James Mingus, Berline Marcelin and Zak Daker
Cold light spills across a European plain, sixty-five kilometers of flat terrain that spans the territory of multiple nations. As the lead platoon moves forward, the squad leader scans the horizon while distant artillery zeroes in, guided by multiple drones stalking out front. He looks to his device for the picture that weaves together US and allied unit locations, overhead sensors, munitions stocks, and national-level intelligence, all in real time. Instead, the feed glitches, data lags, and systems refuse to speak to one another. In that fragile moment, trust breaks, the formation slows, and the enemy gains the upper hand. In modern warfare, where information and shared understanding rules, the network cannot be our opening obstacle.
Why The Need for Change
The current state of Army command and control (C2) reflects decades of incremental additions rather than deliberate design. Tactical networks grew in isolation, producing seventeen distinct battle command systems. Each new capability became a box within a box: One tool solved a specific problem while creating interoperability gaps, redundant data entry, increased maintenance demands, and heavier training loads. This complexity causes leaders to spend a majority of their time reconciling disparate feeds, troubleshooting links, or manually bridging systems instead of focusing on the fight, which results in slower decision cycles, eroded confidence in shared information, and unnecessary cognitive burden on every soldier. Our adversaries are operating on integrated, streamlined C2 architectures that enable swift and decisive action, which is why we are rapidly transforming our fragmented networks to ensure we maintain decision dominance.
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