The Army's Command-and-Control Reboot

you are listening to the war on the rocks podcast on strategy defense and foreign affairs my name is ryan evans i'm the founder of war on the rocks command and control it's how military leaders make decisions communicate orders coordinate their forces and keep operations moving even as circumstances change and the enemy gets its own vote of course by fighting back the army is totally changing the way it does command and control this effort is called next generation command and control and i was joined on the sidelines of the association of the u.s army convention by lieutenant general matthew w mcfarlane commanding general of icor and major general patrick j ellis commanding general of the fourth infantry division these leaders are at the forefront of next generation command and control i'd like to thank arrow environment you av for sponsoring the event at which this episode was recorded it's great to have two fantastic army leaders with us we're talking about this thing called next generation command and control in plain language what is that exactly i'll jump in first sir since i've been kind of on this journey like we were talking about before ryan a couple things to talk about is really the army decided that they the stovepipe command and control systems where we had a box to talk to a box for every different war fighting system we had that wasn't functional anymore army and control system we had a box for every different war fighting system we had that wasn't functional anymore army the approach we would take here is kind of a whole stack approach. So we talk about it, we've really broken it up into four layers, but it's transport layer, you've got to move your ones and zeros. It's an infrastructure layer, you've got to integrate all the different data. You've got to get into a coherent data layer. And then on top of that, you can run applications just like you do on your phone, just run a whole series of applications. The Army's approach here, the Army's attempt to take a modern software development cycle and then really apply that on top of army command and control. Yeah, and I just add it, what it does is it provides leaders like me and leaders at Echelon the ability to make decisions faster and coordinate movement faster than our adversaries. So that's what we call decision dominance. Layered, it starts with the assured resilient transport that Pat mentioned. So we can talk from any point on the face of the earth to any other point on the face of the earth. And Pat demonstrated that here last month. As he was connected from an aircraft flying to Indonesia, was connected on a boat off the shore of Indonesia, and was connected when he was on the ground in Indonesia with my headquarters at JBLM and his headquarters at Fort Carson, Colorado. And how do you two work together on this? Because you're both leaders, you both have formations that you command, but in a way you're kind of battle buddies when it comes to next generation command and control. Is that fair? Yeah, I would say so. We started our journeys, the prototype division for the United States Army. So, you know, experimentation is, should I do something or not? Prototyping, the Army said, no, we're going to do it for ID, figure out how to make this stuff work. And then now that we've run through Project Capstone Convergence 6, which finished in August, so down at the National Training Center, and now the Army's going to forward the same capability up to the Corps. So now it's scaling from one division here, and the 25th Infantry Division's got a little bit different version of this scaling up to the Corps. So we're starting to pass lessons learned. We're starting to pass people that have some expertise are going to start moving up to the core there to help take this from the division level to the core level. The proven capabilities of NextGen C2, we are fielding right now at Joint Base Lewis-McChord for first core and our enablers. For us at the operational level, core is the operational level, the operational warfighting headquarters for the Pacific. We have a different role than Pat at the division level in his subordinate units. Scope and scale is different in terms of the reality of distance in the Indo-Pacific theater and the PACOM AOR. So we are dealing with distances like command posts in Honshu, Japan, all the way down to Brisbane, Australia. We're dealing with tracking the movement of sustainment supplies and you needed munitions from the continent of the United States into the point of need at the tactical level where Pat is and doing different functions at the operational level, enabling our campaign so Pat can stay focused on the tactical mission in his area of operation. What can commanders now do with next-generation command and control that they couldn't do, let's say, a year or 18 months ago? From my perspective, what I'd say is it's not that I'm doing things now that I couldn't do before. I would say what we've done is we've taken the existing staff processes, the existing way that we do business, and with the technology overlaid on top of that, it's allowing us to do that work much more quickly than we were able to do before. I mean, we're talking like processing of fire missions. The volume of that at the division level has gone through the roof, you know, 9, 10x of what we were able to do before. So from my perspective, because I can see a common operating picture, because I can see the same things my commanders see, I don't have to bring them all together into one physical location. We always knew that was bad. Now we don't have to do that anymore. I jump on their cap. They're actually drawn and showing me what they can see. We're able to, you know, at the National Training Center, I had a big fight all the way across the box. We got a last-minute FRAGO that said, you know, fragmentary order that said, turn south and fight south. We planned that, rehearsed that, synchronized that, and executed that. No commander was ever in the same place. We were all scattered all across the battlefield, and we were able to do that in about 12 hours, refocus. That's the kind of speed that I'm talking about. And how much of this is pure technology versus changing how the Army operates? So I think the technology enables it. What I think is really, really interesting about this is, folks, we get questions about, what's the trainability on this? How hard is this for soldiers to pick up? Most of these soldiers and the young officers got their first iPad when they're four years old. They deny that, but most of them get them when they're four years old. So the closer we make things feel to architecture they're already used to and apps that they're already used to, that kind of common feeling is making the training aspect of this go super, super quickly. And soldiers are able to pick that up now in a way that we've never seen before. I had a soldier showed up one week before the NTC rotation, deployed to the NTC with us, and was running the fires enterprise for the division in an application that he had never personally used before, but that was pretty intuitive. He was able to figure out in about a week. Not changing how we fight in terms of the fundamentals, but it's making how we fight more efficient and effective and allowing us to make decisions quicker. An example is if you have a headquarters, a Napoleonic battle rhythm, which we still have in some units with next generation command and control estimates for staff officers across the war fighting functions are automatically done. They're still checking them to make sure they're accurate. But with the dashboard for the commander, he can see the progress. He can see himself. He can see the enemy better, can understand the train more. And then he has the ability to drive the detector to effector, if you will. So the battle rhythm has changed. Instead of doing 14-hour-long meetings with a whole bunch of people huddled up, as Pat just mentioned, with commanders very efficient, not even huddling, but doing it virtually, in a headquarters working through decision processes that we had, the military decision making process, we're skipping a bunch of those meetings because we already have the information ready available and valid to allow me and subordinate commanders to make decisions. How do you balance, on one hand, it's amazing that we can have all these commanders communicate from wherever they are and plan from wherever they are, see a common operating picture. At the same time, I remember as we were coming out of Afghanistan, we were told the future battlefield would be different. We would be told that if you admit you die, we, of course, have seen a lot of that happen in Ukraine as well, in real life over the last few years, tragically. How is the Army balancing those trade-offs of distributed information sharing and communication versus survivability? I'll let Pat explain what he experienced at the National Training Center here. But the key thing it enables is disaggregated, distributed command posts and forces, then the ability to aggregate quickly mass and then disaggregate once they're done. So it enables survival because of how you can stay distributed. Pat, go ahead and give some concepts. Yeah, so from a technical perspective, a lot of what we've done that I think is pretty valuable is we've given commanders multiple options now. There's not one path out. So you've got multiple ways to get out. I can tell a story about, you know, one of the low Earth orbit satellite receivers on top of one of the vehicles went down. 1,500 meters away was the other half of their node. Over radio energy, this guy was able to pull, like, we didn't even know. The guys, the software actually rerouted the network by itself. So the guys doing the work, you notice his computer got a little slow, called up to the other node and said, yeah, our Starlink went down. They connected over radio frequency to get it back out. So what we're doing is we're giving commanders tools to make decisions about risk and risk tolerance. It's like, okay, at this point in the battlefield, we're going to use this type of radio, this type of waveform, or this type of communications architecture. And also, the node concept he's talking about, the vehicles inside of these nodes were scattered apart by, you know, up to 1,500 meters. Every 24 hours, every one of those vehicles moved. And then every 48 hours or so, that whole box of vehicles moved to a whole new area. So for survivability, Alpo was never able to find us at the National Training Center. And some of the communications that we're using, the stuff that we're using in the headquarters is the same stuff that they're using on the dismounted soldiers. You're not looking for a needle in a haystack anymore. You're looking for a needle in a stack of needles. So the out-four commander was very frustrated. He had a lot of tools at his disposal, never found a command post node. So you are going to have to admit if you're going to share data and exchange data. But it's all about risk tolerance. And also, it's about mitigating that risk by raising the noise floor, not necessarily by trying to drop below the noise floor. Taking a short break from this conversation, a very short break to tell you about some exciting discounts for our membership program. You might know about our membership. We offer all these premium podcasts. We have 10 now, including the Russia Contingency, the Iran Reckoning, Thinking the Unthinkable, and more. We offer newsletters and an app. Now we've rolled out a discount if you are working for the government. of the military, or if you are at an educational institution, pretty steep discount to become a War on the Rocks member. Check it out at warontherocks.com slash membership and join our community of insiders. Back to the episode. I think it's fair to say mission command is a very important part of what the army is and how it sees itself. And this, of course, is not a new debate when it comes to next generation command and control. This is a debate that's been happening ever since instantaneous communications became possible on the battlefield and more pervasive, beginning with the telegraph. But the challenge is in some ways more acute is to what extent are you, through next generation command and control, allowing for more decentralized action according to the intent of the commander or incentivizing more centralization? Yeah, I don't know if it's a case of centralization versus decentralization. I had five brigade commanders working for me. They all have different personalities and I needed to interact with them. I needed to interact with them. You know, other than the official guides, I need to interact with them differently. Some needed more time to plan. Some needed more just encouragement. Some I just needed to get out of their way and let them accomplish that task. So from my perspective, it's a little bit of a disciplined thing as a commander. Just because I can see those blue dots doesn't mean I necessarily need to maneuver platoons because that's not what I do anymore. You know, when leaders have the discipline to do the work, the shaping that we do at the division level, the strike we've been talking about this week where we're setting things on fire, we're breaking things, we're killing people in front of our brigade so they don't have it. And I think that's a big part of it. And I think that's a big They don't have to. That's where I focus. We've got reps and years of doing this. So we kind of know what the discipline feels like to let a commander execute that mission command and show that discipline intent. I'll tell you one thing that I think was really fascinating is the National Training Center had one battalion that was cross-attached. They were supposed to secure the breach in this last big battle period, working for one brigade. They get down there and I told them before it even started, I said, if you see an opportunity, go deeper than the breach, get us another terrain feature. And that commander was able to stop working for one brigade, jump into working with a different brigade while he's reporting back to his original brigade and doing that all with different types of radios because we had common, the ability to communicate over radio, over IP. He was able to jump with these nets seamlessly. And I think that's a good example of how the tech, and I could see his blue dots, so I didn't even bother him. I could see where he was moving. So I think what it does for us is that allows that discipline initiative that you want as part of mission command and guys are able to execute it. And the trust is even faster because I don't have to talk to him about it. He just got to execute that. And he grabbed that extra piece of terrain. We passed the tanks through and they were off to the races. Yeah. There's always hesitation when you know your higher, higher, higher headquarters can see what you're doing in the fight. But when there's that trust and there's commander dialogue, the visibility you get two levels up and two levels down helps ensure you're identifying and getting predictive with needs of subordinate units. What we use is the term for divisions to fight free within the corps area of operations, we need to be predictive with our sustainment, their necessary sustainment. So they have what they need to continue the mission or the munitions that they need to continue to their strike operations, as well as passing targets of concern to them. So they know they're out there as we also strike and enable their freedom of maneuver because of what we're doing in the core deep areas, what we call it. To what extent, I'm not sure if you two gentlemen can speak to this, but have learnings from our ongoing campaign against EROD? And what are some of the lessons that you've learned from the fight against Iran informed where you two are steering things? We're watching all the conflicts around the world right now and integrating the lessons that are applicable for us in the Pacific and informing how we're driving the construct for things like next generation command and control, how we're setting the theater, making sure we're attuned to any emerging risk based on technology that we're seeing out there and the ways people are applying that technology in the fight. I signed into the United States Army Europe and Africa as the operations officer seven days after the Russians came across. I was able to have a first front row seat to a lot of those lessons there. You could probably hear in some of this command post survivability stuff. I'm very focused on that because I was able to watch what was happening to the Russians and said, that's not what I want to have happen to our team there. So that absolutely informed that. A lot of the drone conversations have been part of that as well. And we're starting to watch some of the other lessons. But absolutely, I think it's informed when you've got leaders and soldiers that have served in some of these commands and have seen that stuff firsthand, like, yeah, we know exactly why we want to apply this. You know, we were talking before we started recording. wrote an article for us two years ago as you were helping to architect this out. But the same question goes for you is compared to where the Army was on next generation command and control two years ago or two and a half years ago, what has surprised you about where you've ended up now or where you're heading? What has been the sort of genuine surprise? Yeah, I don't know if it's surprise, but satisfying that, you know, we talked to a guy on the moon in 1969, yet over the horizon comms was a challenge for army five years ago now it's not a challenge at all based on the technology we have what has surprised me in the process is the tools and capabilities we're getting to literally truly making decisions much quicker than we used to and the tools and the super intelligence that's integrated into the system so far is super helpful for me and subordinate leaders and leaders like pat to take decisive action quickly i always believed it was out there but I was massively surprised at the amount of the people we have that are just really good at this stuff. And it's not by military specialty. It's just by interest. We had a guy that got real frustrated about the preventive maintenance checks and services, you know, the stuff we do on the piece of paper to inspect a vehicle. He got mad at what we had, vibe-coded an app over a weekend, and then we deployed that into the environment, certified and deployed in the environment. And what I find is if folks know that you're willing to assume some technical risk One of Pat's best young soldiers in a battalion we visited at the National Training Center was an HVAC repairman before he joined the Army. So he's a 21-year-old specialist in one of his infantry battalions that was leading the way in the next generation command and control effort. It is really remarkable what these young service members can do if you give them the technology and just let them run with it. Yeah, they're very talented. If you just let the talent do its thing, that's the thing. Well, the last question I'll ask is, of course, we're talking about the future of warfare, the present of warfare and the future of warfare. But still, history is often an important guide to how we think about the future. And what historical cases have been front of mind for you two as you've been along this journey? The historical cases, we've certainly used technology previously, but it's the reality of the crucible of combat. If you look at what happened in World War II in the Pacific, what was as much a problem was the environment as was our adversaries in the World War II fight. And making sure we're attuned to those lessons as we continue to drive the technology. It's still going to be those great soldiers, the soldiers that win the day, that adapt in stride. We're keen on making sure we remember those lessons from all the different fights as we look to make sure we can dominate moving forward. I think we innovate really aggressively when we're in contact. You think about MRAPs, you think about the stuff we're welding on vehicles in Afghanistan. You look at the stuff they're doing in World War II, I think for me, the historical example was, you know, how do you innovate? In the interwar period, you know, where there was a gap and you're like, how do I get the sense of where we need to go? How do we build that unity of purpose and then get the soldiers working towards that common goal when we're not necessarily in contact? That was the historical example. I think we talked about a lot. It's like, how do you do the change management side of this? Really, what I found is you got to find the people. The joke I make is that a magic eye painting that's at the mall, you know, if you stare at it long enough, you can see a sailboat. Not everybody can see the sailboat. How do you find the guys that can see the sailboat and say, look, you're going to be my guy. Guys that is actually leading an element that we built out of Hyde, a command and control support element. Anything that touches data in our division actually worked for this guy. The first time I met him, I called to scuff him up about some side project stuff he was working on. And General Rainey said, look, you need to get after this and solve this problem. And then I signed into the division a couple weeks later. I bring him up there, sweaty palms. And I said, hey, you want a job? And he went, I did not think that's how this was going to go. And then organizing yourself and then just empowering those folks. I mean, that's a common lesson in the Army, I think, is we've got a ton of talent. And the American soldier is massively ingenuitive. And we just got to give them the time to do it. A little bit of steerage and then access to some resources. And they will accomplish all kinds of stuff for you. That's great. Thank you both so much for having this conversation. Round of applause for our guests. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. Thanks again to AV for sponsoring this terrific event at which we recorded this episode. And again, don't forget to check out our membership program and the amazing discount we've rolled out at warontherocks.com. Thanks for listening.