After spending a year working on pilot programs for a future battlefield command-and-control capability, the U.S. Army is on the brink of starting an effort to competitively prototype a next-generation system, according to the service’s program office in charge of the activity.
Next-Generation Command-and-Control, or NGCC2, as the Army calls it, represents a new approach to providing commanders and units an “open and modular” command-and-control, or C2, ecosystem “across hardware, software and applications with access to a common and integrated data layer,” the Army said in a statement.
The service’s Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications and Network, seeking industry feedback ahead of launching the prototyping effort, released a request for information Monday to industry addressing its NGC2 priorities.
“The goal of NGC2 is to help organize and operationalize data for warfighting applications — including real-time operational modeling of the potential outcomes of commanders’ decisions and courses of action, as well as the ability to tailor and reconfigure elements to meet their missions,” the Army said.
The service launched a pilot in roughly a year ago to examine what could realistically be achieved for C2 using a clean sheet design. Entirely ignoring all current C2 capabilities, the Army partnered with industry to provide soldiers with an agile system capable of functioning off of laptops inside a tank, for example, rather than consisting of giant server stacks in climate-controlled tents easily detectable to the enemy.
“I think we’re learning that we can probably go pretty quick on this given where technology is at,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told Defense News in an interview last fall. The Army needs to move away from “big systems and server stacks and all of that stuff,” he said. “That can all be an app.”
As a major element of the pilot, the Army focused not just on how a fresh C2 system might bring capabilities to the soldier in the field but how to transport data to enable all of those functions, according to Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief.
“The ability to move the data around at speed, at a vast scale and under attack by an enemy, that is a very difficult challenge,” Bush told Defense News in an interview last fall. “The good news is, this time around, the tech is much closer to being able to enable that.”
A request for NGC2 proposals is expected to be released in late February, according to the RFI posted to federal contract opportunities website Sam.gov. The service plans to award contracts by May, with the delivery of initial prototypes within six months of award.
The planned contract awards are structured to enable multiple opportunities for defense companies to contribute to NGC2, the Army said, with the service intending to onboard new vendors for additional components available after the initial prototyping awards.
Specifically, the Army emphasizes “tailorable and intuitive capabilities” and “agility in requirements and governance” for the next-gen technology, according to Army Futures Command’s NGC2 character of needs statement.
Recent updates to the character of needs statement include a focus on mission partner interoperability, operating in challenging tactical communications environments and “an integrated ‘tech stack’ approach that reaches from the communications transport layer through compute, integrated data and applications layers,” the Army said.
“We have an incredibly tech-savvy formation,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, director of AFC’s Command and Control Cross-Functional Team, said in the statement. “Commanders understand the network better than they ever have, and divisions are eager to be a part of the process and part of the user-informed solution.”
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
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