Army moving ahead tests that could reshape future of military communications

FORT CARSON, Colorado — Military, civilian, and defense industry leadership say an advanced new satellite-based digital communications backbone for future warfare will be critical to keeping the U.S. military on the bleeding edge of technology in the 21st century.

The key, according to several sources, is a new Anduril product that the Army is currently testing: the Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) system. Military officials say they hope the California-based defense tech company’s product is not just another shiny new apparatus in a long history of big promises by defense contractors that have failed to deliver or found themselves quickly outdated.

With that as a backdrop, Congress is making moves to hold back half of the NGC2 program’s funding until there is sufficient proof that it actually works.

The current version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2026 specifically mentions NGC2, saying outright that “50 percent” of funds meant to support development of the system will be available only after Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll submits a report to Congress. Lawmakers want to see “the Army’s detailed funding plans for current and new procurements” around the testing of the NGC2 systems, the legislation states.

The Anduril NGC2 system is currently moving through a series of tests with increasing complexity, all being conducted by the Army’s 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson. The 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, will take on a similar testing series starting next year called Lightning Surge, to see if NGC2 is capable of supporting operations in the Pacific.

Officials say the system’s original $98 million contract with Anduril was specifically meant to be flexible in spending and requirements while building the new tactical network.

“If the satellite connection has been contested or is down, how are you sharing throughout? Like mesh networks on the radio side, all of that is complicated,” said Brig. Gen. Michael R. Kaloostian, the director for the Command and Control Future Capability Directorate at the Army. “What can’t be complicated is the front end. It’s the user, it’s the artillery officer, it’s the infantryman. That can’t be complicated.”

The general told The Washington Times in an exclusive interview that the goal for the new NGC2 system is to combine all data available on a battlefield and make it accessible to commanders. The system is a combination of software and new hardware that aims to allow every level of the Army to communicate with each other and share information quickly, while having artificial intelligence help to manage the vast ocean of data — and do it all in a hyper-secure cyber environment that cannot be penetrated by adversary intelligence operatives.

“We are decomposing all of these kind of bespoke systems and we’re taking the data feeds that are required — that a commander needs to be able to make decisions, to be able to speed up a kill chain — we’re taking all that,” said Gen. Kaloostian.

All of this is meant to increase the tactical awareness that U.S. military units will have on future battlefields, where the prospect of being overwhelmed by data and multifaceted advanced tech threats is a serious risk.

“We want to make sure that the EUD [end user device] — what the soldier is using — is simple to use,” Gen. Kaloostian said. “A user shouldn’t think it’s much more different than when he or she uses their iPhone or their Android device.”

That may seem like a simple task, but it becomes much more complicated when the goal the Army has in building this new system includes everything from flying drones, controlling radar, and shooting artillery.

A mix of defense tech firms

Anduril is leading a team of defense contractors involved in the NGC2 system that includes other “technology-first” companies. Colorado-based Palantir, Virginia-based Govini, and Research Innovations, Inc. (RII), as well as Amazon, Microsoft and others, including Florida-based L3Harris Technologies, are all being tapped to help develop the complex system.

Rather than having a single large defense contractor build it, the Army is demanding the system be constructed as so-called “open architecture,” so that future upgrades to both hardware and software can come from any supplier.

The investment by both the government and industry to accomplish the task is growing as military leadership and politicians demand faster, newer tech in the hands of soldiers, while simultaneously asking defense companies to embrace more of a commercial business strategy.

“There’s an appropriate role for the government and there’s an appropriate role for industry,” Joe Welch, the senior civilian executive for the Army’s Transformation and Training Command told The Times in an interview.

“We’re learning a lot about that,” he said. “I think one of the results of our prototyping with 4th ID and 25th ID as we move into the so-called production phase of this, is that we’re going to have a really good understanding about how to set that relationship up in a long-term contracting and agreement perspective.”

Mr. Welch said that a major part of the systems design is to avoid what’s known as “vendor lock,” where a defense industry company becomes the one and only commercial provider for a product or service. But, he was quick to caution that the open architecture approach doesn’t mean there will be a jumbled mass of different systems being used by the Army.

“We’re working to integrate the [different] approaches as quick as possible,” he said. “We’re not going to have multiple versions of NGC2 out there.”

The current version of the system includes new processing computers from Anduril at different levels, as well as new software on existing Army systems, like the “Blue Force Tracker,” a legacy computer mounted in most Army vehicles.

The goal is to feed all information from across the battlefield into the “Lattice Mesh” network, an Anduril product meant to help prioritize, filter, and manage the information.

“That’s like the art and the magic of what Next Gen C2 is,” said Gen. Kaloostian.

“How can we quickly make sense of all of the sensors, all of the data that’s going to be in that future operational environment and future conflict?” he said. “That, to me, is a monumental challenge. Not only are we thinking through the kill chain, but helping commanders make decisions.”

Inside the testing of NGC2

Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, the 4th Infantry Division’s commander, was partly given the command for just this purpose, according to military officials in the offices of both the secretary of the Army and the chief of staff of the Army.

Not only is Gen. Ellis a career infantry officer, his last job with Army Futures Command also gave him first-hand exposure to new tech tools that he’s now in charge of testing.

His task is to make sure the NGC2 system the Army ultimately adopts is one capable of launching the service into a futuristic tech space on the battlefield. He’s doing that through a testing series called “Ivy Sting,” and the challenge is that the system needs to be one the entire Army can rely on in a variety of environments.

“I look at it as a toolbox for the commander,” Brig. Gen. Shane Taylor, the capability program executive for Command, Control, Communications and Network for the Army said during an exclusive interview at Fort Carson.

The Army is so invested in the new approach to the battlefield and NGC2 that his organization was created out of what it called “a major reorganization” aimed at “delivering Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) capabilities.”

“Let’s be honest, 25th has a very different fight than 4ID,” Gen. Taylor said. “It’s going to be line of sight comms. It’s going to be beyond line of sight. It’s going to be LEO [low earth orbit], MEO [medium earth orbit], GEO [geostationary earth orbit] satcom. It’s going to be 5G. It’s going to be WiFi. But, what density and distribution of that will be different between those two commanders and how they fight.”

The combination of secure Wi-Fi-based mesh networks for soldiers on the front lines, high data rate radio connections between headquarters and increasingly more use of LEO satellites is a challenge the Army has continually tried to address. Instead of successfully building a large capable network, various upgrades over the past decades have resulted in cross-compatibility issues that most service members, including Gen. Taylor, are known to sarcastically joke about.

Making new communications platforms work with data from existing hardware is now the priority.

“The unique thing about where we’re going is the ability to rapidly create apps, software solutions, off of that data layer,” Gen. Taylor said. “That really is critical to getting after, really what our number one priority is.”

That priority is to not get left behind by modern technology and be stuck with old hardware, or “tied to a box,” as Gen. Taylor describes it. He stressed that the service needs to be able to do software updates across the force to provide new capabilities — all of it in support of creating an overall picture of the battlefield for commanders called a common operating picture.

“This common operating picture, we’re supportive of it,” Sam Mehta, who heads the communications division at L3Harris Technologies, which currently supplies the majority of the Army’s communications equipment, a critical component in the NGC2 system to transfer information between soldiers.

“We always say cell phones or mobile phones, that these are software-defined data devices essentially,” Mr. Mehta told The Times. “That’s what our current generation of technology we’re delivering is.”

Integrating the new with the old

One of the biggest hurdles for the new NGC2 system is to create a communications structure that not only supports all the new sensors, drones, and systems of the AI age, but still lets information flow from soldiers on the ground up to their higher headquarters.

“We have the ability to significantly upgrade and update the capabilities for what we’ve already delivered,” said Mr. Mehta.

That’s a critical aspect of the NGC2 system, according to military officials. Rather than replacing all existing hardware at significant cost, the Army is challenging suppliers to work with each other and upgrade the equipment they have already.

L3Harris is working with Amazon’s Kuiper program to use LEO satellites in military applications.

Mr. Mehta said what makes the Kuiper program attractive to NGC2 is security. “What we like about Amazon Kuiper in particular, is that they are purpose building … for secure, encrypted military trade transmission.”

It’s a critical factor that U.S. lawmakers are likely to drill into before finalizing approval of full funding for NGC2.

L3Harris has for years provided much of the equipment used by the Army to encrypt communications. Now, as the focus shifts from being able to talk on a radio to sending massive amounts of data through cyber channels, encryption technology remains an important requirement.

The entire NGC2 system aims to foster secure communications as well as resilient communications, with what’s known as a PACE plan, offering a primary, alternate, contingency and emergency platform to communicate.

Congress is requiring that the Army prove the entire system achieves “high assurance” encryption and decryption certification from the National Security Agency.

The 4th Infantry Division’s Ivy Sting testing series and the upcoming 25th Infantry Division’s Lightning Surge testing will have to account for all of these factors.

Both divisions will be field testing over the coming months and the tests won’t just be for the Army. The entire U.S. national security community is watching to see if the collection of contractors, new technology, and money results in success or a perfect storm for wasting taxpayer dollars.