community is pushing forward with researching and designing adaptable command and control warfighting systems, according to the service’s leaders and subject-matter experts during the Technical Exchange Meeting 12 in May.
Army organizations shared their Network priorities and strategies with industry representatives at this two-day, semi-annual event that brings stakeholders together.
Joe Welch, Army C5ISR Center director, delivered a keynote address discussing efforts to implement next-generation command and control, which is the service’s approach to experiment, prototype, test and identify network solutions. The C5ISR Center is an element of the Combat Capabilities Development Command.
“Next-generation command and control has been moving rapidly,” Welch said. “This came from an idea last year that moved into a concept demonstration at Project Convergence. We have further experimentation planned this year to get after the concepts, technologies, and experimentation with Soldiers to ensure we think we have this right.”
With the network as the Army’s top transformation priority, NGC2’s goal is to employ modular and open architectures that can rapidly scale and evolve to meet mission needs. The ability for Soldiers to adjust and change course is a key tenet of NGC2.
“We want to be able to experiment, prototype, move very quickly into deployment, use something as long as it’s working, and be able to challenge it when there’s something that’s better out there when the need or the technology changes,” he said. “It’s a very fundamental underpinning of where we’re looking to go.”
Command and control systems must be capable of rapid updates to improve functionality, capability and capacity, according to Welch. This enables Soldiers to quickly adapt during evolving operations.
“We’re going to continue to engage with industry as we move through the experimentation phase to understand where technology solutions may lie,” he said. “With NGC2, it’s not just the capability that you have but the ability to tailor and adapt it for the commander and their staff and what their needs and information requirements are.”
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The C5ISR Center is the Army’s applied research and advanced technology development center for C5ISR capabilities. As the Army’s primary integrator of C5ISR technologies and systems, the center develops and matures capabilities that support all six Army modernization priorities, enabling information dominance and tactical overmatch for the joint warfighter.
The C5ISR Center is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. Through collaboration across the command’s core technical competencies, DEVCOM leads in the discovery, development and delivery of the technology-based capabilities required to make Soldiers more lethal to win our nation’s wars and come home safely. DEVCOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Futures Command.
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