The Army has said its ongoing Project Convergence (PC) capstone experiment has demonstrated “monumental” improvement in the ability to connect sensors and shooters and pass data across the services and with allies and partners.
Lt. Gen. Ross Coffman, Army Futures Command’s deputy commanding general and experiment director for the PC capstone event, told reporters this year’s demonstration once again involved working with a plethora of new technologies “in the dirt,” while increasing the simulated Indo-Pacific-focused “threat envelope” 10-fold over previous iterations.
“And the entire Joint Force, and with our U.K. and Australian teammates and allies, we were able to effectively move data for the first time in an Indo-Pacific scenario at a magnitude never seen before,” Coffman said during a press conference at Camp Pendleton in California.
The Army has conducted Project Convergence as its signature effort to test new technologies and “sensor to shooter” capabilities since 2020, with Coffman noting the event has grown over the years to include more joint force and international partner involvement to work on “the exchanging of data, [establishing] common operational pictures and increasing our effectiveness by decreasing the time it takes to get rounds on target.”
Gen. James Rainey, head of Army Futures Command, announced last February the service would look to focus its PC campaign around both persistent experimentation throughout the year along with using a larger-scale, capstone event to inform priorities, to include shifting the next capstone demonstration from fall 2023 to the following spring (Defense Daily, Feb. 8).
This year’s PC capstone is a two-phased event, with the Army starting the experiment out of Camp Pendleton before moving to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin next week, with participation from the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force as well as the U.K., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, France and Japan.
Coffman noted this year’s PC capstone included utilizing the new Joint Track Management Capability (JTMC) “bridge” capability to facilitate passing defensive information to all those connected on the network.
“This ‘bridge’ absolutely allowed us to pass information from multiple sensors to multiple shooters, so that an Army sensor passed to a shooter in every service and every service’s sensor passed the same to every other service. So we’re really proud of that ‘bridge’ that was created.”
The JTMC bridge was borne out of a Missile Defense Agency effort, according to Coffman, who added the Army expanded its use at this year’s experiment to help inform data transfer requirements.
“One of things that was interesting is as we increased the pipe [of data] on this JTMC bridge, it worked magnificently. It was able to pass an amount of data that we have not seen before. We tested it last year [and] it was nascent and we were able to pass data successfully. But now by increasing 10-fold, it absolutely was able to pass that data and get it to the right shooters. However, what we learned very quickly is that when you’re passing that volume of data, there’s other legacy systems that weren’t designed initially for that amount, so we have to open those up,” Coffman said.
The Air Force also brought several of its new Tactical Operations Center – Light (TOC-L) prototypes to PC, which the service has said is designed to be a “highly mobile tactical-edge battle management node.”
Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, the Air Force’s program executive officer for command, control, communications and battle management, said PC affords the service an opportunity to do large-scale experimentation with the TOC-Ls to understand how they operate individually and collectively together within the broader joint force network, while informing potential incremental upgrades that could be done for the system.
Navy Vice Adm. Michael Boyle, commander of U.S. Third Fleet, noted he brought the USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60), USS Momsen (DDG 92) and the USS Savannah (LCS 28), some E-2D and EP-3 aircraft to PC “in order to provide some real, live program of record assets and demonstrate that we can connect that capability to the experimentation.”
“That gives me the confidence, as an operational commander, that if asked to synchronize these joint effects, I could. And so, on top of [Project] Convergence, I built a mission rehearsal where my maritime operations headquarters was executing mission orders that directed experiments and directed fires. And Convergence, bringing these teams together, allows us to practice that,” Boyle said.
Boyle also cited PC as an opportunity for the services to experiment with operating “one single magazine across the joint force,” with Coffman adding that work on establishing a common operational picture ensures “we don’t waste missiles needlessly and we’re all shooting at the same time.”
“If we can’t connect ourselves together, then we’re going to build individual, stovepiped plans and we may end up double targeting or triple targeting,” Boyle said. “But if we can connect together, then we can draw from a single magazine across the joint force…We don’t have unlimited magazines…[and] it is our job to ensure that we can connect my sensors to his fires and his sensors to my fires, because I might have the most available weapon where he’s got the most survivable sensors. And vice versa.”
Coffman noted the first phase of PC has included a focus on sustainment in contested environments, with the Army’s new Contested Logistics Cross Functional Team participating in the event.
“The Marine Corps is absolutely on the cutting edge of moving logistics assets around the ocean and getting them onto land. [The Army] has obviously looked at seacraft to solve that problem for us as well. And what we learned is that the Marine Corps may be a little better positioned with their assets…And we’re looking to determine what that means for our requirements in the future,” Coffman said.
Boyle and Coffman both reiterated the PC capstone event has been an opportunity to inform future priorities and requirements that their services may need to pursue to further bolster connectivity and data transfer capabilities.
“We’re not just experimenting for the sake of experimenting. We’re experimenting to understand what works and what doesn’t work and what do we want to pursue as a capability that connects us together,” Boyle said. “[New technologies in] these experiments, sometimes they have glitches because they’re not programs of record and the connections can be fragile. That’s part of what we’re trying to figure out here as we go.”