ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — “Adaptation is no longer an advantage — it’s a requirement for survival.”
These words from the Army’s seniormost leaders — included as part of a letter to the force sent May 1, 2025, from Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Randy George — underscore a fundamental tenet of the recently announced Army Transformation Initiative, or ATI. To put it bluntly: go fast, leverage commercial innovation, or get out of the way. But how can the Army leverage the speed of commercial innovation while applying the tactical fine-tuning necessary for operational use?
This is something that the service’s science and technology backbone, specifically the Army Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, C5ISR, Center, has been laser focused on throughout its decades-long mission of providing cutting-edge capabilities to Soldiers and value to industrial base partners through a robust lab infrastructure and deep subject matter expertise.
“The C5ISR Center is uniquely positioned to be an entry point for future iterations of next-generation capabilities,” said Beth Ferry, C5ISR Center director. “New industry technologies need a way to be measured against operational use cases, and the Center is ensuring best-of-breed industry solutions are paired with Army [Science and Technology] investments to deliver exactly what Soldiers need.”
In many cases, industry’s access to a real-world tactical ecosystem is limited, meaning capabilities that are often affordable and developed quickly may not perform adequately in conditions facing Soldiers on the battlefield, or when used with specific networks, vehicles and applications not available in the commercial space. This is not to say that the Army is forging its own path to deliver technological advancements but rather that it must work collaboratively with industry while ensuring capability development within the defense industrial base is persistently underpinned by tactical applicability.
To get after this, the C5ISR Center offers several ways for industry to integrate emerging and mature capabilities, be it a software application into a tactical cloud environment, hardware system onto a ground vehicle platform, or something in between. But this is only part of what’s needed to adequately adapt industry solutions.
Through lab and field-based risk reductions, Army Science and Technology also provides a realistic threat picture and can replicate real-world conditions to push the limits of industry’s latest offerings.
These risk reduction environments and Soldier touchpoints, coupled with vast institutional knowledge and expertise, span the Center’s portfolio and its core competencies, including efforts across counter unmanned systems, electronic warfare, tactical power and energy, configurable command and control, network resiliency, aided target detection and recognition, contested logistics and more.
“There is no denying that industry innovation is moving fast in some of these areas, but the role of Army Science and Technology and the collective knowledge of government experts in these domains cannot be overstated,” said Ferry. “Collaboration is essential to meet the unique demands of Soldiers.”
In the current environment, collaboration between the Army and industry cannot be business as usual. Driscoll has acknowledged the Army has been locked into inefficient agreements with large defense contractors in the past, which is something that ATI will eliminate.
“The Army has been a bad customer for itself oftentimes. So, as an example, we’ve given away our right to repair our own equipment some of the time, which basically, what that means for Soldiers is, we will have exquisite pieces of equipment sitting on the sidelines for 8 to 12 months,” said Driscoll earlier this month during a War on the Rocks podcast alongside George. “That is a sin, and we’ve done it to ourselves.”
George added that relying on the government’s slow-moving procurement process is also not an option. “We are not in a world anymore where we can wait for seven years for something to come to production,” he said. “There’s obviously areas that we’re just going to have to develop a little bit more, but we can also work with industry. So, we’re right now in a lot of discussions about how we kind of streamline that as we’re moving forward.”
This is exactly what Army science and technology, and the C5ISR Center, are all about.
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The U.S. Army Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance 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, DEVCOM C5ISR Center supports our networked Warfighters by identifying, developing, maturing, and rapidly integrating innovative technologies to drive continuous transformation.
DEVCOM C5ISR Center is an asset of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. DEVCOM is Army Futures Command’s leader and integrator within a global ecosystem of scientific exploration and technological innovation. DEVCOM expertise spans eight major competency areas to provide integrated research, development, analysis and engineering support to the Army and DOD. From rockets to robots, drones to dozers, and aviation to artillery – DEVCOM innovation is at the core of the combat capabilities American Warfighters need to win on the battlefield of the future. For more information, visit c5isrcenter.devcom.army.mil.
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