Army Continues Network Transformation Push

Army Continues Network Transformation Push

Army senior leaders speak at AUSA 2024
Photo by: Tasos Katopodis for AUSA

As the Army pursues a network that is simple, unified, rugged and easily upgradeable, the service must learn to harness innovations that already exist in the private sector, two senior leaders said.

“The difference today that we’ve never experienced before in the Army is the technology is already there,” Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said. “The real challenge is how good are we at ingesting it and adopting it. It is our challenge to take an innovative approach with our institutional processes … to unlock the potential of what the private sector can already offer.”

Speaking Oct. 15 during a fireside chat on accelerating command and control and network innovation at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2024 Annual Meeting and Exposition, Camarillo said the Army has come “a long way as we’re continuing to further our efforts to simplify our network.”

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus, who participated in the fireside chat alongside Camarillo, agreed. “I’m about as excited about the things we’re doing today than I’ve been in a long time,” he said. “We’re doing tangible things today, putting things in our formations that are better than we had before, more lethal than we had before.”

To date, the Army has streamlined from 42 networks to 14, with the goal of having just one by 2027.

The network “underpins everything,” Mingus said, connecting people, weapons, sensors and more.

“The general principles of what we want our network to be is easy to use, it has to keep pace with commercial innovations, it has to recognize we’ll operate in highly contested and congested environments,” Camarillo said. “It also has to be rapidly upgradeable.”

To achieve these objectives, the Army is looking at a more integrated approach as it builds its network. “There is an opportunity for teams of vendors to work together on a set of capabilities that we can rapidly iterate over time,” Camarillo said.

It also is changing its mindset. “The requirements are never going to be 100% done,” he said. “The challenge we have … is creating an acquisition program that enables us to continuously upgrade over time. We’re working through that right now.”