The Army is undergoing one of the most significant command-and-control transformations in its history with the development of Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2), a central component of the wider C2 Next modernization effort. NGC2 is intended to converge warfighting systems across domains into a unified, data-centric architecture that enables commanders to make faster, more knowledgeable decisions across the battlefield. Under this construct, command and control is no longer defined by a single system, but by an integrated ecosystem composed of transport, infrastructure, data, and applications.
In April 2025, the Army solidified NGC2’s role as its clean slate approach to command and control by formally establishing it as a program office under Program Executive Office Command, Control, and Communications–Tactical. Subsequent division-level experimentation and prototype fielding demonstrate the Army’s commitment to operationalizing this architecture at scale. Early feedback from exercises such as Project Convergence and Ivy Sting indicates improvements in situational awareness and execution speed as new command and control capabilities are introduced.
While most early NGC2 efforts have appropriately focused on other warfighting functions such as fires and maneuver, the continued deliberate integration of human resources (HR) capabilities into this ecosystem is both doctrinally necessary and operationally urgent. Without personnel accountability, casualty flow, replacement operations, and personnel movement data integrated into the NGC2 data layer, commanders risk achieving technical integration without fully realizing decision dominance.
NGC2 and Phased Implementation
Ongoing NGC2 pilots and experiments — particularly at the division level — prove that implementation is occurring in deliberate phases. Initial efforts emphasize capabilities that deliver immediate operational effects, followed by the gradual integration of supporting warfighting functions as data pipelines, security controls, and system maturity improve.
Lessons emerging from these pilots support the importance of integration over full replacement. Proven personnel accountability, casualty estimation, and personnel movement systems must be modernized and connected deliberately rather than prematurely discarded. This phased approach enables innovation to proceed while preserving operational persistence, particularly in contested and degraded environments. One of the most important questions that we must ask ourselves as we plan to operate in environments with near-peer threats and the threat of drones that will key in on high signal use is, “What do you do when the network goes down?” Layering different capabilities where we can still operate is necessary to sustain operations.
Doctrinal Imperative: HR as a Sustainment Function
Army doctrine clearly defines HR as a core component of sustainment. Field Manual (FM) 4-0, Sustainment Operations, identifies sustainment as the integration of logistics, financial management, personnel services, and health service support required to support operations until mission success. Personnel are fundamental to generating and sustaining combat power.
FM 4-1, Human Resources Support, further stresses that personnel accountability, personnel readiness management, casualty operations, and replacement operations are inherently data-driven functions that directly influence a commander’s understanding of combat strength and readiness. HR inclusion in NGC2 is therefore not an option nor just a good idea — it is doctrinally required.
The Personnel Replacement and Movement Challenge
Personnel replacement and personnel movement are among the most complex HR functions in large-scale combat operations (LSCO). These functions require continuous synergy across casualty reporting, personnel accountability, medical disposition, and movement control. Systems such as the Medical Planners’ Toolkit (MPTk), Deployed Theater Accountability System (DTAS), Defense Casualty Information Processing System (DCIPS), and Tactical Personnel System (TPS) play critical roles in this task.
However, these systems currently function with limited interoperability, depending heavily on manual reconciliation and staff coordination. Casualty data processed through DCIPS does not automatically update theater accountability systems such as DTAS, while predictive casualty and replacement models generated by MPTk remain disconnected from real-time personnel disposition and movement data. TPS provides visibility into personnel movement but is not fully synchronized with predictive or accountability systems.
In a data-centric command-and-control environment, this splintering constrains the Army’s ability to translate casualty estimates into executable replacement and movement decisions. However, any solution that fails to clearly distinguish casualty estimates from personnel replacement requirements, project return-to-duty rates, and enable HR professionals to communicate precise replacement demands to commanders represents a step backward.
AI-Enabled Platforms within the NGC2 Ecosystem
NGC2 experimentation has introduced a growing set of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled platforms to accelerate decision making across warfighting functions. Sustainment and HR organizations are gradually engaging with tools to support data aggregation, analytics, visualization, and collaborative planning. These platforms demonstrate the potential of AI to reduce staff workload and improve situational awareness inside a unified data environment.
For HR professionals, these tools offer lots of promise and hope when properly integrated; however, their effectiveness still depends on the quality, fidelity, and availability of authoritative personnel data. This reinforces the need to deliberately integrate HR systems into the NGC2 data layer rather than depending exclusively on application-level solutions.
Case Study: HR Planning for Casualties — LG-RAID and MPTk
Linguistic Geometry Real-Time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision-Making (LG-RAID) embodies a significant advancement in AI-enabled operational planning. Developed through Army Research Laboratory-supported research, LG-RAID employs linguistic geometry and game theory to generate predictive courses of action via modeling enemy actions, reactions, and counteractions in complex operational environments. Its concentration on rapid planning, adaptability, and low computational overhead fits closely with NGC2’s vision for data-centric command and control.
Recent pilots have demonstrated LG-RAID’s ability to assist HR planners with casualty estimation through AI-enabled analysis. For HR professionals, LG-RAID offers this possibility as a future capability, particularly if continued development enables reliable projections by military occupational specialty and grade, incorporates return-to-duty modeling, and integrates personnel movement considerations. These enhancements would align LG-RAID more closely with HR replacement planning requirements and provide commanders with the information needed for sound decision-making.
Why MPTk Remains Operationally Necessary
Despite the promise of emerging AI-enabled platforms, the MPTk remains the Department of War’s credentialed system for casualty estimation and personnel replacement planning. Unlike current AI-based tools, MPTk provides HR professionals with detailed casualty and replacement projections disaggregated by military occupational specialty and grade, outputs essential for replacement operations and sustainment planning.
Additionally, MPTk is designed to operate in forward environments without persistent internet connectivity, allowing planners to generate estimates in disconnected or low-bandwidth conditions. This functionality remains highly relevant in LSCO where browser-dependent or cloud-only tools may be unavailable. Although efforts are underway to duplicate or enhance MPTk functionality within other platforms, those capabilities have not yet achieved parity in fidelity, joint acceptance, or functional resilience.
The Army has spent years training personnel to operate these systems. However, in several cases they remain long overdue for modernization and cloud-enabled integration. Embedding these capabilities within NGC2 would provide an opportunity not only to modernize them, but to do so deliberately, by pairing engineers and programmers with operational subject matter experts throughout development. The 4th Infantry Division G-1 team working directly with the programmers is a perfect example of this. This approach lowers the risk of delivering a technically sound product that fails to meet operational expectations, mitigates post-delivery dissatisfaction, and ensures the resulting capability is determined by those who will use it under combat conditions. I believe starting with what we already have in place can get us closer to the desired final product.
Integration Over Replacement: Modernization Without Hollowing the Force
Modernization must not be mistaken for abandoning fundamental skills. The Army does not stop teaching Excel concepts simply because Power BI exists; rather, it recognizes that advanced tools amplify — not replace — understanding. History offers plenty of reminders: even as computers surpassed humans in raw processing power, skilled chess masters continued to defeat algorithms through experience, intuition, and strategy. In popular culture, fully automated battle droids in Star Wars did not ultimately win the fight for the Empire. These examples reveal a simple truth: technology increases capability, but judgment remains decisive.
AI helps with decision making, but people still make decisions. This difference is especially important in LSCO, where HR professionals must operate in disconnected or degraded environments, synchronize across staff sections, and translate incomplete or rapidly changing data into implementable recommendations. Cross-staff coordination, deliberate Annex F development, and replacement flow synchronization remain fundamentally human processes that depend on professional judgment, mutually shared understanding, and effective communication.
AI-enabled platforms can increase speed and insight, but they do not replace the need for HR professionals who understand how personnel data is generated, validated, briefed, and, more important, applied under pressure. Yes, the current approaches take more time and force HR professionals to step away from their monitors more often to fully understand the needs and requirements of other staff. However, that is where creativity, ingenuity, and unique problem solving are revealed. Stressing these competencies is not anti-AI; it is mission command thinking applied to HR.
The Role of Data Literacy and Culture
Technical integration is only half the challenge. The Army Sustainment University’s tiered data-education strategy, ranging from foundational literacy to advanced analysis, provides a model for preparing HR professionals to perform efficiently in a data-centric command-and-control environment.
FM 4-1 identifies timeliness, accuracy, and data literacy as enduring principles of HR support, emphasizing that personnel managers must interpret and communicate data to influence commander decision making. As a result, HR professionals must develop the same analytical outlook now being cultivated across the sustainment enterprise. Beyond proficiency in individual tools such as Excel or Power BI, HR professionals must understand how data is structured, queried, and visualized to translate information into decisions.
The modernization of sustainment culture and data-literacy initiatives demonstrate that the Army is preparing its workforce for precisely this type of convergence. Sustainers must not only use data but also embed adaptability into their curriculum and culture. The Adjutant General (AG) Corps must seize this energy and position itself as the human dimension of that transformation.
Conclusion
The Army’s transition to NGC2 represents a shift toward data-centric warfare. Through integrating transport, infrastructure, data, and applications, NGC2 promises unprecedented command and control agility. However, without the deliberate inclusion of personnel data, the human dimension of sustainment, the operational picture remains incomplete.
Integrating HR systems such as MPTk, DTAS, DCIPS, TPS, and emerging AI-enabled capabilities like LG-RAID into the NGC2 data layer would transform personnel replacement and movement operations from reactive, staff-intensive processes into predictive, synchronized capabilities. Doctrine already defines personnel services as a pillar of sustainment and prescribes data-driven accountability and casualty operations as HR core functions.
The AG Corps has envisioned this integration for the future force. NGC2 provides the architecture to operationalize it today. Commanders cannot achieve true decision dominance without the human dimension firmly embedded in the data that drives the fight.
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CW3 Marcus J. Harvey currently serves as an instructor/writer within the Senior Leader Training Division at the Adjutant General School, Soldier Support Institute, Army Sustainment University Campus at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He leads curriculum development and instruction on human resources data integration, analytics, and decision support systems, including Integrated Personnel and Pay System–Army and the Medical Planners’ Toolkit. He also supports multiple mobile training teams inside and outside the continental U.S., advancing data-centric HR capabilities in theater sustainment and readiness operations. He is currently pursuing a Master of Education degree in school counseling from Liberty University and holds a bachelor’s degree in management with a focus in human resources from American Military University. Additionally, he holds numerous technical certifications to include Project Management Professional, Microsoft Office 365 Expert, and Power BI Data Analyst.
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This article was published with the winter 2026 issue of Army Sustainment.
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