The First Battalion, the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, tested an early version of the Army’s Integrated Tactical Network (ITN) in war games.
WASHINGTON: The military invites partners to present white papers on new technologies to be potentially adopted as part of its range of capabilities 25.
The capability kits are designed to improve army technology and prepare for service All domain operations. The army’s tactical network is seen as the basis of this initiative. Starting from 2021, the kits are scheduled to come out each two years, in order to gradually add new technology that upgrades, expands and improves existing capabilities.
Features include a range of technologies, but focus extensively on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data management, advanced waveforms, and mission command applications. For a set of 25 options, the army is looking for white papers for new technologies in three areas:
- C4ISR Modular open standards package Radio technology – The goal is the continuous development of radio stations that meet open standards, while providing new and improved capabilities, such as multiwave software-defined radio cards, crypto cards and the ability to host multiple waveforms on a single card.
- Modernization of SATCOM – The goal is to “streamline” the military’s tactical satellite modem product line, while reducing its logistical footprint by using less hardware, virtualization, or both.
- Predicted combat power using artificial intelligence / machine learning – The aim is to develop data sets and analysis capabilities to support supply chain logistics and predictable combat power.
The The Army Cross-Functional Network team and U.S. Army Command, Control, and Tactical Communications Executive Office (PEO C3T) will review white papers. Reports must be sent by July 20 and can be sent through Common market for communications.
Army leaders see the modernization of the service’s tactical network as fundamental to achieving the intended sensor-to-shooter killing chain, provided by efficient data transmission from a variety of sources, including satellites, to the deployed joint forces operating in a contested environment.
Army Major General Peter Gallagher, who is leading efforts to modernize the Futures Command’s network, said this spring“We need to be able to win in the information solution domain and win right now. Without the network, all other modernization efforts are dreams. “
In the end, Gallagher said the army’s goal was to improve Joint commands and control of all domains “Speed, scope, convergence and dominance,” emphasizing what the military has agreed to call “dominance of the solution”- the ability to outdo and surpass the enemy so diligently that he cannot prevail.
Army Chief of Staff General James McConville this spring also stressed the need for the military to accelerate the cycle between identifying the necessary new technologies and implementing operational versions of this technology. McConville said the cycle should take several years or less.
Attracting soldiers faster, more efficiently, and more effectively to the work equipment they need is a major goal of the skill set. The Army performs this work using development operations or the DevOps model, which says the service includes experiments, demonstration, and collection of direct feedback from soldiers through an iterative cycle. The integration of military technology with other services for all domain operations is the goal of Project convergences.