WASHINGTON — Challenge Convergence this yr will develop in scope and scale to look at extra deeply how the joint power and worldwide companions can conduct absolutely linked mixed operations.
One other new aspect to the U.S. Military’s annual experimentation occasion is a “gateway” the place business can check rising expertise in a operational setting.
The service had all kinds of business companions “knocking on our door to get in” to Challenge Convergence in 2021, Brig. Gen. Man Jones, who leads the Military’s Futures and Ideas Middle, advised Protection Information in an interview forward of the Affiliation of the U.S. Military’s annual convention.
The primary portion of Challenge Convergence kicks off in October and continues into November.
In its third yr, Challenge Convergence will concentrate on each the Indo-Pacific and European theaters whereas determining methods to combat with capabilities at a bigger scale. The experimental occasion grew from an Military train within the desert of Yuma Proving Floor, Arizona, in 2020 to a joint analysis in 2021; this yr, it would incorporate worldwide companions the UK and Australia.
In lots of circumstances final yr, business confirmed up with new expertise too near the beginning of the experimentation course of, so the Military has partnered with business and created the “Gateway” experimentation occasion, Jones stated. Participation within the Gateway’s first yr is excessive, with roughly 50 totally different applied sciences present process assessments in theater-agnostic situations.
The Military will present taking part business with a separate community to plug into, and the occasion will happen at Yuma Proving Floor throughout Challenge Convergence, Jones famous.
“The intent is for business companions, who’ve understood and been briefed on a few of our challenges that we might have, [to] convey among the developments and issues they’ve been engaged on,” which might then absolutely be part of the subsequent Challenge Convergence or subsequent variations if profitable, Jones stated.
“That is how we’re going to proceed to generate new and modern concepts into the general marketing campaign of studying.”
What else is new this yr?
In joint warfighting, one service is usually chosen because the lead on a mission whereas different providers are referred to as in as assist, Jones famous.
“After we actually begin taking a look at [multidomain operations], what all people has come to understand is that to defeat a near-peer or a peer risk, we will’t do this any longer,” he stated. “Now we have to have the ability to combine the Air Drive’s plane, the Military’s deep sensing and the Navy’s Aegis ships, all collectively towards one single goal.”
Challenge Convergence 22 will try and conduct “mixed arms as a mixed service,” integrating a number of capabilities at a single goal, he added.
Key to enabling this can be a joint community centered on integrating sensors, processors, command nodes and effectors in a sequence. “We don’t have that at the moment,” Jones stated.
It presently takes 10-15 days for the U.S. and its companions to combine networks forward of an train, Jones stated. The U.S. army needs to have the ability to combine networks inside 4 to 6 hours. “I’d nonetheless assume that’s a number of years away.”
Challenge Convergence this yr has six studying targets, Jones stated. The primary is to ascertain an built-in air and missile protection community. The second is to make use of mixed arms fires to penetrate and defeat enemy belongings in enemy-controlled territory.
The third is to conduct mixed joint operations to realize a place of “relative benefit,” Jones stated, which might contain a number of approaches, resembling gaining a bodily place, attaining a psychological impact or deceiving an enemy.
The fourth objective is to tell a sensible “Mission Associate Surroundings” community, which brings collectively disparate networks of allies and companions that may’t usually talk, “as a result of we all know that we now have to combat with companions at each flip,” Jones stated.
The fifth goal is for the joint power to maintain itself, “so we attempt to combine how can we do this in each a distributed method and a contested method,” he stated.
The ultimate goal is to establish the authorities and insurance policies that forestall the U.S. armed providers from working collectively — an essential objective, Jones stated, as a result of “we’ve made coverage selections underneath an setting that didn’t envision this joint mixed arms software of our capabilities.”
For instance, he added, ”to ascertain the community that we’re on the brink of do, we now have 9 interservice agreements simply to even join the overarching structure. I’m not saying cross knowledge, I’m saying the structure. That’s loopy.”
Challenge Convergence 22 will happen at some new areas to raised mirror distances the joint power would encounter within the Indo-Pacific space of operations. The regional state of affairs will tie collectively Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton and San Clemente Island in California, in addition to a location in Hawaii.
A European theater state of affairs will play out on the Nationwide Coaching Middle at Fort Irwin and the Navy’s digital warfare vary at China Lake — each in California.
Tech headed to the check
Jones stated there are greater than 200 totally different applied sciences present process assessments for this yr’s occasion. And he’s reviewing not less than 24 totally different applied sciences to find out if any present packages must be adjusted, if necessities must be solidified or if the expertise must be divested as a result of it received’t work.
Among the many sensors the Military is incorporating into the experiment is the Excessive Altitude Detection and Exploitation System, or HADES. The sensor is presently aboard a manned plane, “however that’s in all probability not the place it’ll keep,” Jones stated. It can carry out some goal acquisition and digital warfare results.
The service can also be utilizing an unnamed system that conducts so-called deep sensing; area sensors may even play a task. Nevertheless, Jones declined to call the taking part programs. A next-generation artificial aperture radar — a business product — will assist differentiate threats on the bottom.
To course of knowledge from sensors, the Military will use a reproduction of the TITAN floor station — or Tactical Intel Concentrating on Evaluation Node — which continues to be underneath improvement. TITAN ingests knowledge and turns it into actionable info.
The target-pairing system Firestorm may even return for this yr’s occasion, as will SHOT — the Synchronized Excessive Op-tempo Concentrating on system — which helps generate concentrating on messages to ship out by way of a command-and-control node.
C2 nodes coming to Challenge Convergence 22 embrace the Built-in Battle Command System, which connects sensors and shooters on the battlefield and performs a central function in built-in air and missile protection. Additionally attending is a photo voltaic glider to create an aerial tier community relay for digital messaging.
The Military is bringing again the tactical knowledge material, nonetheless underneath improvement, referred to as Rainmaker. This yr, it would mix with LEAP, or Decrease Echelon Analytic Platform, which can assist transfer processed knowledge from one node to a different to get it to an effector, Jones stated.
Effectors in play on the occasion will embrace Military Particular Operations Command’s Hero-120 loitering precision munition in addition to a reproduction model of the service’s Lengthy-Vary Hypersonic Weapon system, nonetheless in improvement.
Robotic fight automobiles may even return in addition to a number of digital warfare platforms, together with the Terrestrial Layer System.
The Military is utilizing a lightweight assist vessel — an Military watercraft meant to simulate the longer term Maneuver Assist Vessel (Gentle), which isn’t but constructed — to evaluate sustainment capabilities in a Pacific state of affairs.
And an electrical Joint Gentle Tactical Automobile will take part within the experiment to assist consider the Military’s local weather technique objectives.
This yr’s Challenge Convergence may even consider a brand new expertise for medics within the subject referred to as BATDOK — or Battlefield Assisted Trauma Distributed Remark Equipment. It’s an app that permits medics to take care of trauma circumstances earlier than they attain a health care provider or surgeon.
A medic can plug in vitals and damage statistics, and the system will generate step-by-step procedures to observe. The app may even observe the care already administered so surgeons and docs are ready to choose up the place care left off within the subject.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist overlaying land warfare for Protection Information. She has additionally labored for Politico and Inside Protection. She holds a Grasp of Science diploma in journalism from Boston College and a Bachelor of Arts diploma from Kenyon School.
