Establishing a standard, open architecture for its battlefield network should allow the continuous introduction of emerging technologies and will inspire non-traditional, innovative businesses to pitch new operational capabilities to the Army, according to the general in charge of modernizing the service’s communications system.
Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, who heads the Army’s network cross functional team (CFT), wants to establish an open-architecture baseline
capability for the entire Army that can be rapidly, continuous updated as new technologies emerge or to meet evolving threats.
“What we really need is continuously adaptable capabilities,” he told reporters recently after an event hosted by the Brookings Institution at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We don’t want to be boxed in where we can’t constantly adapt. We want to have the ability, through a coherent and flexible architecture, to be constantly adapting and not be stuck with legacy systems that can’t adapt to evolving technology or an evolving threat.”
The network is foundational to all of the Army’s six modernization priorities, to the way it will fight future wars and whether it can win, Gallagher said. His CFT is working in lockstep with the Army’s command, control, communications-tactical program office (PEO C3T) and PEO Soldier to ensure the Army finally establishes a secure, upgradeable network that is viable in combat against a near-peer threat.
“We have to ensure our soldiers have the capability to shoot, move, communicate and protect themselves against a peer adversary,” he said. “A network is foundational to every one of those other modernization priorities. The network is the foundational underpinning that’s going to enable that to happen.”
When companies big or small develop capabilities – new waveforms, offensive and defensive cyber, even smaller, longer-lasting batteries – the Army wants them to be able to port in to the existing network baseline architecture. Gone are the days when the army will buy proprietary networking software or components, Gallagher said.
“We’re not seeking proprietary systems, at all,” Gallagher said. “We want to have a standard open architecture, but we also want to make sure we can port in capability that is going to give us an advantage over an evolving threat.”
PEO C3T and Gallagher’s CFT hosted a two-day event Feb. 6-7 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., network modernization headquarters to communicate its new strategy to industry. The event brought out a mix of traditional and non-traditional defense contractors, Gallagher said.
“It was good mix of folks,” he said. “There were many folks that we had not dealt with before. That sparked the interest of Army senior leadership over the last several months as we’ve been going through this network review.”
“We’re challenging the assumptions of industry,” he said. “What we’re asking industry to help us with is what’s in the art of the possible to continue to modernize this tactical network transport in a way to address … the threat of a peer adversary. WIN-T gives us a backbone, but it … doesn’t give us everything we need against a peer adversary. We’ve got to continue to modernize and augment that network over time as quickly as we can.”
Gallagher said companies with technologies that could provide new capabilities but felt “boxed out” of the previous network modernization efforts are now offering their products up now that the Army has opened the programs to third-party vendors.
“If you have the potential to bring something to the table now because you were kind of boxed out before, some folks feel there is some innovation and that we’re willing to accept innovative solutions,” he said. “Others might have been comfortable with the status quo, and we’ve just got to work our way through that.”
“The status quo is not what we need and we all know that,” he added. “If you can bring a capability to the table that we can port into our network architecture going forward that’s going to give us a significant advantage and give our soldiers and leaders capabilities to help us fight and win, that’s what we’re looking for.”