Command and control, or C2, functions are a determining factor in battlefield dominance and a major focus area within the Army’s sweeping modernization efforts.
Through a program known as Next Generation C2, the service branch aims to create an entirely new network aligning with its goal of achieving data centricity. Late last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George cemented some of the project’s objectives, which include a consolidated network architecture, the use of Army-provided commercial mobile devices by service members and most importantly, a network that is easy to use.
At the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Army Summit on June 13, you will have the opportunity to hear Army officials and private sector experts weigh in on the service branch’s top challenges and priorities in a variety of informative keynote speeches and panel discussions. To view the speaker lineup and register to attend the event before tickets sell out, click here.
On a broader scale, NGC2 wants to build a common data access layer. Though the program is still under development, Col. Mike Kaloostian, director of transport and security for NGC2 within the Army Futures Command told Breaking Defense that the service branch is pressing forward with “a sense of urgency.”
NGC2 comes as a complement to C2 fix, an ongoing Army project intended to streamline the service branch’s existing tactical and enterprise networks into one global network.
“The primary goal of C2 fix was how do we simplify the infrastructure that’s already in these formations so that they could better operate their network and better rely on some of the staff functions that are network enabled — think sustainment, intelligence, fires — how those network enabled functions are task organized or organically employed within the formation,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control, communications-tactical for the Department of the Army, explained in a May interview at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting in Philadelphia.
What C2 fix offers commanders, he said, is the “flexibility to employ a much more robust capability, rather than organically employ it at every brigade.”
Kitz will share even more of his thoughts as a panelist at the 2024 Army Summit.
The AFC is additionally looking at C2 from a user-focused perspective. In December, AFC Commanding General James Rainey said the command is evaluating strategies for making data more available and user-friendly.
“We have the potential to reinvent and really develop a data-centric command and control system,” he said.
What he aims to achieve is a “complex, adaptive, systems-to-systems approach to warfare.”
Hear even more experts offer their insights on current Army projects at the 2024 Army Summit. Click here to register.
