Current communication systems relied upon by U.S. warfighters are too “old” and “outdated,” according to Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll, who says a concerted push is underway to accelerate private industry’s delivery of advanced technology and the Army’s acquisition process.
Mr. Driscoll said in an exclusive interview with The Washington Times that the establishment of a new communications backbone is critical to the mission of embracing and integrating much of the new defense technology that was on display at the recent Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington.
“Until we have the data layer that allows our people, our sensors, and our things to communicate in near real time, we are not able to take advantage of a lot of the tech innovations of our time,” Mr. Driscoll said.
Many of the military industry contractors and developers at the AUSA conference in mid-October — one of the biggest arms shows in the United States each year — touted new, quick-thinking artificial intelligence weapons platforms and digital-first design structures.
The problem: All of it will rely on as yet unproven communications systems.
In July, the Army and Anduril Industries announced a $99.6 million agreement for a prototype of a possible solution. Anduril has said it is working on a team that includes other major contractors such as Palantir, Govini and Microsoft, among others, is developing “an ecosystem that can rapidly integrate a range of technologies into a singular architecture,” giving soldiers access to “compute, communications, and information processing capabilities all at once.”
Mr. Driscoll told The Times his team is closely tracking the testing of the transformative architecture, particularly within the context of ongoing conflicts on the world stage.
“If you look at Ukraine, a core, fundamental lesson is warfare is scaling to a place that the cognitive load for a human is just too great,” Mr. Driscoll said. “You have got to design everything, every single thing, so that a machine can be in the decision making.”
The Army is currently testing its Next Generation Command and Control system, or NGC2, the prototype provided by the Anduril team and their partners. The new communications platform is attempting to achieve a longtime dream for the military — a secure, software-based platform that can link systems across the battlefield and services.
Defense sources say a combination of low earth orbit satellites, data layer radio communications and other platforms will be the communications backbone for NGC2.
The 4th Infantry Division is responsible for testing and implementing the new system. Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis is the division commander. Gen. Ellis was previously a director at the Command and Control Cross Functional Team, which gave him firsthand experience with the challenges the new NGC2 will have to overcome.
Some testing has already shown success toward replacing a historically difficult legacy system. The U.S. military’s existing Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System, known as AFATDS, has a reputation for being such a system.
Soldiers across the services have been known to joke about the system’s ability to function.
Anduril representatives have said a modernized version of AFATDS — the newly released Artillery Execution Suite — successfully connected with their communications solution “only eight weeks” after the company received its agreement with the Pentagon.
Artillery units were able to fire “running entirely on Anduril’s Lattice Mesh and Palantir’s Target Workbench from headquarters down to the gun line,” Anduril announced in late September.
The defense industry and the Pentagon will be closely watching the 4th Infantry Division as they participate in a major training exercise in spring of 2026 using the new systems. Gen. Ellis’ soldiers will fight a real-time training battle against human opponents in the training areas in the California desert.
It could be a major step toward realizing the goal of modernization. At a minimum, it’s a major test for Mr. Driscoll’s military counterpart, the Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Randy George, who has been pushing to actualize an Army modernization campaign that began early in his career.
When asked if all the new technology systems will actually be able to talk to each other in the near future, Mr. Driscoll was hopeful.
“All the things we’re working on, the work that General George and the vice [chief of staff of the Army] and the sergeant major of the Army had done before I was even in this role… set us up to a place where we could act quickly,” Mr. Driscoll said. “I think what you will start to see in the middle of next year is much of our equipment actually starting to look and be able to communicate like you’re describing.”
