If data is the new ammo, Army may need dedicated data formations: General

Mark Pomerleau 

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WASHINGTON — Controlling and managing the deluge of data in the modern Army could require the service to establish new formations dedicated to the task, according to a key Army officer.

“One of the things that we’re going to look at in there is as [Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2)] and data becomes really our ammunition, the question is, is there an organization designed to oversee data across the United States Army?” Deputy Chief of Staff of the G-6 Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey told Breaking Defense in an interview.

NGC2 is a sprawling effort to replace the Army’s command and control networks and infrastructure in order to pass data more efficiently from sensors to decision-makers to soldiers and everywhere in between. The ability to do so quickly, military leaders have said, will be key to victory — and survival — on the modern, data-soaked battlefield.

As such, Rey said the Army is exploring — but hasn’t decided on — whether it needs a dedicated formation to manage and integrate data across the entire Army, that spans from within the US to outside the nation’s borders, from garrison to the tactical edge. The formation would allow the Army to deliberately focus on standardizing data formats, ensuring interoperability, applying artificial intelligence and machine learning for insights, and ultimately enabling data-centric operations across the force, regardless of location, Rey said.

Information will not only need to be managed by individual units themselves to enable operations, but coordinated and integrated with joint and multinational data that will come together at the theater level for a joint combatant commander.

As for where the formation could fit in with NGC2, Rey said he envisions it as interacting with the application and data layers, where it would “oversee that exchange of data, not only within the Army, but all of the joint services and our coalition partners.” (NGC2 is made up of four layers, the other two being the transport layer, on which data is moved from one location to another, and the integration layer, where data flows from in and out of the unit and is triaged using artificial intelligence.)