Months after telling Congress the Army’s battlefield network is critical to success in future wars, service officials want to strip the program of funding because the communications system cannot stand up to threats a near-peer adversary would pose.
In May, the Army requested $400 million for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical Increment 2 (WIN-T2). Officials returned to Capitol Hill on Sept. 28 to request stripping the program of $554 million in fiscal 2018 to pay for other priorities.
“Our intent is to halt the programs in [fiscal 20]18 … halt procurement of WIN-T Increment 2,” Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, the Army’s chief information officer, told the House Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air and land forces on Sept. 28.
Crawford graded the Army’s network modernization effort a “C.” Subcommittee Chair Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), quickly responded that “Many of us would give you a lower grade in terms of what you have accomplished.”
Crawford responded that the current WIN-T system as fielded faces challenges with beyond line-of-sight communications and lacks sufficient security, both of which are vulnerabilities a peer nation like Russia or China could exploit in a war.
“If we’ve got some security considerations, then why should we stick with the program out to 2020, knowing that we’ve got those significant problems,” Crawford said. “Let us invest in trying to fix our fight-tonight capability while we pivot to be ready for something different, vice repeating what we’ve done in the past.”
Plans are to continue fielding the WIN-T equipment it already has bought and then rely on the Joint Battle Command Platform (JBCP) until fiscal 2022, Crawford said. The service has general plans to incorporate off-the-shelf commercial technology to upgrade the existing network and plug capability gaps, but other than that has no replacement in mind for WIN-T, the satellite-based backbone of the Army’s deployable communications network.
“We do not have an objective system,” Crawford said. “If there were an objective system on the shelf, we would be going to try to purchase that objective system.”
“We’ve come to the conclusion that the network we have is not the network we need to fight and win against a peer threat in a contested or congested environment,” Crawford said of ongoing efforts to field WIN-T. “Our current network does not meet our war fighting needs now, nor do we believe it will meet the future war fighting needs of a high-intensity conflict.”
Too that end, the Army wants to move $554 million in fiscal 2018 from the WIN-T program to other priorities. Several members of Congress pointed out that the Army has already spent $6 billion on the program, not all of which is sunk cost.
Maj. Gen. James Mingus, director of the Mission Command Center of Excellence, explained that the entire Army has a baseline capability in WIN-T increment 1. Prime contractor General Dynamics [GD] since 2008 has been consistently refining and downsizing system components and is now fielding Increment 2 to the Army, Mingus said. All of that equipment will remain with the units that are currently using it in combat.
“We don’t believe [there will be] any operational impact,” Mingus said. “Because of the baselining of Inc 1 across the entire Army and then select formations with Inc 2 … the interoperability across all formations will still be there.”
The Army will retain and use the basic WIN-T architecture for years, Mingus said.
“We want industry to be able to come back in two years, or three years, and say ‘We’ve got a new, small, better, faster satellite dish so we can take advantage of all of what’s out there,” Mingus said. “The architecture writ large will stay with us for quite some time.”
Army officials met with profound skepticism from lawmakers who just months prior had heard plaudits about WIN-T, despite Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley ordering a top-to-bottom study of the program, it’s cost and what it has delivered.
Turner said the Army leaders’ testimony was “very disappointing” and he repeatedly lamented having to hold the hearing at all.
“Given the Army’s previous track record with the network, I am skeptical on whether this proposed new strategy will work as intended and I’m concerned we’re going to be back three years from now discussing another approach and yet still not have full implementation,” Turner said.
“The information you provided us today does not justify the abrupt shift,” in resources away from an established program of record to a nebulous process by which the Army hopes to achieve all of its requirements, Turner said.