FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — The Army is now beginning to field updated and modernized network equipment to the division as a whole, including the enabling units.
In the past, the service had outlined a fielding strategy that sought to equip certain priority brigades within divisions with the integrated tactical network, a combination of program-of-record systems and commercial off-the-shelf tools. This meant that other brigades and enabling units — such as sustainment, intelligence, logistics and engineering brigades — would still be operating on legacy equipment.
Now, as the Army is shifting to division as the main unit of action, it’s important to ensure all units can be compatible with modernized gear.
“Since we’re going to a more large-scale combat operation and division as a unit of action focus for the Army of 2030 construct, it’s imperative that we get all enablers and supporting units to be on the same exact [command-and-control] architecture as their supported brigades,” Maj. AJ Mangosing, assistant project manager for Program Manager Tactical Radios at program executive office for command, control, communications and network, said in an interview. “What that does is that improves the robustness of the PACE plan — the primary, alternate, contingency and emergency communications plan — and improves the overall lethality and survivability of the unit.”
The Army began to test this concept as part of Operation Lethal Eagle, an exercise with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. This year’s exercise sought to pull in the entire division, as opposed to just brigades, to test how a division as a whole would fight.
Officials said that last year, as part of events that lead up to 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division’s capstone training event, which included Operation Lethal Eagle, very few enabling units had the latest networking kit due to limited inventory.
“Now that the inventory has increased, we are now fielding to division enablers at scale. And we are now rolling that out during Operation Lethal Eagle to observe the enablers in action,” Mangosing said.
As the Army is looking toward developing a next-generation command and control capability in the future, it has begun fielding what it calls the C2 Fix architecture in the interim. C2 Fix seeks to use what the Army already has, along with commercial off-the-shelf technology, to enhance the network tools for soldiers’ so-called “fight tonight” capability.
Last year’s Operation Lethal Eagle validated the need for enabling units, officials said. It showcased how the Army can’t just be focused on maneuver elements, and there has to be unified communications across the division.
“The concept of C2 Fix works. Now we’re starting to enhance this with how the division fights,” said Lt. Col. Anthony Cato, the top communications and signal officer for 101st Airborne Division.
The exercise, and fielding to the entirety of the division, allows the organization to figure out how it will fight in the future enabled by new capabilities across all its units.
“We’re focusing on how does the division change along with the changes of its subordinate units … We have the responsibility to give feedback up to big Army in terms of the capabilities they’re asking us to either validate or just straight up critique,” Lt. Col. Paul Charters, chief of knowledge management and senior simulations officer at 101st Airborne Division, said on the sidelines of Operation Lethal Eagle. “That’s the other piece is we have to adapt as a division headquarters to a changing world in terms of technologies, in terms of challenges. As we identify how our brigade structure has to change and how to adapt how we manage the enablers, we’re also learning a whole lot about ourselves as a division headquarters. How can we better align ourselves to provide those capabilities to our division, make ourselves more survivable so we can do those things and also integrate new technologies that help us ideally be more efficient?”
Testing and validating new technology in the architecture
The Army has explained that it wants its future communications architecture to be open so it can import new capabilities rapidly as they become available without issue.
Across the service, units are looking for some level of customization and tailoring of network capabilities based on how they fight. Flexibility has been one of the bumper stickers for the integrated tactical network, providing baseline capability that allows units to tailor to what they need.
One example is how 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division at its capstone training event in Germany in January sought to test the commercial encrypted application Wickr to pass data, enabled by the internet connection from low-Earth orbit satellite constellations.
That was because they had a mixed formation of ITN and non-ITN units, opting to use Wickr as a primary collaboration tool. The 101st used that application to a lesser extent during Operation Lethal Eagle, instead, using other government and commercial products to experiment with.
“That’s why we’re at OLE because we’re trying to learn about these things. As units identify things or they have software built, we bring it in to test it in the architecture, see how it works, see what doesn’t work and we continue to iterate from there,” Maj. Timothy Ray, assistant product manager for Project Manager Mission Command at PEO C3N, said in an interview.
One such technology is a software-defined radio made by goTenna.
At a fraction of the size and weight of traditional multi-channel radios, the goTenna solution provides a mesh networking capability that enables chat functions. It’s especially useful for scout teams that want to conduct reconnaissance and be as light as possible.
Moreover, since it’s only producing smaller chat and text format messages as opposed to voice, it has a smaller electromagnetic signature than traditional radios, making it harder for the enemy to spot — revealing the scout’s position — and jam.
“What we’re working towards with this in particular, is pairing this small mesh network to something that is beyond line-of-sight communication, like a Garman inReach or something as small as that. We’ve worked it, we’ve used it with our HF radio, high-frequency radios that have big jumps,” said Lt. Col. Reed Markham, commander of 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment.
Another technology the Army has begun integrating more is the Instant Connect Enterprise, or ICE, essentially a voice-over-Internet Protocol capability that ingests radio signals and waveforms. So long as they’re connected via Wi-Fi or cellular, anyone with an end user device — essentially a military version of an Android phone — can push the radio button and talk over the radio network using any of the waveforms, serving as a many-channel radio wherever they go.
This means there’s now less hardware at the edge because it’s leveraging cloud services and applications, smaller dislocated footprints, and improved reach-back support and access to services. It also increases the number of users that can talk on the network without muddying it.
“It increases the maneuverability and our speed because you have access to a device where we’re connecting that software where you can access multiple bands. I think it increases awareness, it increases mobility because now you have the opportunity where an on-the-move soldier is not carrying around 15 batteries for X amount of radios, and so forth,” Cato said. “From a command post perspective, it allows us to increase our survivability as we can offset. So, you’ve heard the term ‘our antenna farms.’ It allows us to decentralize our signature and then to be able to manage that to manage multiple nets within a command post.”
The tech also has a language translation capability where one force can talk through using their native language, and it will spit out the native language of a partner military on the other end. This came about when 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division was conducting its capstone training event in Hawaii last October with partner forces. It was integral they communicate with the Japanese army, Philippines army and others.
The tool also aided the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment of 101st Airborne Division when they were in Europe helping to train Ukrainians.
The ICE capability also allows for greater integration of legacy, non-ITN or C2 Fix capabilities into the architecture.
“It allows us to incorporate legacy systems. We have new technologies on a new C2 Fix network or architecture, and we’re able to bring in some of our legacy beyond line-of-sight capabilities so it streamlines and simplifies at the on-the-move or at-the-halt at a command post perspective, where we have access and we can very quickly and easily integrate C2 Fix units and non-C2 Fix units,” Cato said. “What’s important is how do we integrate them into how we fight? It’s not about I have or I don’t have a piece of kit, because it’s not about the kit. It’s about how are we fighting as a division. And we’re fighting not just with our maneuver elements, it’s also with our enablers.”
To close that gap, the Army has also developed what it’s calling flyaway kits, including capabilities and personnel that accompany a unit to communicate with non-ITN units.
They were initially needed as part of 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division’s capstone exercise given they were an ITN-enabled brigade with a non-ITN-enabled division and they needed a solution to connect the two.
The goal is to ensure higher commands have the same capabilities to reach down to other units to maintain the C2 Fix architecture.
Overall, the C2 Fix architecture has allowed the division to see itself better and more holistically across the battlefield, officials said. But, where they need improvements are the ability for nodes to aggregate data at the right place and right time in a digestible way.
