Among these victims of their own negligence were World War I ace of aces Manfred von Richthofen and second-ranking American World War II ace Thomas B. McGuire Jr.

Yet another cautionary tale was left by Neel Kearby.

While a second lieutenant in the Army Reserves in 1938, Kearby shot up the ranks after World War II broke out: captain on Feb. 1, 1942, major on March 1 and lieutenant colonel on Nov. 28.

In October 1942, Kearby was put in charge of a new unit, the 348th Fighter Group. It was the first outfit shipped to V Fighter Command in New Guinea equipped with the Republic P-47D Thunderbolt, a huge, sturdy single-engine fighter armed with eight wing-mounted .50-caliber machine guns.

American fighter jockeys in the South Pacific generally preferred the Lockheed P-38G Lightning, which had proven a highly successful ace-maker, while dismissing the P-47 “Jug” as too heavy and not maneuverable enough to dogfight nimble lightweights such as the Japanese navy’s Zero and the army’s Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa.

Once in command, however, Kearby became a hardcore “believer” in the P-47 and devoted himself to developing a doctrine for making the most of the Thunderbolt’s diving speed, while canceling out the Japanese advantages.

When the 348th moved to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, on July 14, 1943, its pilots had trained well under Kearby’s tutelage and its first combat flight on Aug. 16 yielded its first victim: a Ki-43 of the 59th Koku Sentai (air regiment) downed by 2nd Lt. Wilburn C. Henderson.

In spite of being 32 years of age — practically ancient by USAAF standards — Kearby was a believer in leading by example and on Sept. 4 he scored his first victories, a Mitsubishi G4M bomber and one of its Zero escorts.

Ten days later he outran and downed a Mitsubishi Ki-46, a twin-engine reconnaissance built for speed. On Sept. 23 he was promoted to colonel. Then, on Oct. 11, he shot down six Japanese aircraft in a matter of 15 minutes, a feat that led to his being awarded the Medal of Honor from Gen. Douglas MacArthur on Jan. 23, 1944.

Over the next few months Kearby and the 348th established themselves as forces to be reckoned with over New Guinea. On Jan. 9, 1944, he downed two fighters, bringing his score up to 21. At that point he was dividing his attention between flying alongside the 348th and, after Nov. 12, 1943, flying a desk in V Fighter Command while Lt. Col. Robert Richard Rowland assumed command of the 348th.

Kearby’s superior in Fifth Air Force, Maj. Gen. George C. Kenney, encouraged this arrangement to stir up a rivalry between aces, as he was already doing with P-38 champions Richard I. Bong and Tommy McGuire. Besides bringing out the deadly best in these outstanding pilots — and pitting the P-38s against Kearby’s P-47 — the publicity it generated kept the Fifth Air Force in the public eye and attracted re-equipment stateside.

On Feb. 8, 1944, Kenney put Kearby in command of the 308th Bombardment Group (Heavy), and it was during this command that Kearby forgot his own dictum.

On March 5, 1944, Kearby was leading Captains Samuel Blair and William D. Dunham at 22,000 feet altitude over the enemy airfields at Wewak when, at 1720 hours, they spotted three Kawasaki Ki-48 bombers heading toward Dagua for a landing.

The Japanese at Dagua spotted their comrades’ plight, however, and the 77th Sentai scrambled five Ki-43s up after the intruders.

Diving on their prey, each American ace was credited with one, but Kearby was not sure of his and circled around to make another pass. His 22nd victim splashed in the sea, but in making that second pass at relatively low altitude and reduced airspeed, he handed the advantage to the Hayabusas. The 77th Sentai’s log credited a P-47 each to Warrant Officer Koichi Mitoma and Sgt. Hiroshi Aoyagi, while suffering one plane badly damaged.

In July 1947 Australian War Graves personnel found Kearby in the wreckage of his plane, “Fiery Ginger IV,” just 1,800 feet from Dagua. The only intact remnant, the white vertical stabilizer bearing the serial 42-22668, was returned to the U.S. and in 2001 it was put on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force beside a rebuilt plane in his markings.

Kearby’s remains were laid to rest at Sparkman Hillcrest Memorial Park.

Besides the Medal of Honor, Kearby was awarded two Silver Stars, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, five Air Medals and one Purple Heart. In 1959 a building on Sheppard Air Force Base is named in his honor and in 2010 the Texas Historical Commission and the City of Arlington unveiled a plaque and a statue of him in the Arlington Public Library.

But while the Army may not storm Shanghai in a ground assault, it certainly has the ability to strike Chinese territory. The Army has an arsenal of long-range munitions in service or under development, including the shorter-range Precision Strike Missile, the Typhon Strategic Mid-Range Fires system and the Dark Eagle Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon. These missiles can hit targets 1,000 to almost 3,000 kilometers away.

A likely target would be Chinese ports that would be key to supporting the Chinese fleet, staging an amphibious invasion of Taiwan and sustaining Chinese exports and imports.

But damaging Chinese ports or seizing Chinese economic facilities is a bad idea, warns an Army National Guard officer. In fact, “the Army should preserve Chinese maritime shipping infrastructure during conflict so that it is usable postwar,” wrote Capt. Micah Neidorfler in a recent essay for Military Review.

This sounds counterintuitive; compelling the enemy to capitulate by destroying his strategic infrastructure has been a plank of U.S. policy since the B-17 bombers of the 1930s. But despite U.S. efforts to decouple its economy from China’s, America still depends on China for everything from iPhones and rare earths to providing an export market for American farmers. Much of the global economy — especially manufacturing — relies on Chinese industry.

Yet, “U.S. joint doctrine specifically identifies ports as targets, and predictions for a U.S.-China war perceive Chinese ports as likely targets for U.S. strikes,” Neidorfler noted. “Therefore, in any U.S.-China conflict, Chinese maritime infrastructure will be exposed to the devastation of twenty-first-century warfare.”

If devastating China’s ports cripples the global or U.S. economy, any victory could prove pyrrhic. Since an unconditional Chinese surrender is unlikely, there will inevitably be a negotiated peace and a need to restore postwar trade, Neidorfler argued.

“Suggesting that the Army should preserve enemy strategic infrastructure might make many balk, but the reasoning is sound,” wrote Neidorfler. “U.S. domestic prosperity significantly depends upon international trade and the global economy, which in turn are deeply intertwined with China.”

But Neidorfler sees a way out of this dilemma. Ports are complex entities with numerous — and vulnerable — components for loading and unloading cargo, storing it and transporting goods to and from the site. Thus, ports are vulnerable to disruption at many points, including cranes, piers, rail yards and oil storage tanks. It is possible to hit specific targets that render a port temporarily inoperable, but without inflicting long-term damage.

“Applying this tactic to Chinese ports would fulfill a strategic aim of preventing or degrading their utility during wartime while remaining relatively easy to repair post-conflict, allowing China to return to maritime trade quickly,” argued Neidorfler. In addition, because “destroying subcomponents does not threaten ports’ long-term functionality, this dramatically reduces the escalatory nature of targeting them.”

All of this ties into the larger question of the Army’s role as a major player in a Pacific war.

Defense tank analyses of a possible U.S.-China war have ignored Army contributions or focused on the service’s niche capabilities, Neidorfler noted. But in reality, “over the last decade, the Army has focused on five main themes,” he wrote, including command and control for the joint force, sustaining the joint force and also protecting it via air defense, ground-based long-range fires and traditional maneuver forces.

Whether the U.S would actually attack Chinese ports is open to debate. Given that China has the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal and ICBMs that can reach the continental United States, the decision to fire missiles at Chinese cities may be more of a political than a military decision.

However, Neidorfler offers an alternative: using the Army to seize Chinese-owned ports in other nations, to use as bargaining chips or to prevent their use as military and intelligence bases. China’s investment in foreign ports is massive: 129 projects in which Chinese companies own equity or are involved in port operations, according to a 2024 estimate. He argues the majority of the Army’s force structure would be available for such a strategy, as a U.S.-China conflict would not require a vast number of maneuver units in the Pacific.

The Army would enjoy a variety of means to capture Chinese-owned overseas infrastructure that would be lightly defended at best, he argued. These include special operations forces, and for a more diplomatic approach, Army foreign area officers and National Guard bilateral affairs officers who could work with the host nations.

But even here, there are political complications, Neidorfler cautioned. Seizing Chinese property “raises sovereignty issues for the nations housing Chinese ports, and the United States could not pursue this unilaterally,” wrote Neidorfler. Since many countries — especially in the Global South — are unlikely to welcome American military intervention, “third-party states’ own militaries seizing assets would be more realistic.”

U.S. experts on China have misgivings on these ideas. Authorization to attack Chinese ports is not a given, Lonnie Henley, a researcher at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told Defense News.

“Who knows what some future president in some unspecified global circumstances would decide,” Henley said.

As for Army long-range missiles, “you need a place to stand to launch those weapons, and you have to get the forces there, and sustain them, and defend them from counterattack,” said Henley, a former Army lieutenant colonel with long experience as an intelligence expert on East Asia.

In addition, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy already have plenty of missiles.

“More weapons on target is always good, but how many more can the Army provide, compared to another dozen B-52 sorties?” Henley asked.

The U.S. and its allies could probably cut off most Chinese maritime trade.

“So what’s the added benefit of seizing ports in third countries?” Henley said. “None that I can see.”

Even Neidorfler admits that his ideas are “not an intuitive strategy,” as culturally, the Army is “focused on achieving decisive victory in the shortest time possible.”

Yet short of global nuclear war, a Sino-American war would inevitably end in some kind of peace agreement.

“If the U.S. Army is truly preparing for a conventional war, it must recognize that any settlement must be mutually acceptable for it to last,” Neidorfler concluded.

But this runs into the perennial question of generalists versus specialists. Should counter-drone, or C-UAS, be a skill taught across the U.S. Army, with every soldier a potential asset for air defense? Or should C-UAS be assigned to highly trained specialists?

The service needs to create a specialized C-UAS Military Occupational Specialty, or MOS, argues one Army officer.

“Dedicated CUAS MOSs will focus on defensive operations by defending maneuver formations from enemy kinetic UAS [unmanned aerial systems] and ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] assets,” wrote Capt. Peter Clifton in a September essay for the Army’s Air Defense Artillery Journal. “This will allow friendly formations to retain freedom of maneuver on the battlefield and prevent enemy UAS assets from detecting and reporting friendly positions.”

Current C-UAS training is too generalized, according to Clifton, who is headquarters and headquarters detachment commander for the 110th Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Battalion.

“The Joint CUAS course is generally an afterthought for training and pulls soldiers from their primary MOS responsibilities,” he wrote.

The problem isn’t that maneuver forces lack counter-drone capabilities. Units being deployed may receive anti-drone jammers, and personnel are expected to be proficient with their small arms, machine guns and anti-tank weapons, all of which can be used against drones. But assigning regular personnel to anti-drone work means “adding additional duties to a squad member in an already over tasked squad will severely degrade mission command from the company commander to the team leader,” as units will have less riflemen for engaging and destroying enemy forces, Clifton warned.

The Army itself admits that counter-drone training needs improvement. For example, a recent report by the Center for Army Lessons Learned revealed numerous problems during exercises at the National Training Center.

“The current training environment nearly always prioritizes maneuver, intelligence, and combined arms tactics, relegating C-UAS training to a secondary role where it is thrown in a corner and forgotten about, only reemerging when a critical event, such as a drone swarm overflight of a BN [battalion] HQ, reminds leaders of the importance of C-UAS,” the report warned. Units rotating through NTC suffer from a lack of standardized tactical standard operating procedures, “refined” battle drills and dedicated C-UAS planning and personnel, according to the report.

Other research suggests a C-UAS MOS would have challenges as well as benefits. On the plus side, C-UAS specialists would better integrate counter-drone capabilities into the maneuver forces, and allow for training that is more focused and can be continually updated, according to a 2023 study by the Center for Strategic and International Security think tank. However, a C-UAS MOS would also require more time and resources for training, and result in “potentially slower response time because only authorized C-UAS operators can counter threats.”

Ironically, one potential benefit of a counter-drone career field has nothing to do with drones. A C-UAS MOS might be a recruiting tool for attracting young people “with an affinity for technology and video games,” Clifton argued. “Recruits already predisposed to systems like the Xbox controller will lower the learning curve and make their training faster and more cost effective.”

Right now, the Army is trying to replicate that model. Several modernization initiatives are underway, fighting through layers of bureaucracy, outdated policy and institutional inertia. The goal? To improve the soldier dining experience and increase meal card entitlement usage. But even with those efforts, one must ask: Is the university dining model truly generalizable to the military setting?

Before my time as an Army dietitian, I worked in university dining at Ohio University. Even in the early 2000s, the student dining environment far outpaced what the Army offers today. Students could flexibly use meal swipes across dining halls, grab-and-go concepts and campus markets. Didn’t want to sit and eat? No problem, grab your food and go. Miss a few meals during the week? Use your meal swipe as a cash equivalent, a set dollar amount per meal, at a campus market (think an Army & Air Force Exchange Service shoppette, minus the alcohol). Some schools even allowed local restaurants to accept those dollars.

Now contrast that with the Army’s use-it-or-lose-it meal card system, where garrison dining access often resembles a food desert. Since 2022, Army Materiel Command (AMC) has been pushing modernization efforts. Pilots like the Flexible Eating and Expanded Dining (FEED) initiative aim to expand essential station messing (ESM) redemption sites, while the Campus-Style Dining Venue (CSDV) initiative seeks to contract out base dining facilities to create more appealing dining experiences.

These efforts signal progress. But they won’t be enough.

This isn’t just a question of imitation. It’s a question of environmental differences.

Army life doesn’t mirror college life. Even the word “campus” is misapplied. Its origin traces to the green outside Nassau Hall at Princeton, not the 40,000-acre footprint of Fort Hood. Universities are walkable. Installations are not.

Class schedules are flexible. Army training schedules are not. College students decide when, or if, they go to class. Soldiers don’t choose whether to report to formation, motor pool or PT.

For universities, dining is part of the amenities package. Whether a student eats junk food or skips meals altogether isn’t the university’s concern. But in the Army, nutrition is operational and fuels the warrior ethos. It shapes physical readiness, recovery, injury risk and long-term health. What’s on the plate today determines combat capability tomorrow.

And in a world of formations, hard times and competing priorities, food choice is one of the last liberties soldiers hold. But when the Army fails to meet their needs, they’ll use that liberty to eat elsewhere. Or not at all.

Universities often choose between contracted and self-operated dining models. The Army has historically leaned toward self-op garrison feeding. But as culinary specialists shift their focus to field feeding, a garrison labor gap is emerging.

The FEED initiative outsources soldier feeding to food courts, a move some argue undermines health and fitness efforts. The CSDV model proposes contracting to fill that gap. But let’s be honest: Privatization has not always benefited soldiers and families. A better approach may be reinvesting in a self-op model that develops local talent — spouses, dependents and retirees — into food service professionals. This doesn’t just strengthen on-post employment; it builds nutrition literacy in the home and plants seeds for long-term military family readiness.

Replicating university dining venues alone will fall short. Army installations dwarf even the largest campuses, let alone some models the Army has toured. Existing nonappropriated food venues are already saturated with ultra-processed options, contributing little to performance or health. What’s needed is a systems-based approach grounded in performance nutrition and designed to navigate competing resources and logistical barriers:

• Whole-food access: Expand access points for fresh produce, lean proteins and minimally processed foods, ideally near barracks and family housing. Think micro-markets stocked with nutritious staple items, not just chips, candy and energy drinks.
• ESM at the commissary: Numerous exceptions to policy have been made in other food modernization pilots. One more is needed: Allow cash equivalents to be used at the commissary, not just for prepared foods, but for raw ingredients as well. This would boost ESM utilization and expand access to nutrient-dense, performance-supportive options.
• Hub-and-spoke food models: Centralize food production to improve labor efficiency and product quality, and distribute meals to where soldiers live and work, accounting for soldier geographic sprawl and transportation barriers.
• Market-style options: University dining continues to evolve. At Ohio University, a campus dining venue was renovated to include a market offering fresh, minimally processed food options and a teaching kitchen. The Army should take note.
• Utilize untapped labor pools: Self-op university dining often relies on student labor. The Army can do the same with underemployed military spouses and family members, offering them training, income and purpose while building community resilience.

Modernizing Army food service isn’t just about mirroring college campuses. It’s about building a nutrition infrastructure that holistically supports soldier health, readiness and retention. That requires more than trendy venues or digital kiosks.

It demands bold policy, operational alignment and a clear-eyed recognition that nutrition isn’t a perk. It’s part of the warfighting function.

Jordan DeMay is an Army officer specializing in nutrition, human performance, and military health care delivery. He previously served as the nutrition lead for the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) System, a health care administration fellow at Defense Health Agency headquarters and the officer-in-charge of two military treatment facility dining facilities. He holds master’s degrees in nutrition, health care administration and business administration from Baylor University. He is board-certified in sports dietetics and is also a certified strength and conditioning specialist.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Army or the Department of Defense.

WASHINGTON — The Association of the United States Army rolled out its annual conference from Oct. 13-15 in Washington, beckoning defense industry officials, lawmakers and military personnel from around the globe to assess the future force and the threats personnel may soon encounter.

Anchoring this year’s themes were efforts geared toward modernizing the force through next-gen weaponry and vehicles, personnel training, long-range artillery, unmanned systems, defense capabilities, network domains and much more.

Such efforts, meanwhile, continue to be influenced by conflicts abroad that demand battlefield tech evolution at breakneck speed.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is dragging toward another brutal winter as manned and unmanned innovations continue to reshape modern warfare. Arsenal developments throughout the increasingly contentious Indo-Pacific persist in response to territorial assertions by Beijing. And tensions endure in the Middle East, where regional attacks by Iranian proxies, Syrian upheaval and Israel’s war in Gaza are under the microscope of the international community.

Army officials attending the conference emphasized the service’s need for transformation as the technologies, policies and spending at the core of these conflicts intersect with the Army’s global mission.

Defense News and Army Times covered these discussions — and much more — from the show. Catch up on all of our top stories from this year’s AUSA conference and be sure to read more of our latest coverage at defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa.

Modernization

Early drops of new Army command software delight artillerists in drill

Never mind the mere beta status of the Army’s new app for operating howitzers, soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado, were itching to find out whether four decades of the existing, error-prone system were finally coming to an end.

So they hooked up their M777 to the novel Artillery Execution Suite during an exercise last month and pulled the lanyard.

The new software, AXS, is a module of the overarching Next-Generation Command-and-Control, or NGC2, envisioned to power all Army battlefield operations. The tests showed that AXS can drastically shorten what artillerists call the “kill chain.” Read more here.

Driscoll goes scorched earth on Army buying inertia

In what may be a first for the staid Association of the U.S Army’s annual meeting in Washington, the Army secretary kicked off the conference with an F-bomb.

Dan Driscoll, who has served as the Army’s civilian leader since February, announced major coming changes to Army purchasing, parts repairs and technological adoption in a heated address that accused construction contractors of corruption and stressed that the lives of soldiers were on the line. Read more here.

Inside the US Army’s new modernization mega-command

The Army created a new four-star outfit – Futures Command – in the late summer of 2018, right in Austin’s city center, empowered with a mandate to quickly develop new requirements for modern capabilities.

As Austin’s high-tech evolution continues, so does the Army’s. The service announced earlier this year that it would combine the new Army Futures Command with the 52-year-old Training and Doctrine Command, effectively doing away with two four-star-led organizations to create a brand new one. Read more here.

Next-gen tank to reach soldiers for testing by end of 2026

The Army’s already-accelerated plan to field its next-generation M1E3 Abrams tank will hit a major milestone before the end of next year with its first soldier touchpoint, a General Dynamics executive revealed Wednesday.

Speaking at a panel alongside Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Randy George, Danny Deep, executive vice president for Global Operations at GD, said a “pre-prototype” of the M1E3 would be sent to the fighting forces so they could kick the tires. Read more here.

First shots in future fights will be fired in cyberspace, leaders warn

The next conflict likely won’t start with bullets or missiles at a distant overseas location, but instead could be a cyber strike on the homeland.

“The first shots will be fired in the cyber domain,” said Maj. Gen. Jake Kwon, director of strategic operations for the Army’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff. “The Army has to think differently, and we have to fight faster.”

To move faster on cyber, Kwon said several initiatives must be met. First on the list is artificial intelligence-driven mission command, with the top goal to achieve decision dominance. Read more here.

General Atomics successfully tests next-gen artillery round

A controlled artillery round that can hit targets from 120 kilometers away in GPS-denied environments was successfully tested at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona.

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems’ Long Range Maneuvering Projectile, or LRMP, was fired from an M777 howitzer platform using M231 powder charges during an August test, the company announced. Read more here.

Training

Boeing and Leonardo join forces to modernize Army aviator training

U.S. aerospace giant Boeing and Italian firm Leonardo are uniting to offer a contractor-owned, contractor-operated solution for the U.S. Army as the service embarks on an effort to revamp its flight school, the companies announced Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington.

The two aerospace leaders are going to submit an offering to the Army’s Flight School Next program aimed at creating a more flexible and scalable approach to rotary-wing training focused on going back to the basics — particularly using a single-engine helicopter. Read more here.

Here’s what’s new in soldier gear in 2025 and beyond

From cold weather gear to loitering munitions, Program Executive Office-Soldier, the center for all things soldier gear, has been upgrading and fielding new equipment to troops, with more in store in the coming year.

This past year, the office has lightened body armor, added blood coolers for lifesaving measures and put together new cold weather gear for soldier testing, among other equipment. Program officers met with Army Times before the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting & Exposition to showcase some of its equipment. Read more here.

Next Generation Squad Weapon continues fielding, seeing upgrades

The Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon continues to field to units and see upgrades, including a carbine version that’s currently under development.

The M7 and M250, both of which fire a new 6.8mm-caliber round, are the Army’s replacements for the M4 and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, respectively, among the close combat force.

Col. Jason Bohannon, program manager for soldier lethality at Program Executive Office Soldier, told Army Times in a recent interview that in addition to ongoing fielding of the weapons systems, some are already having upgrades applied. Read more here.

Soldiers need better way to evacuate casualties, enlisted leaders say

Top enlisted leaders who work on U.S. Army medical and operational needs are being increasingly vocal about modernization necessities when it comes medical evacuation and its associated tasks in a future large-scale combat with a near-peer enemy.

Casualty numbers in the Russia-Ukraine war point to what would likely be large-scale casualty events in future conflicts that will far eclipse the numbers seen by U.S. troops in recent campaigns like those in the Global War on Terror, a panel of command sergeants major said this week. Read more here.

These soldiers are finding ways to see enemy drones before they strike

Soldiers with the 1st Cavalry Division have found ways to help armored vehicles pair sensors with drones to spot enemy drones before they strike.

Col. Nicholas Dvonch, division artillery commander, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Trenton Huntsinger spoke with Army Times recently about the progress of the division’s experiment.

The soldiers have taken passive sensors — the size of a baseball home plate — and mounted them on armored vehicles to detect enemy drones and pass that information back to their air defense element. Read more here.

Armored soldiers get first live-fire work on Switchblade 600

Soldiers with the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division recently tested the Switchblade 600 Loitering Munition System during an exercise at Fort Hood’s eastern training area, marking the first time the system has been live-fired on the Texas installation.

Personnel from 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team in September conducted the trial in support of the Army’s Transformation in Contact initiative aimed at modernizing armored formations for future conflicts. Read more here.

Personnel

A new barracks task force aims to improve military living conditions

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has formed a new “barracks task force” to improve living conditions for U.S. service members in barracks across the globe.

“For too long this Department has neglected its responsibilities to set and maintain the appropriate standards for barracks, and that ends now,” he said in a memo.

The Barracks Task Force will be led by the Assistant Secretary of War for Energy, Installations and Environment. The team must develop an initial barracks plan that will identify investment opportunities and create department-wide policies for barracks standards that will prioritize air and water quality for troops. Read more here.

Army expands MOS program that allows soldiers to skip certain training

The Army recently announced a slew of military occupational specialties, or MOSs, that are being added as eligible jobs within the service’s Civilian Acquired Skills Program, or ACASP, an initiative that allows soldiers with particular sets of skills to skip certain portions of training early in their Army careers.

With the latest addition of 17 job specialties, which officially were added on Oct. 1, the number of jobs that qualify for the ACASP has climbed to 60.

Under the program’s guidelines, qualified recruits, meaning those who acquired job-specific certifications or training as civilians, are eligible to go into the service with modified training and at a higher rank than their peers. Read more here.

Infantry brigades shift to mobile brigades in Army transformation

Over the next two years, the U.S. Army will convert 25 Infantry Brigade Combat Teams into new formations known as Mobile Brigade Combat Teams as part of the service’s “Transforming in Contact” initiative, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George said at a media roundtable in September.

As part of the service’s initiative to rapidly deliver new capabilities to operational units, three brigades are already undergoing the MBCT transition. Their leaders recently discussed some of the changes. Read more here.

Army secretary to soldiers: help get ‘human stupidity’ out of the way

U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll encouraged soldiers and families to help the Army get “human stupidity” out of the way to improve life on installations.

In a session that lasted over an hour, Driscoll, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer said they were working to improve quality-of-life measures for soldiers and their families. Read more here.

College-style dining facilities coming to Army bases

The U.S. Army has signed a contract to create dining venues at several installations aimed at revamping soldiers’ culinary experience, the service announced Sept. 30.

The Army Nonappropriated Fund Contracting Office at Installation Management Command, G9, awarded Compass Group USA a concession contract Aug. 28 to create college campus-style facilities at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Fort Stewart, Georgia; Fort Carson, Colorado; Fort Hood, Texas; and Fort Drum, New York. Read more here.

Army begins ‘talent panels’ to cut 6,500 manned aviation jobs

The Army has officially embarked on its effort to relocate some 6,500 junior officers and warrant officers who it says are no longer needed in the aviation field.

Aviation officials say, however, that they hope to reach that target without forcing many troops out of the service.

Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, commander of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker, Alabama, told reporters at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting on Wednesday that talent panels launched this month are intended to keep decision-making power with the soldiers and would not immediately lead to involuntary transfers or reductions. Read more here.

Industry

Printing with sand: How Rock Island Arsenal keeps Army gear humming

In the forge at Rock Island Arsenal, workers in silver heat suits and darkened face shields shovel fire unfazed as flames lick their feet and legs. Their work is older than the nation’s railroads.

A short drive down the road is Rock Island’s advanced manufacturing center built during World War II. The interior is brightly lit, clean and the only sound is the low hum of 3D printers at work. Despite the differences, both facilities serve the same mission: to keep the Army supplied and ready now and in the future. Read more here.

US Army’s first hypersonic battery to be fully equipped by December

The U.S. Army’s first unit to receive hypersonic weapons will get a battery’s worth of rounds by the end of the year, Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, the service’s program executive officer for missiles and space, told Defense News in a recent interview.

In 2021 the 1st Multidomain Task Force, 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade at Joint Base Lewis-McChord received all equipment — except for the actual live rounds — for the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon capability it calls Dark Eagle. Read more here.

Army scrutinizes supply chain risks to deliver MV-75 aircraft by 2027

The U.S. Army has conducted a thorough assessment of supply chain risks to build the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, the MV-75, and is aiming to deliver the prototype aircraft in fiscal 2027, the program executive officer for Army aviation, Brig. Gen. David Phillips, told Defense News in a recent interview.

Following calls from Army senior leaders to dramatically accelerate the MV-75’s fielding, plans conveyed earlier this year to hit production of the advanced tiltrotor by FY28 still stand. Read more here.

New Army helo engine still powering on despite uncertain future

The U.S. Army has not yet terminated the Improved Turbine Engine Program despite the service proposing to end the program as part of its major transformation initiative laid out in May.

While the service continues to look at different courses of action with the program, it has continued its testing program. The Army had already installed the General Electric-designed engine, designed to replace all the engines in both UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters, into a Black Hawk at Sikorsky’s facility in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The aircraft first flew in May with the new engine and has since been tested in forward flight at up to 4,000 feet. Read more here.

Anduril, GDLS team up on smarter battlefield radar

Anduril Industries is partnering with General Dynamics Land Systems to integrate its Spark Radar onto armored vehicles and other ground platforms, aiming to strengthen maneuver force protection against emerging threats such as drones and precision munitions.

The collaboration brings Anduril’s radar and battle management technologies into GDLS’ vehicle designs from the start, rather than adding them after production. The companies said the integration is a step toward coordinated, multi-vehicle defense systems that connect sensors, radars and command nodes across formations. Read more here.

Army accelerates PrSM output as ATACMS nears sunset

The Army is finding ways to accelerate its new Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, as it begins to field it more widely to the force while sunsetting its 40-year-old tactical missile system, Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for missiles and space, told Defense News.

The service is expecting a production contract for the first increment of PrSM by the end of the month, with Lozano noting, “We will put Lockheed Martin under contract for 400 missiles.” Read more here.

International

Where to stash combat gear in the Indo-Pacific? The Army wants to know

The U.S. Army is revising the worldwide distribution of forward-deployed equipment, dubbed preposition stock, as officials weigh its utility and cost, Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, the acting Army Materiel Command commander, told Defense News.

The effort was designed to stage weapons, vehicles, equipment and supplies at key global locations so forces can rapidly respond to crises. In recent years, the Army has moved from viewing the use of Army Prepositioned Stock kit as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency situation to regularly dipping into the stocks for major training exercises.

While APS has long been a cornerstone of U.S. power projection, Mohan acknowledged the system must adapt to new strategic realities, particularly as the Pentagon shifts greater focus to the Indo-Pacific theater. Read more here.

Army Korea’s move to longer duty tours to come in stages, general says

The Eighth Army in Korea is already accepting soldier transfers under a new “tour normalization” system that began Oct. 1. But not every installation in the country is ready yet to accept soldiers and their families for longer tours.

Speaking to reporters at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting on Monday, Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, Eighth Army commander, said the unit had embarked on a phased implementation model, with the southern installations, including Camp Humphreys, adopting tour normalization before the northern ones. Read more here.

I Corps adapts to meet modern challenges in the Indo-Pacific

The U.S. Army’s I Corps is at a moment of strategic transition, shouldering the responsibility of shaping the service’s readiness across the vast, complex Indo-Pacific theater.

Overseeing that effort is Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, under whose command the Corps, through continuous exercise and training, is rethinking itself as both a forward campaign-capable headquarters and a practical force provider for homeland defense.

Defense News sat down with McFarlane in a recent interview to discuss how the Corps is preparing for various phases of conflict and recap lessons from its expansive training campaign. Read more here.

How the US Army, NATO are creating a new Eastern Flank Deterrence Line

The U.S. Army and its NATO allies are rapidly aligning resources to develop a new “Eastern Flank Deterrence Line” aimed at developing combat capabilities that can measure up to possible Russian attacks, according to service commanders in Europe.

U.S. Army Europe and Africa commander Gen. Christopher Donahue “wants to go fast on this,” Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, the Army’s V Corps commander, told Defense News in a recent interview. Read more here.

New program aims to put nuclear generators on Army bases around the world

U.S. officials on Tuesday announced a program to locate small nuclear power generation reactors on U.S. Army bases around the world.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced the Janus Program, aimed at developing microreactors to generate power without relying on diesel fuel, at the Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington. Read more here.

Unmanned

Sikorsky turns the venerable Black Hawk into a true unmanned aircraft

The UH-60 Black Hawk has previously flown without a human pilot, but now it’s fully reconfigured to be an unmanned aircraft capable of flying a variety of missions, according to Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky.

The company is unveiling the unmanned aircraft system version of the Black Hawk at the Association of the U.S. Army’s conference, marking Sikorsky’s latest leap in autonomous helicopter development. Read more here.

Army’s big drone ambition runs into the hard part: scaling up

The U.S. Army is racing to turn its aging organic industrial base into a modern drone factory network — and learning just how hard it is to move from prototypes to mass production.

The Army’s push comes amid lessons from the war in Ukraine, where inexpensive drones and loitering munitions have reshaped the battlefield and overwhelmed conventional forces. Read more here.

No drones for Army squads, teams, 25th Infantry Division leader says

Amid a push to put more small drones in the hands of soldiers across the force, the U.S. Army is learning that there’s a ceiling to the number of unmanned systems that units can handle.

Col. Dave Lamborn, commander of 2nd Mobile Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, out of Hawaii, told a panel during the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington that in division testing, the Army’s smallest units could be overtasked by the challenge of operating drones on top of all their conventional duties. Read more here.

General Atomics, Hanwha to work on short takeoff version of Gray Eagle

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems announced Tuesday it is teaming up with South Korean firm Hanwha Aerospace to develop and produce a short-takeoff-and-landing version of the Gray Eagle drone.

The two firms signed the partnership agreement Tuesday, General Atomics said, and will work together to design and build a production-representative version of the drone. General Atomics said it has already flown a self-funded prototype, which the company said shows it can quickly move from development to delivery. Read more here.

The Army’s new watercraft plan banks on autonomy, commercial ships

The Army’s long-awaited watercraft strategy charts a course that prioritizes sustaining an aging fleet, leveraging commercial solutions and accelerating experimentation with autonomous vessels, according to senior service leaders who helped craft it.

The new strategy, which has yet to be published publicly, takes “a much more holistic or comprehensive approach to Army watercraft,” Lt. Gen. Karl Gingrich, the Army deputy chief of staff G-8 chief, told Defense News in a recent interview. Read more here.

AeroVironment eyes new factory, drone launches for Switchblade

In recent years, AeroVironment’s Switchblade loitering munition has become a critical weapon in Ukraine and played a growing role in multiple nations’ arsenals.

Now, AeroVironment is preparing to expand its ability to produce the Switchblade and is working on new ways to launch and control it — including from an MQ-9 Reaper drone. Read more here.

WASHINGTON — The Association of the United States Army rolled out its annual exposition from Oct. 14-16 in Washington, with defense industry officials, lawmakers and military personnel from around the globe huddling to discuss the future force — and what threats may await just over the horizon.

As in previous years, the service continues its aggressive modernization push, with efforts focused on next-gen weaponry and vehicles, personnel training, long-range artillery, unmanned systems, defense capabilities, network domains and much more.

Such efforts, meanwhile, continue to be influenced by evolving conflicts abroad.

Russia’s prolonged invasion of Ukraine is dragging toward another brutal winter as manned and unmanned innovations reshape the region’s tumultuous front lines. Tensions endure in the Middle East, where regional attacks by Iranian proxies remain a looming threat to U.S. troops and allies. And arsenal developments and troop movements throughout the Indo-Pacific region continue to unfold in response to increasingly bold territorial assertions out of Beijing.

Army officials attending the conference emphasized the service’s need for flexibility and quick adaptation as the technologies, policies and spending at the core of these conflicts intersect with all corners of the globe.

Defense News and Army Times covered these discussions — and much more — from the show. Catch up on all of our top stories from this year’s AUSA conference and be sure to read more of our latest coverage at defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa.

Modernization

All the high-tech gear the Army is bringing to soldiers

As technology advances, the gear soldiers use to survive on the battlefield and accomplish their missions becomes more sophisticated. As the epicenter of all things soldier gear, Program Executive Office-Soldier works with Army laboratories, research and development commands to deliver ready-to-field kit to troops, with gear ranging from soldiers’ boots to advanced targeting and night vision.

Army Times spoke with experts at PEO Soldier ahead of this year’s Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C, about some of the more high-tech equipment they’re developing and fielding. Read more here.

Trial by fire: How the Army banks on frontline units to test new gear

When learning recently that a prototype of the Army’s new air and missile defense radar was performing significantly better in tests than the old Patriot radar, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George had an idea.

Why not send the Raytheon-made Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, to units stationed in the Pacific, the Middle East or Europe to get a sense of how the new equipment works in field, he suggested.

The process would essentially outsource service test and evaluation procedures currently confined to controlled environments in the United States to what the Army calls the “tactical edge,” one step in a wider transformation initiative that prizes change driven by the deployed. Read more here.

How the Army’s chief of staff plans to modernize the service

The U.S. Army will ramp up its efforts to transform its formations with next-level technology including capabilities to counter drone threats much faster, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George said.

“We have to buy smart and fast,” George said in a speech at the annual Eisenhower luncheon. “Our budget is tight, our numbers are lean and that requires us to prioritize and make informed investments.”

When George became Army chief a year ago, he announced he would focus on using units in the field to transform the service “in contact,” putting capability into the hands of soldiers in realistic operational environments to advance things that work and scrap what doesn’t. Read more here.

When will the Army embrace hybrid-electric vehicles?

The Army has long tinkered with the idea of making some of its vehicles electric or hybrid, and while the technology has become commonplace in the commercial vehicle industry, the service has yet to jump on the bandwagon.

As officials hedge their bets, companies have continued to put technology in front of the service in order to show the purported benefits, arguing that the technology is ready for prime time in the Army’s modernization plans. Read more here.

Take notes, a formation like this could be coming to your unit soon

In the piney woods of Louisiana, one brigade’s new approach to reconnaissance recently illustrated the Army’s plan to undertake more complex and demanding missions with new tech and fewer soldiers. The 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, or MBCT, with 101st Airborne Division carried out their rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center in August, the culmination of months of planning, new equipment training and restructuring.

The brigade is one of three selected by the Army chief of staff to be the focus of his “Transformation in Contact” initiative, which seeks to deliver new equipment to units as they increase their readiness and prepare for deployments. Read more here.

Training

Fighting ‘dirty’ — The Army’s plan to survive, and win, a doomsday war

Daring moves by U.S. adversaries foreshadow the return of sinister nuclear, chemical or biological weapons as technological advances promise to bring new tools of destruction to strike soldiers on future battlefields. A soldier’s new best friend may not be a rifle, or altogether new weapons, but instead a gas mask, gloves and a protective suit.

As threats evolve, the Pentagon, and specifically the Army, is reimagining how units may have to fight large-scale combat in deadly, contaminated environments. But experts in Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) defense, must also fight complacency that’s existed for generations and bureaucratic red tape. Read more here.

From CamoGPT to life skills, the Army is changing how it trains troops

As the Army has adjusted its doctrine and modernized how it prepares soldiers for leadership and combat, the service’s Training and Doctrine Command touches nearly every aspect of those initiatives. Over the past year, new programs and updates to existing training have flowed across the force.

Army Times spoke with Gen. Gary Brito, head of Training and Doctrine Command, about some of these areas and what they mean for new and career soldiers. Brito took over his current command in 2022 after serving as the Army’s deputy chief of staff over personnel. Read more here.

Soldiers exposed to new combat realities with expanded training

A new approach to training brand new recruits in large-scale combat aims to prepare soldiers for future conflicts as the Army readies the force for a potential slugfest against foes like the Russian or Chinese militaries.

In March, the service launched “Forge 2.5,” another update to “The Forge,” which began as a concept in 2016 with a 96-hour field exercise for week-seven trainees. The Forge has been in place since 2018 as a regular feature of basic training. The event closely mirrors “The Crucible,” which the Marine Corps instituted in its recruit training in the 1990s. Read more here.

How the Army is improving care in the field to keep soldiers alive

The Army is revamping how it provides lifesaving care in the field, including new hospital setup gear, ways to preserve blood on the front lines and a new combat-ready respirator to keep wounded soldiers breathing. Over the past year, Program Executive Office-Soldier added medical devices to its portfolio of all things soldier, which includes clothing, weapons, body armor and a host of other items.

The 1945th Medical Detachment is slated to stand up in late 2025 and will hold three Prolonged Care Augmentation Detachments, or PCADs, officials said. Early work on the PCADs began as all U.S. service branches acknowledged that large-scale combat operations would mean wounded soldiers might have to wait longer for care. Read more here.

Training changes on the horizon for Army Guardsmen

The Army National Guard must find new ways to train in a limited number of days each year so that their formations are ready to fight large-scale combat operations when called, Army National Guard Director Lt. Gen. Jonathan Stubbs said Tuesday at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference.

Guardsmen are generally restricted to serving 39 days each year, and in that time, soldiers must practice everything from physical training and small arms marksmanship to knocking down aerial threats or planning how to move a brigade across the globe. Read more here.

Why Army divisions must prepare to get dirty

During this past year the Army sent a division headquarters and its enablers into a large-scale, on-the-ground exercise to learn how these personnel groups will approach surviving the next war.

It was the first time in decades that division headquarters and the myriad units it would go into combat with — a combat aviation brigade, sustainment, air defense brigade and division artillery — trained together in person. But it certainly will not be the last. Read more here.

Personnel

What ‘Transformation in Contact’ means for the enlisted soldier

Over the past year, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and his top generals have merged two constant Army initiatives: readiness and modernization. Keeping soldiers ready to fight when called and delivering them new gear, updated doctrine and time to train on their equipment and tactics is a balancing act.

Although the Transformation in Contact initiative is part of an Army-wide effort, three brigades have been selected to test out many of the on-the-ground changes, including 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky; 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division out of Hawaii; and 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, New York.

The brigades are buying commercial equipment and reconfiguring their unit structures to find out what they’ll need for a future fight. Read more here.

US Army sets ambitious new recruiting goal following years of struggle

The U.S. Army is aiming to recruit 61,000 new soldiers in the coming year, an ambitious goal that is building off of the service surpassing its goal with 55,000 new recruits in fiscal 2024 after several dismal recruiting years, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth announced Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

The Army recruited 55,000 new soldiers in FY24. The service’s Delayed Entry Program goal for FY25 is 10,000, which is twice the number as FY24, Wormuth said. The delayed entry program allows enlistees to sign up but leave for initial training later, often so that they can complete high school or college.

“This goal is ambitious but we believe it is achievable,” she said. Read more here.

How saving soldiers’ lives influenced the Army’s new kit options

While new night vision and advanced drones often attract a lot of attention, soldiers know that much of their comfort and survival in training and combat often depends on what they wear. Everything from boots and weapons to first aid pouches, new bomb suits for explosives specialists and even cold weather gear comes out of Program Executive Office-Soldier.

Such items — whether it’s the new Greens uniform, a better hot-weather boot, poncho or the beloved “woobie” — are all part of what soldiers wear. Army Times spoke with gear experts at PEO Soldier ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition about some of the items soldiers wear that are being fielded, developed or improved. Read more here.

Army wants all troops on new fitness program by 2032. How’s it going so far?

The Army recently announced that its all-around health and fitness program will now expand beyond a select 111 brigades to the entire Army. Since its inception in 2018 with a pilot program, the Holistic Health and Fitness program, or H2F, has sought to educate and improve soldier performance in physical, mental, nutrition, spiritual and sleep domains.

To that end, the force has built brigade-level civilian teams of nearly two dozen contracted staff members, which include an H2F program director; nutrition, injury control and mental health directors; registered dietitians; physical therapists; athletic trainers; strength coaches; cognitive performance specialists and occupational therapists. Read more here.

How Project Polaris is gearing up the brigade by targeting the squad

The home for all things soldier gear is partnering with a host of Army entities on a project to build a better infantry brigade by working from the bottom up at the soldier and squad level. Army Times spoke with Maj. Gen. Christopher Schneider, commander of Program Executive Office-Soldier, ahead of the annual Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition about the “Project Polaris” initiative.

Coordinating the Army’s many groups that encompass all the parts of a brigade requires significant effort. The coordination between Schneider’s command and others is now considered the service’s Close Combat Integration Enterprise, or CCIE, Schneider said.

“We have never been as aligned as we are today,” Schneider added. Read more here.

Soldiers will get $240 a month for operational deployments

Soldiers deployed for more than 60 days in an Army operation will now receive an extra $240 each month. For those already deployed, the cash benefit is retroactive to Oct. 1, said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth.

The new benefit, dubbed “operational deployment pay,” is specifically for operational deployments and does not cover exercises at the combat training centers, Wormuth said. For example, the pay is intended for brigades and battalions who’ve deployed to Europe for Operation Assurance, she said. Read more here.

Industry

Army races to widen the bottlenecks of artillery shell production

The U.S. Army has started diversifying its supplier base for 155mm artillery shells, moving away from the bottleneck of a single source that has endangered the flow of fresh ammo, according to a top service official. The service is racing toward a goal of shoring up all major single sources that provide parts or materials for 155mm munitions by the end of 2025.

“There’s going to be a lot of ribbon cuttings between now and the end of the year,” Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told Defense News.

The Pentagon is investing billions of dollars to increase the capacity of 155mm munition production as it races to replenish stock sent to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, which began in early 2022, and to ensure the U.S. has what it might need should conflict erupt across multiple theaters at once. The Army planned to spend $3.1 billion in FY24 supplemental funding alone to ramp up production. Read more here.

Why the Army is looking abroad to close a widening artillery gun gap

More than two years into observing an artillery war play out in Ukraine, the U.S. Army finds its own gun technology options lacking. The service’s current arsenal is either old, as is the case of the towed M777, or lacking the desired range for future conflicts against near-peer armies, exemplified by the latest version of the Paladin self-propelled howitzer, made by BAE Systems.

The recent cancellation of an effort to mount an unwieldly long barrel on a Paladin body — length determines range, generally speaking — has forced the service to start from square one yet again. The Army quietly halted the yearslong prototyping effort, dubbed the Extended Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, a year ago, announcing only this March that “engineering challenges” had turned out to be insurmountable, as acquisition chief Doug Bush put it. Read more here.

US Army quits plan for next-gen Patriot missile replacement

The U.S. Army has decided to back off an effort to replace its Patriot missile with a next-generation interceptor, according to Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for missiles and space.

“We are not going to move forward on what we were calling a Lower-Tier Future Interceptor,” Lozano told Defense News in an interview at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference, adding that those scrapped plans would have been “a very expensive endeavor.”

The effort would have completed the final piece of the puzzle in a new Integrated Air and Missile Defense System. Already the service has fielded its command-and-control system, and is developing and will soon field a new radar capable of detecting threats from 360 degrees. Read more.

What the Army is planning for its vehicle-protection push

The U.S. Army wants to pursue a more layered approach to protecting combat vehicles and formations, a step away from the singular push over the last decade to outfit them with active protection systems, Army officials in charge of ground combat modernization told Defense News.

Army Futures Command has been working on a Formation Layered Protection requirement and is releasing what it calls a “characteristics of need” statement to industry. The Army is looking for ways to protect dismounted soldiers, vehicles and full formations from a variety of threats. Potential approaches include masking vehicles or hardening them with both active and passive protection tactics. Read more here.

GM Defense pitches silent-drive vehicle as heir to the Humvee

Emerging rapidly out of dense foliage, a truck swings around a bend on a washboard gravel road, but the only sound is the crunch of gravel beneath tires and the occasional ping of a rock hitting its underside.

The truck is a new hybrid vehicle that GM Defense has developed to show the Army what is possible for a Humvee-type capability that meets the needs of modern warfare. The Army does not yet have a requirement for a new Humvee, or High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or something else to replace the 40-year-old vehicle with 50-year-old technology. Read more here.

How the Army’s upgrading ammo to destroy targets large and small

From pistol rounds to artillery shells, the Army is developing a host of new ways to destroy targets large and small. The service is working on one-way tracer rounds for current standard rifle ammunition and reduced-range training rounds for some of the same cartridges.

Additionally, the service is testing proximity fuses for grenade launcher rounds that would help defeat enemies behind barriers and blast drones out of the sky. Meanwhile, on the larger end of the caliber spectrum, Army scientists are building new rounds for the 120mm tank rounds they expect will be needed to defeat enemy armor. Read more here.

International

One on one with US Army Pacific Command chief Gen. Charles Flynn

The Army has spent the last year increasing the complexity and breadth of its exercises in the Pacific while trying out new capabilities that will soon be a part of formations in the theater. Relationships with Pacific nations have grown amid continuing tensions with China, and U.S. Army Pacific chief Gen. Charles Flynn has staked out a role for land forces in a region associated primarily with air and naval power.

Defense News sat down with Flynn prior to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation. Read more here.

US Army Pacific to absorb new units under ‘transformation’ mantra

The U.S. Army command for the Indo-Pacific finds itself at the front of the service’s transformation initiative, incorporating new unit types created to facilitate rapid adaptation to adversary tactics, according to U.S. Army Pacific Command chief Gen. Charles Flynn.

Several units in the Pacific, from Hawaii to Alaska, were chosen as part of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George’s initiative, dubbed “Transforming in Contact,” Flynn said in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

“But there’s a whole other transformation in contact that’s going on out here at the operational and theater level.” That transformation has to do with absorbing new organizations and capabilities designed to facilitate the quick incorporation of new tactics and technologies in the field. Read more here.

Project Convergence to plant a flag in the Pacific

The military’s massive experimentation event, Project Convergence, will plant a flag in the strategically vital Pacific region next year, the first time that U.S. and allied forces will kick the tires of the Pentagon’s latest warfighting concepts at the edge of America’s sphere of influence.

“Our large experiments need to be concept-informed, and the concepts we’re talking about are the sets of capabilities and relationships that we think we’re going to need to win in the operating environments we are going to face in the future,” said Army Brig. Gen. Zachary Miller, who heads the Joint Modernization Command at Fort Bliss, Texas. “And the priority theater for the Department of Defense is the Pacific.”

The joint force has simulated Pacific scenarios in the United States during previous iterations of the exercise, which began as an Army-only event in 2020 at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. But the experimentation campaign has never been held forward in relevant theaters aside from some peripheral activities at the Army Pacific headquarters level earlier this year. Read more here.

How the US Army is helping Ukraine with front line repairs

It starts with a message on the secure messaging app Signal.

Front line units in Ukraine see an issue with their equipment and send notes to translators, who soon share those with the U.S. military. Then, operating from one of seven stations in Poland, American forces schedule video calls with the Ukrainians to help them repair the weapons.

This is the process for the Army’s virtual repair mission to help keep equipment working as long and as close to the front line as possible in Ukraine. Read more here.

Sending THAAD to Israel adds to strain on US Army, leaders say

The deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel and roughly 100 soldiers to operate it will add to already difficult strains on the Army’s air defense forces and potential delays in modernizing its missile defense systems, Army leaders said Monday.

The service’s top two leaders declined to provide details on the deployment ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the weekend. But they spoke broadly about their concerns as the demand for THAAD and Patriot missile batteries grows because of the war in Ukraine and the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas militants. Read more here.

Army weighing sending missile defense prototypes forward into theater

Tasked by the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, the service’s missiles and space shop is examining the possibility of sending new air and missile defense capabilities still in the prototype phase into theater, the program executive officer told Defense News.

“The chief has challenged us and has asked us to look at opportunities, present some options, by which we would accelerate [the Integrated Battle Command System] to the field, accelerate [the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor] to the field and accelerate some of the [Indirect Fire Protection Capability] capabilities to the field,” Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano said in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

Both the Raytheon-developed LTAMDS and Leidos’ Dynetics-made IFPC have experienced successful test events over the past year. Read more here.

Unmanned Tech

As Ukraine builds better drones, do American firms still have a role?

In mid-September, massive explosions erupted in Toropets, a city in eastern Russia near the border with Belarus. Ukraine had struck a military warehouse, igniting bombs and missiles in what Pentagon officials later said was Russia’s largest loss of Russian ammunition during the war — hundreds of thousands of rounds destroyed.

Almost as important, though, was how Ukraine conducted the strike. Toropets is more than 300 miles from the Ukrainian border, outside the range of western weapons Kyiv wants permission to fire deep into Russia. Instead, Ukraine used drones it built alone. Read more here.

How the Army plans to remove soldiers from the deadly breach

If a collection of soldiers and scientists are successful, troops may never again have to run, on foot, into a breach, swinging a grappling hook in a scene resembling medieval foot soldiers breaking through enemy fortifications.

Instead, soldiers of the future may pilot explosives-laden drones and robotic bulldozers into the tangle of concertina wire, steel barricades and landmines. Over the past nine months, the 264th Engineer Clearance Company, with the 20th Engineer Brigade at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, began its third phase of human-machine teaming experiments. Read more here.

Make counter-drone training as routine as marksmanship: Army general

Soldiers recently deployed to the Middle East often had less than a minute to decide how to take down an incoming drone. A unit detecting, intercepting and destroying a drone often took less than four minutes, said Maj. Gen. Scott Naumann, commander of the 10th Mountain Division.

To meet that threat, the two-star is working with his unit and using a soldier-created tool to prepare troops to counter drones more effectively.

“Training [counter-drone] should be as routine as drawing our rifles, going to the range and honing our marksmanship skills,” Naumann said. Read more here.

Army closes in on autonomous boats to ferry supplies into battle

The Army is developing requirements to distribute supplies to troops on the battlefield in a contested environment using a network of autonomous boats and aircraft, according to the general in charge of logistics modernization.

“Our focus is an ecosystem looking at how we improve the supply chain, but also ensuring that we could keep that supply chain in motion — given a peer adversary like China — [when] we’re not able to [establish] fixed sites and keep them there for long periods of time,” Brig. Gen. Shane Upton, the Contested Logistics Cross Functional Team lead within Army Futures Command, told Defense News. Read more here.

For Replicator 2, Army wants AI-enabled counter-drone tech

The Army is eyeing a mix of existing and new technology to potentially scale through the second iteration of the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, including systems that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to target and intercept small-drone threats.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced last month that Replicator 2 would center on countering threats from small drones, particularly those that target “critical installations and force concentration,” he said in a Sept. 29 memo. DOD plans to propose funding as part of its fiscal 2026 budget request with a goal of fielding “meaningfully improved” counter-drone defense systems within two years. Read more here.

WASHINGTON — The Association of the United States Army held its annual conference Oct. 9-11 in Washington, with defense officials, military personnel and industry representatives gathering to discuss the future force — and what threats it may face from advanced adversaries.

The service is in the midst of a modernization effort that has focused on long-range precision fires; next-generation combat vehicles; future vertical lift aircraft; the network; air and missile defense; and soldier lethality. It is now expanding that focus to positioning, navigation and timing, as well as advanced training technology. But the war in Ukraine has impacted much of the Army’s decisions.

Gen. James Rainey, who leads Army Futures Command, the service’s organization in charge of modernizing the force, said the service needs to adapt its artillery strategy based on both “what’s happening in Ukraine” as well as what U.S. Army Pacific requires from conventional fires.

“Everything we’re seeing in Ukraine [is] about the relevance of precision fires, all the emerging technology, but the big killer on the battlefield is conventional artillery, high-explosive artillery,” he said.

The U.S. Army plans to issue a new conventional fires strategy by the end of the year, he added.

Defense News, Army Times and C4ISRNET covered this and more from the show. Catch up on our top stories from this year’s AUSA conference and read more at defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa and c4isrnet.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa.

Modernization

Change of plans: US Army embraces lessons learned from war in Ukraine

Expensive, massive tanks destroyed by small and cheap loitering munitions. Drones helping artillery locate targets. A battlefield so flooded with sensors that it’s impossible to stay hidden for long.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Army has carefully taken note of these trends. Now those changes are reshaping the service’s plans from acquisition to how to approach formations to reimagining logistics. Already, the Army has rethought its plans to modernize tanks and altering its strategies with drones.

“The character of war is changing,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “It’s changed more in the last couple of years because of the war in Ukraine. And I think it will continue to change at a very rapid pace and we have to have the mindset to change with it.” Click here to read more.

Army’s upcoming artillery strategy has ‘a big menu’ to choose from

Decisions on the way forward for one of the U.S. Army’s top long-range fires priorities — the Extended Range Cannon Artillery program — won’t come until a new conventional fires strategy is complete, the service’s acquisition chief said.

“It really becomes a fiscal year 2025 budget decision, if we were to go in a different direction,” Doug Bush confirmed to Defense News in a recent interview. “I think, though, that the requirement is still there. We still need longer range in a more affordable way, which is an important caveat.”

Of the 24 new Army systems slated to make it into the hands of soldiers by the end of 2023, only the Extended Range Cannon Artillery program might miss that goal, Bush said when the Army unveiled its fiscal 2024 budget request this year. Click here to read more.

The Army’s new chief has a plan and it’s all about warfighting

Gen. Randy George begins his tenure leading the Army as it faces a period of rapid change, competition with adversaries across the globe and a strained force. The new chief of staff intends to fuel that fight by distilling the complex set of challenges facing the force into a singular goal: ensuring the service is the best warfighting organization it can be.

The general was once a private, having enlisted out of his Iowa hometown, but by 1984 he was at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Graduating in 1988, the infantry officer first saw combat with the 101st Airborne Division as part of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm only two years later.

That operational career has informed how he wants to lead the Army through the coming years amid old and new demands on a smaller Army that’s expected to be everywhere it’s needed when called.

George, 58, talked with Army Times about his four focus areas, the generals he’s tasked with leading those efforts and what he expects from soldiers across the force. Click here to read more.

What’s the firepower like for the Army’s new rifle?

The Army’s new rifle, automatic rifle and fire control provide a more accurate, farther reaching and deadlier combination of weapons than a squad or platoon currently carries.

During a September media event held at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland by Program Executive Office Soldier, participants shot both the Next Generation Squad Weapon XM7 rifle and the XM250 automatic rifle — the Army’s replacements for M4 and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon for the close combat force. That group includes infantry, scouts, combat engineers and special operations forces.

At the event, officials announced a unit in the 101st Airborne Division had received the weapons that week and would undergo initial training on the weapons later in the month, followed by limited-user tests in October. A squad from the 75th Ranger Regiment will also participate in testing the weapons. Click here to read more.

US Army ready to pursue electric light recon vehicle

The U.S. Army is ready to pursue a prototyping program for an electric light reconnaissance vehicle beginning in fiscal 2024, pending funding approval from Congress, the service’s program executive officer for combat support and combat services support told Defense News.

“We’re ready to get working on that program,” Brig. Gen. Luke Peterson said in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “It’ll be a prototyping effort, and we will learn from that to help inform a fully developed capabilities development document.”

The Army already approved an abbreviated capabilities development document for the eLRV, and Peterson’s office has partnered with the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Moore, Georgia, to develop requirements.

Using some funding in FY22 to get started, the program office conducted market research that included purchasing some commercial electric vehicles in order to test them against an operational mission profile, Peterson explained. Click here to read more.

Beyond 2030: How Army Futures Command is adapting its approach

The U.S. Army five years ago established a new four-star command, shifting billions of dollars to fund it and basing it in a tech-centric city.

The goal of Army Futures Command was clear: It needed to disrupt the service’s lengthy record of failure when it came to producing a new modernization program.

As the Army gets closer to its 2030 goal for fielding new weapons, service leaders say the command is here to stay — but will expand its focus. Click here to read more.

Training

21,000 casualties in seven days: The push to update medic training

In a recent corps-level wargame, U.S. Army forces sustained 21,000 casualties in seven days. That’s nearly half the soldiers in a full-strength corps.

“It will take everyone to clear the battlefield as quickly as we can when we’re talking about the scale of 21,000 casualties in corps warfighting,” said Maj. Gen. Michael Talley, head of the Army’s Medical Center of Excellence. “That’s reality. How do you keep going? How do you sustain momentum?”

Talley laid out these challenges the military medical community faces, and what can be done, during a recent Maneuver Warfighter Conference panel at Fort Moore, Georgia. Click here to read more.

Divisions are headed into the dirt

Division staff and the units that support brigade operations will be getting dirty.

Exercises where a commander can simply simulate a water resupply or fueling station for long-range helicopter assaults are great for planning but miss the realities of actual fighting — weather, downed vehicles and the hands-on skills of individual soldiers.

Simulations help but can hardly predict or provide the “friction” of actual combat, or even some aspects of training, Gen. Andrew Poppas, head of Army Forces Command told Army Times.

“That’s a dynamic you have to refine only in the dirt,” Poppas said. Click here to read more.

How a shovel can help with training, plus common mistakes during drill

A company commander’s best tool for surviving the crucible of a combat training center may be a shovel.

Commanders headed for their time “in the box” at any of the major training centers across the Army — from the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, to the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Germany to the Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Johnson, Louisiana — will need to do a lot of home station preparation and get their soldiers digging.

That’s one of a slew of tips that some current observer controllers/trainers at the centers shared at the recent Maneuver Warfighter Conference on Fort Moore, Georgia, during a session aimed at company commanders heading to the centers. Capt. Joseph White and 1st Sgt. Brandon Robinson, both cadre with the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, said the most significant struggle at their location isn’t related to technology but rather discipline and standards.

“Are your soldiers doing the right thing when you’re not there?” White said. Click here to read more.

‘As long as it takes’: US Army doubles down on Ukraine training goals

Canadian and U.S. Army officials are determined NATO efforts to train Ukrainian forces will last long term, despite uncertainty over whether Congress will continue to fund additional military assistance for Kyiv.

Canadian Brig. Gen. Mason Stalker, the deputy training commander for Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, stressed at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference that dozens of NATO members are contributing to these efforts, even though the future of the United States’ role in the conflict remains unclear. Click here to read more.

Op tempo, training complexity pose risk to aircrews, per aviation boss

A few months ago, the Army’s aviation community appeared to be facing a dire situation.

A series of deadly helicopter crashes killed 14 soldiers between February and April, interrupting one of the safest periods in the Army’s flying history.

That led the service’s leaders to order an Army-wide safety stand down in May — the rare move grounded all non-deployed flying units until they completed a mandatory safety training program led by their commanding generals. The sessions, leaders said, also allowed junior troops and other community members to provide feedback on safety practices and challenges in the community.

Ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting, Army Times spoke with aviation branch chief Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, who commands the aviation schoolhouse and Fort Novosel, Alabama, about the stand down’s findings and ongoing initiatives in Army aviation. Click here to read more.

Personnel

Data powers Army’s return to the ‘lost arts’ of wartime personnel work

Fiscal 2023 proved busy for the Army’s top personnel officials.

A recruiting crisis made it harder to fill the ranks — and project what future forces the service needs and how it can fill those units. A new Army-wide human resources system debuted after multiple delays. And Russia invaded Ukraine.

According to Lt. Gen. Douglas Stitt, the Army’s top personnel officer and leader of its G-1 directorate, these events combine to create a “growth industry” where the service’s personnel pros can apply new technology and tricks to the “lost arts.” Stitt and his senior enlisted adviser, Sgt. Maj. Christopher “Smoke” Stevens, spoke with Army Times at the Pentagon on Sept. 25 ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. Click here to read more.

The Army’s new fitness program team will come to you

The command rolling out the Army’s new, all-encompassing fitness program has a fresh way to get the program’s expertise inside more units.

If an active duty division commander can dedicate a five-soldier team — comprised of one captain, two senior noncommissioned officers and two junior NCOs — to learning the essentials, the Center for Initial Military Training under Training and Doctrine Command will send cadre to them. Click here to read more.

House moves to strengthen vetting for military financial counselors

A bipartisan duo of House lawmakers has banded together to improve the vetting of financial advisers for service members. The move comes after an Army counselor with undisclosed conflicts of interest with outside brokerage firms allegedly swindled two dozen Gold Star families.

The House in July passed legislation from Reps. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., and Don Bacon, R-Neb., that would require the Defense Department verify its roughly 400 military financial advisers are without conflicts of interest by having them submit annual financial disclosures.

Sherrill and Bacon introduced the legislation as an amendment to the fiscal 2024 defense policy bill after a report by The Washington Post detailed how an Army financial counselor, Caz Craffy, allegedly mismanaged a cumulative $750,000 in four families’ life insurance funds by placing the money in the brokerage accounts of firms where he simultaneously worked. Click here to read more.

The inside story of how the Army rethought recruiting

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth knows she — and the Army — can’t control everything in life.

The Army can’t control childhood obesity rates. The Army can’t control the falling rate of applicants medically or legally eligible to enlist. Nor can the service stop seismic shifts in the labor market, or control the falling percentage of veterans, who are traditionally the most influential and trusted advocates for military service among the U.S. population.

But Wormuth, who recently announced sweeping recruiting reforms, is focused on what the Army can control. Click here to read more.

Army’s top NCO talks discipline and why we’re measuring op tempo wrong

“Hold on a second here,” said Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer at the start of a Sept. 29 interview with Army Times. “I’m just going to touch up a little bit.”

An electric razor’s gentle buzz emanated through the phone, followed by hearty laughter. Army Times spoke with Weimer ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference, but the conversation was barely underway before the Army’s top NCO poked fun at himself. Click here to read more.

Industry

GM Defense, Anduril team up on emerging battlefield needs

Tactical trucks producer GM Defense is partnering with unmanned and autonomous systems specialist Anduril Industries to address emerging needs on the battlefield.

The companies agreed on “establishing a framework to collaborate on defense program capture activities,” they said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington on Oct. 10.

“The team is focused on delivering autonomy solutions, battery electrification and other new propulsion technologies, as well as those integrating the full range of Anduril technologies onto GM Defense mobility solutions,” they added. Click here to read more.

Teledyne FLIR debuts vehicle for Army equipment carrier competition

Teledyne FLIR is entering the competition for the Army’s light equipment carrier.

The Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport vehicle, or SMET, is intended to carry gear and light payloads to make soldiers in the field more nimble. Four companies competed for the first generation in 2017, and General Dynamics Land Systems won the first two contracts in 2019 and 2020. The program is now entering its second increment.

Teledyne FLIR introduced its prototype, the six-wheeled M2RV, at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. It comes with 38 square feet of cargo space, more than 2,600 pounds of payload capacity, and the ability to move at speeds exceeding 10 mph, according to the company.

The model has two attached payloads. The first is its new R80D SkyRaider, a 10-pound quadcopter drone. The second is its 280-HDEP surveillance system, mounted on the rear of the platform. Click here to read more.

US Army seeks to drive down costs within hypersonic missile industry

The U.S. Army sees opportunities for industry to drive down the cost of producing hypersonic missiles as it helps to grow the industrial base, which was essentially nonexistent roughly five years ago, according to Chris Mills, the deputy director for the service’s hypersonics project office within the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office.

The Army awarded a contract to Leidos subsidiary Dynetics to build the Navy-designed Common Hypersonic Glide Body for both services. Each service will integrate the missile and fine-tune the capabilities based on individual service needs, such as launching from a ground vehicle or a ship. Click here to read more.

Competing robotic vehicles on display after Army signals new approach

The four companies vying for the Army’s robotic combat vehicle program displayed prototypes at this year’s Association of the U.S. Army conference.

The RCV is an unmanned system meant to serve alongside manned units, part of a larger slate of updated ground combatants — the Next Generation Combat Vehicles — the Army is acquiring. Its missions will include ones that would pose a high threat to soldiers, such as approaching enemy forces for intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance.

McQ, Textron Systems, General Dynamics Land Systems and Oshkosh Defense were selected to compete for the light model of the RCV in late September. The Army’s framework for the program has since changed, though. Click here to read more.

BAE preps adaptable armored vehicle turret for counter-drone missions

BAE Systems hopes a prototype redesign of its new armored vehicle’s turret could one day allow the U.S. Army to rapidly adapt it into an anti-drone weapon.

BAE is now developing the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle for the Army as a replacement for the Vietnam-era M113 armored personnel carriers. The company has so far built more than 270 of the tracked, heavily-armored AMPVs, and hundreds more are on the way, according to BAE’s vice president of business development for combat mission systems, Jim Miller. The business official spoke to Defense News on Oct. 9 at the Association of the U.S. Army’s conference in Washington. Click here to read more.

International

US Army moves to pre-position materials in Pacific

The Army is hoping progress made at Talisman Sabre, the joint U.S.-Australian exercise this summer, could open doors for it to position more equipment in the Indo-Pacific region.

The service sees expanding its pre-positioned equipment in the area as part of its contribution to deterring China.

And the Army made headway this summer when it was permitted to permanently keep three company sets of equipment in Australia following Talisman Sabre, Gen. Charles Hamilton, Army Materiel Command commander, told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. Click here to read more.

US Army embracing remote maintenance beyond Ukraine

The U.S. Army is applying the telemaintenance capability it developed in a parking lot in Poland to its most challenging logistical theater — the Indo-Pacific, according to the head of Army Materiel Command.

“It has been a great enabler to the warfight in Ukraine,” Gen. Charles Hamilton told Defense News in an interview just ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army conference. “It’s one of the game changers in a sense.”

Now, AMC, working with U.S. Army Pacific and the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, is readying to use this telemaintenance capability in the challenging environment of the Indo-Pacific. It will first try it in a variety of exercises, including the Defender series and Talisman Sabre in Australia, Hamilton said. Click here to read more.

Military intervention in Niger unlikely, says Ghana’s top Army officer

A West African union is considering diplomatic options in response to the July coup in Niger that ousted democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, the head of Ghana’s Army Staff told Defense News.

But Maj. Gen. Thomas Oppong-Peprah also noted a “military assessment” is underway to examine a possible armed intervention in Niger, a prospect the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, first floated in August after the bloc’s defense chiefs met in Ghana. Click here to read more.

US Army relies on Pacific allies, exercises to sustain supply lines

U.S. Army commanders overseeing forces in the Indo-Pacific outlined their work with allies and partners in the region to sustain the supply lines that allow the service to maintain forces throughout the broad, diffuse area.

“This mesh network of friends, partners and allies helps us to accomplish the things that the Army needs to have done,” Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, who commands the Army’s I Corps, said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “One of those things is we’ve got to build interior lines.” Click here to read more.

US Army’s multidomain task force units could bring in allies, partners

The U.S. Army’s multidomain task force units could see elements that include allies and partners, according to the head of U.S. Army Pacific.

“We’re actually doing some work right now with the third MDTF in Hawaii to create conditions for a combined MDTF,” Gen. Charles Flynn told Defense News on Oct. 9 at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “Australia is moving five officers this summer — summer of 2024 — to Hawaii so we can build out a combined element of the multidomain task force”

The Army is also considering how it could include Japan in an MDTF. Click here to read more.

Unmanned tech

Shield AI unveils V-Bat Teams drone swarm tech, with eye to Replicator

California-based defense technology firm Shield AI launched a new drone swarming capability called V-Bat Teams — one it hopes the Defense Department might use for programs such as its Replicator initiative.

V-Bat Teams, which grew out of Shield AI’s experiments with the Air Force’s AFWERX innovation unit that culminated in a demonstration this summer, has at its core the company’s artificial intelligence pilot software dubbed Hivemind. These teams consisting of a handful of V-Bat aircraft are intended to operate autonomously in high-threat environments, without needing instructions or guidance from GPS or communications. Click here to read more.

Kongsberg sending counter-drone network to Ukraine, pitching it to US

Kongsberg is sending its integrated counter-drone system to Ukraine to help guard against incoming Iranian-made loitering munitions, and hopes to convince the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to consider the system for future vehicle programs.

The Norwegian company builds the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station, or CROWS, used atop U.S. Army vehicles as well as the remote weapon station on the Marine Corps’ Marine Air Defense Integrated System.

But the company sees where its Integrated Combat Solution software, which would tie together multiple vehicles, unmanned systems and sensors, “could change the way we fight, and doctrinally change and improve survivability to our end user,” John Carlsson, the company’s vice president of business development in the United States, told Defense News at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. Click here to read more.

US Army mulls attack drones, ground robots for Replicator

The U.S. Army could contribute one-way attack drones and ground-based robotics to the Pentagon’s nascent Replicator initiative, which aims to deploy autonomous systems en masse to counter Chinese stockpiles.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks rolled out the venture in August, calling for thousands of attritable systems in the field in the next 18 to 24 months. Details have been scant regarding sourcing and validation of the systems as well as how the U.S. will dispatch them so quickly.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth on Oct. 9 said the service has “a number of areas that would be right for Replicator,” including UAVs “of all sizes.” The service is in close coordination with the defense secretary’s office.

“Obviously UAVs, both using them as sensors and as deliverers of payloads, and also defending against them, are key on the battlefield,” she told reporters on the sidelines of the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington. “Some of the loitering munitions that we have could be candidates for Replicator. And then, finally, perhaps some of our ground robots.” Click here to read more.

Teledyne launches latest Black Hornet nano-drone with upgraded sensors

Teledyne FLIR Defense is betting big on a drone so small it can fit in a soldier’s hand.

The company, part of Teledyne Technologies, rolled out the latest edition of the Black Hornet nano-drone at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. The Black Hornet 4 is less than a foot long and weighs a fraction of a pound. Click here to read more.

New radar to turn Gray Eagles into anti-drone hunters, says General Atomics

A new multidomain surveillance radar from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, dubbed Eagle Eye, aims to increase the U.S. Army’s ability to track and shoot down even small drones.

Mike Shortsleeve, vice president of Defense Department strategic development at the firm, said in an interview at the Association of the U.S. Army’s conference in Washington that Gray Eagle 25M drones are now in production with Eagle Eye, a synthetic aperture radar. Click here to read more.

At its inception in the Arizona desert in 2020, the U.S. Army hoped to use the event to evaluate its materiel upgrades, including a potent brew of artificial intelligence, autonomy, robotics and radiating connectivity. The scale at which experimentation took place paled in comparison to the global presence the service touts.

The technology crucible, however, quickly grew.

In 2021, Project Convergence welcomed Air Force and Navy participation, highlighting the military-wide expectations of future fighting. The next year, it added international forces: Australia and the U.K. directly participated, while others, such as Canada, looked on. The endeavor, critical to shaping the Army’s future formations and employment of tech, soon became a breeding ground for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2, the Pentagon’s larger connectedness campaign.

But the blossoming left some in Army leadership with questions. Was there enough time to fully absorb the results? Was there enough time to plan successive events?

“Digesting all of that data and analyzing what it really meant was a major undertaking,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told Defense News. “And frankly my concern for Army Futures Command was: ‘Are we rushing through this?’ ”

That organization helps shape Project Convergence year to year as well as bridge the so-called valley of death, the metaphorical chasm between technological development and its purchase and deployment.

The next iteration of Project Convergence — with the suffix “24″ — bucks the annual approach amid greater emphasis on smaller, cumulative demonstrations in the preceding months. When it’s showtime, the project will offer a grander setup, reflecting the Army’s transition to large-scale combat operations and potential international battlefields of the future, both service and defense industry officials told C4ISRNET and Defense News.

“It would be foolish, in my view, to spend the time and resources to do that kind of complex experimentation and not give ourselves the time to get the lessons and the insights out of it,” Wormuth said. “It’s not activity for activity’s sake.”

Californ-AI

Project Convergence 24 will be executed in two phases, from a pair of locations and with previously uninvolved partners.

The first will be at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, with eyes locked on the Indo-Pacific. The Biden administration considers the region critical to international stability and trade; it is home to some of the world’s largest militaries, namely China and India, as well as some of its largest ports.

Operations there will concentrate on the air, sea, space and cyberspace domains, as well as focus on interservice cooperation, offensive and defensive fires, and ensuring the right sensors deliver the right information to the right force at the right time, Lt. Gen. Ross Coffman, the deputy chief of Army Futures Command, told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

Fort Irwin, California, will serve as the epicenter of the second phase, which will zero in on the land domain and involve foreign troops.

“This is an Army effort, and it’s going to take the entire Army, the joint force and our coalition partners to really learn the lessons that we need to so that we can transform together and win on future battlefields,” Coffman said. “The lessons we learn are applicable globally. They can be applied to Europe. They can be applied to Africa. They can be applied to the Pacific.”

The service is attempting to overhaul its far-shooting weapons, air and missile defense capabilities, aviation fleet, communications systems, and more as relationships with Russia and China ice over. The U.S. Defense Department considers the former a more immediate threat, while the latter poses longer-term hazards.

The service at the same time is trying to revamp the way it develops and procures the latest gear and machinery after a variety of its modernization efforts — the sprawling Future Combat Systems program, centered on a network that connected new vehicles, drones and other technology; the Crusader weapon system, intended to replace aging artillery; and the Comanche helicopter — all foundered.

“The Army is transforming,” Coffman said. “And as we look to the future, as we look out the windshield moving forward, we really are focused on pulling together all of the incredible work by [the office of the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology] in the modernization space, and then looking forward, taking into account what’s happening in real time in Ukraine and other places, and anticipating what will come next.”

The ties that bind

Testing in the spring will feature a buffet of the defense industry’s latest developments, including robots paired with soldiers on foot, specialty drones (dubbed launched effects) putting eyes on a target for long-range fires, and a means of managing contested logistics. It will also put the Army’s networks under serious stress.

To outwit, outmaneuver and outshoot tech-savvy adversaries such as Russia and China, the Army and its sister services are betting big on CJADC2. The new era of command and control would see forces and databases across air, land, sea, space and cyberspace seamlessly interlinked, providing the best-positioned or best-equipped unit the chance to strike first and strike hard.

“It’s an incredibly complicated task to take on, to bring all those networks together,” Bob Ashley, a retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told C4ISRNET. “The key thing is that there’s different kinds of radios that don’t talk to other kinds of radios, and different formats of data, because we never really thought through the full interoperability for all of that stuff.”

The Defense Department requested $1.4 billion in fiscal 2024 for CJADC2. Project Convergence is often regarded as the Army’s contribution to the odyssey. The Air Force, likewise, pitches in its Advanced Battle Management System, and the Navy is workshopping Project Overmatch. Concerns about coordination have cropped up; the Air Force’s principal cyber adviser in July 2022 publicly fretted about disjointedness, and lawmakers that same year sought in annual defense legislation an audit of CJADC2 timelines and spending.

“For all these weapon systems to talk to one another, for all this data to be interoperable, that’s really what CJADC2 is about,” said Ashley, who served as a senior adviser to the Army secretary. “How do we bring all this stuff together?”

In that regard, defense companies are playing a major role. The increasingly intricate webs that need digital weaving — with data flowing from aircraft to soldier, from shore to ship, to and from command posts that quickly break down or bounce between locations — are made possible by their hardware and software.

Project Convergence 22 featured a so-called gateway where firms could test emerging kit in a relevant environment, all without breaking the bank. The initiative proved effective, according to Coffman, and will make return appearances.

“That’s the challenge we’re trying to take on. How do we go make the lightning bolts real in all these pictures that the Department of Defense likes to draw?” Adil Karim, a Northrop Grumman vice president, said in an interview with C4ISRNET. “How do we help the Army and the broader Department of Defense be more like the internet that we have in our personal life?”

Northrop Grumman is one of more than 100 companies that have participated in Project Convergence. The Virginia-based business furnished its Integrated Battle Command System, among other products.

“It’s always useful to have a real warfighter kick the tires on your capability and say, ‘Hey, could this be a circle instead of a square?’ Or, ‘Can we paint it red instead of blue?’ That kind of thing,” Karim said. “That’s always been true in exercises.”

Continued complexity

Coffman, Army Futures Command’s deputy chief, remembers when Project Convergence comprised “two enemy, two sensors, two effectors.” He was in charge of the Next Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. At the time, the service “wanted to prove the tech,” he said, without getting “too complex too early. So we started very small.”

That has changed.

In just three years and as many versions, Project Convergence has become a sculptor of budget blueprints, policymaking and joint force modernization. It has ushered hundreds upon hundreds of pieces of high-tech equipment into the dirt and into the hands of soldiers who may one day rely on them. It has also shed its annual rhythm — a symptom of the data avalanche produced and ultimately parsed.

“We have learned a tremendous amount. It is, I think, the biggest and most successful joint opportunity for experimentation,” Wormuth said at a September event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

But Project Convergence can’t just be about a splashy capstone event, the new Army chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, said during the same discussion.

The idea is for Project Convergence to be a hotbed for capability, whether that’s a new weapon, or a novel way to tie sensors together, or how formations might fold in automaton assistance.

Much of what is demonstrated successfully there ends up growing in other exercises and activities in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, where it can then translate to real-world firepower.

The Army is “trying to look at this as continuous transformation,” George said. “What we want to do is tie all the pieces that we’re learning together and make sure we’re doing this in a continuous fashion, and kind of spinning it off.”

The company, part of Teledyne Technologies, rolled out the latest edition of the Black Hornet nano-drone this week at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. The Black Hornet 4 is less than a foot long and weighs a fraction of a pound.

The successor to Black Hornet 3 can fly for more than 30 minutes, reach a range of more than 2 kilometers (1.24 miles), and stay stable in 25-knot (89 mph) winds. Onboard, it carries a sensitive daytime camera and a thermal imager, capable of capturing videos and images, as well as a software-defined data system.

“We all sat together, the whole team, both on the U.S. side and the Norwegian side, to focus — we need to have a game-changing capability,” Nils Haagenrud, senior director of unmanned aerial systems programs, told C4ISRNET in an interview.

Militaries the world over are increasingly investing in uncrewed technologies. Drones and robots offer troops a means to reconnoiter, refine targeting and attack from afar with little human risk. Commercial interest is also booming: The civilian market is expected to reach $38 billion by 2027, according to Statista, a data-gathering and analysis firm.

Tens of thousands of older Black Hornets were delivered to forces in more than 40 countries, including Ukraine. The U.S. Army began buying Black Hornets five years ago as part of the soldier-borne sensor program, and has since placed orders totaling more than $125 million.

The lessons learned — both stateside and abroad — helped mold Black Hornet 4, according to Haagenrud and his colleague, David Viens.

“It gives us a lot of experiential learning and a lot of customer engagement to know what the customer needs in the next generation,” said Viens, vice president of business development in the United States. “We have a lot of good information from the customer in Ukraine, but it’s sensitive. We can say the systems are being used very effectively.”

The company is expected to pitch its product to the U.S. Defense Department. The Norwegian armed forces are another significant consideration, according to Haagenrud.

Teledyne’s operations are concentrated in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Europe.

Soldiers with the 3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment over the summer tested a batch of communications tools meant for Strykers, known as Capability Set 23. One issue identified during the experimentation, conducted in Germany, was related to power consumption.

The older Strykers upon which soldiers relied were power constrained, limiting what could be done in the field. At the time, questions lingered: Was the newly fitted kit — the integrated tactical network — or the Stryker variant at the root of the problem?

Operational feedback helped the Army’s Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, or PEO C3T, and others mitigate the concerns. Newer, upgraded Double V-Hull Strykers also offer greater amounts of power, which officials recognized.

“Some of the feedback items they found were, [soldiers] really liked the new networking kit, but they found that we had installed a lot of it on legacy vehicles because that’s what they have. They haven’t been issued the new vehicles. As a result, they were experiencing some power challenges when they weren’t connected to generators,” Matt Maier, a project manager at PEO C3T, told reporters in August during a demonstration in New Castle, Delaware. “In fairness to the unit, those systems, those vehicles, weren’t designed for the extra network capability.”

The effort looped in Program Executive Office Ground Combat Systems, or PEO GCS, whose leader, Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, described the Strykers employed during testing as “some of the oldest” in “the fleet.” The executive office’s portfolio includes Strykers and the Abrams tank.

“We may find there might be some things that were put on that were significant power hogs,” Dean said in a September interview, “but more than likely it’s the first-gen Stryker space, weight and power as the limitations.”

One of the key takeaways from the experience is how critical coordination across executive offices and other entities is to ensure “the whole Army upgrade kind of happens at the same time,” Maier said. “So while they’re rolling out the new Double V-Hull Strykers or they’re rolling out the new armor formation vehicles, we can then roll out the same networking kit in those vehicles to those units.”

The Army is taking a stepwise approach to modernizing soldier communications and its own larger networks, the digital threads that connect assets on the battlefield and back home. The increments are known as capability sets, amalgams of ruggedized military tech and off-the-shelf products.

The capability set venture began in fiscal 2021 with eyes on infantry brigades. Capability Set 23 is tailored to Stryker brigades, using its predecessor as a foundation on which to further build. Capability Set 25 deals with armor.

“The focus on Capability Set 21 was on expeditionary units and infantry units,” Maier said. “But the focus for Capability Set 23 is on a more resilient network, better PACE options, and is focused on more-mobile units.”

PACE describes the order in which lines of communication will be tried until contact is established: primary, alternate, contingency and emergency.

Capability Set 23 provisions include cellular hot spots for vehicles, improved GPS routing and multiple input and output radios for rapid exchanges with command posts, both mobile and static. The set passed a critical design review in April, meaning the bloc of technologies was relevant, conceptually sound and cost effective.

The positive mark also cracked open the door to procurement.