WASHINGTON — This week the Army successfully executed a live fire mission from a M777 howitzer against a Marine Corps-provided target, using Marine Corps data — the kind of integration that sounds like it should be easy, but has historically proven to be shockingly difficult.
The event was part of an ongoing series at 4th Infantry Division called Ivy Sting, incremental and serialized events that aim to build up capability to scale the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control ecosystem to an entire division.
Ivy Sting 4, which took place this week, saw integration with the Marine Corps and coalition integration from Austrian and British allies for the first time. The Marine Corps team integrated into 4ID’s data layer, building interoperability between the Corps and Navy systems, according to the Army.
“I think this is all about getting after the [Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2] approach,” Brig. Gen. Michael Kaloostian, director of the C2 Future Capabilities Directorate, said in a Jan. 30 interview ahead of the test. “We’re all looking at the same data, modernized data architectures. This is just verifying that we’re moving in the same track and that we will be able to share data. Because they’re looking at different AI platforms, [they] are looking for ways that they’re moving into their integrated data layer to be able to do that.”
CJADC2 refers the Pentagon’s vision for how systems across the entire battlespace, from all the services and key international partners, could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data, faster, to commanders. The word “combined” in the parlance of CJADC2 refers to bringing foreign partners into the mix.
Between the last Ivy Sting that took place in December and Ivy Sting 4, the Army employed Marine Corps data to enable two-way data sharing with Marine systems. The test this week also included 48 joint force nodes that primarily included the Marines, connected to the NGC2 ecosystem, which allows information to move across different networks and command levels, according to Andruil, the lead contractor on the 4ID NGC2 effort.
In the case of the fires mission, the Army-generated fires data was shared back into Marine Corps systems, which demonstrated bidirectional data exchange and coordinated joint fires using the NGC2 data layer, Anduril said.
Tom Keene, senior vice president at Anduril and head of the connected warfare division, said the Marine Corps data was taken from sensors like radars and sensors at Camp Pendleton or even at Indo-Pacific Command and brought in to enrich the Army’s understanding of a target or of a sensor.
“You’ve heard a lot about JADC2 and CJADC2. What we’re doing is making that real here at this event where the Marines are collaborating with the Army, the Army’s collaborating with the Marines and we’re taking systems that literally weren’t designed to talk to each other and enabling them to share very rich data in a time sensitive way that’s secure, that’s reliable, and that’s robust,” he told reporters this week.
Additionally, during Ivy Sting 4, the US Navy received Joint Fires C2 data to be processed through a lab-based AEGIS system, according to officials.
What Else Is New
Officials also described a major increase in the number of nodes, sensors and external data feeds connected as part of Ivy Sting 4.
Organic sensors from drones to electronic warfare and Stryker vehicles, expanded from 12 to 20 distinct sensor types, increasing the amount of data generated directly by unit-owned and operated systems, Anduril said.
Moreover, NGC2 expanded from supporting 14 internal and external data feeds in Ivy Sting 3 to integrating over 70 internal and external data feeds in Ivy Sting 4. That included data from higher headquarters, joint partners, and other operational systems, allowing units to access a much broader set of information without needing to deploy or manage more of their own sensors.
“Within NGC2 we have this key concept of nodes, and that’s a place where data is created or processed or a user experience that the user has within a vehicle. Those could be command posts, or it could be a fixed site, like a tactical operation center, or it could be on a soldier warn device,” James Craven, a program manager with NGC2 for Anduril, told reporters this week.
“By distributing these nodes across the battlefield, we’re leveraging the Lattice mesh to find the best path through the network to get back to either cloud access or to regions where we don’t have denied, degraded, intermittent, latent network environment. It really allows them to can you continue to fight even if the traditional means of communication back are limited.”
Additionally, 4th ID created an airspace management tool aimed at improving how air assets are controlled.
Previously, managing airspace was a manual process and stovepiped. The tool will allow a single airspace picture that is more automated to see the flight paths of all air assets and plan fires as to not hit air assets.
“Obviously, we don’t want to fly our helicopters into other helicopters. We don’t want to fly them into one way attack drones or drones or in the airspace. But one of the main reasons I’m really interested in airspace clearance is to make sure that airspace deconflictions to make sure it’s clear so that we can shoot fires through it,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ellis, 4th ID commander, told reporters this week.
“Now this is all in one single interface and all of that can be seen by our folks that are managing the airspace and they’re able to, one with high confidence, make recommendations about when and where we shoot and also with really high confidence to tell the aviators that are flying through that airspace that the air is clear.”
