The C5ISR Center tested numerous technologies this summer for manned-unmanned teaming and advanced network communications techniques at its Network Modernization Experiment, a field-based event at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey to try tools in an operational environment.

A primary takeaway from the experiment was that a critical open standards project for Army’s future battlefield network works. The C5ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards, or CMOSS, allows soldiers to upgrade capabilities more simply by plugging a rugged standard VPX card into a small box.

The C5ISR Center team responsible for developing CMOSS brought a prototype to NetModX and attempted to integrate a TSM waveform that works with software-defined radios; a position, navigation and timing solution; as well as mounted mission command applications. CMOSS is based on an open standards architecture that increases the interoperability of tools.

“The more important lesson we learned is that the standards work,” Ben Peddicord, the C5ISR Center’s branch chief for intel technology and architecture, said during a July media roundtable.

“So we were able to bring together a number of solutions from a number of vendors, and very quickly and easily — I mean, like, within days — successfully integrate them and help them execute their mission. So I think we learned some specific very narrow technical issues that we need to work on. Nothing significant, but most importantly, I think we really demonstrated the power of the standards.”

The Army plans to field CMOSS capability on Stryker armored vehicles for Capability Set ‘25, one of the service’s rollouts of new tactical network technologies that happen every two years. The team also demonstrated interoperability with a dismounted soldier’s Nett Warrior situational awareness tool and with a UH-60 Black Hawk, according to an Army news release.

During the first week of NetModX the research team focused on integrating the three solutions into the larger network. In the following two weeks they experimented with more vendors.

“We were able to, in the following two weeks, have vendors come in and very rapidly in the field, drop their solutions in, and everything really, pretty much just worked,” Peddicord said.

The products included emerging waveforms; assured PNT; CMOSS infrastructure prototypes; and capabilities for data encryption, tactical communication and electronic warfare, according to Peddicord.

The CMOSS experiment at NetModX included participation from L3Harris Technologies, General Dynamics Mission Systems, Spectranetix, Trellisware Technologies, SRC Inc., Curtiss-Wright Corp. and Collins Aerospace.

The C5ISR Center also tested a developing network capability for robotic combat vehicles that would give operators an improved understanding of their radio connection to the vehicle. Currently, operators can maneuver the vehicle until their link dies and the robot becomes “orphaned” on the battlefield, said Archie Kujawski, lead of the future radio concepts team.

“We saw a need for the end operators to be able to visualize the battle space for that remote link through the radios and to visualize that as they move across the battle space, and we saw that as a pretty big need in order to enable that link,” Kujawski told reporters in late July.

In response, the C5ISR Center developed a Network Coverage Overlay that allows robot combat vehicle operators to visualize the strength of their connection with the colors green, amber and red, according to Jonathan Lee, lead of the spectrum research and development team. The tool displays a coverage heat map that estimates radio signal strength based on terrain and elevation. The end goal is a capability that will notify users when their connection is degrading.

“One benefit that allows a user to gain knowledge of where they will have real network coverage,” Lee said at the media event. “This allows the radios to be used better, and allows the vehicle operators to make decisions based on radio connectivity along the different routes, and consequently allowing them to see how far they can send the remotely controlled vehicle.”

The network researchers also tested anti-jam, covert radio waveform capabilities of command post communications as part of a broader effort to reduce the electronic signatures of the service’s command posts. The Army is pushing for mobile, distributed command posts as it prepares for potential future wars against advanced adversaries such as Russia and China.

At NetModX, the C5ISR Center tested new commercial radios on moving vehicles that could in the future be part of the mobile command post effort, known as Command Post Integrated Infrastructure, an effort led by Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical. The researchers tested two commercial radios from undisclosed companies in a “caravanning” activity in which vehicles rolled around a seven-kilometer course with mixed terrain and foliage, RJ Regars, a C5ISR Center systems engineer, said at another media update in August.

One radio performed well, while the other did not, Regars said without getting into specifics. Neither radio performed well in a second test in which the devices passed off responsibility for maintaining the data link, based on their location. Those results “were as we expected” because the commercial radios weren’t built with tactical use in mind.

“There’s value in understanding both what the commercial systems are doing well, and what they’re not doing well because … our emphasis is to leverage what we can from the commercial world, and not have to redevelop these things,” Regars said.

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall, the chief information officer and J6 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week at the TechNet Augusta conference that while the Defense Department has many technological pieces it needs to link sensors and shooters, those tools must be equipped to handle interference by adversaries. The ability to pass and process massive amounts of data to increase the command and control capabilities of the joint force in future battles will also require edge processing capabilities that the military does not yet have.

“We’re missing some key components to do this in a contested environment,” Crall said. “So I’m concerned about our tactical processing nodes — the actual hardware capability to bring — got work to do there. [We] got work to do on a resilient cloud structure that follows us to make sure that that data is there. I’m concerned about the transport layer to move that information to decision.”

From a hardware perspective, Crall said that some tactical edge processing capabilities are already on the battlefield, but he declined to go into specifics due to classification. What the military needs next, he said, is “these ideas of bringing our portable data centers with us.” He added that the services need small, light, cloud-connected and “very” resilient processing devices with secure waveforms that can manage information while operating with spotty network access.

As the department forges ahead with its JADC2 vision for a connected, unified force across domains, Crall noted that industry needs to prove that solutions can work in denied and degraded communications environments.

“If your experimentation can’t move from garrison to the flagpole, if it starts and stops as a garrison solution, [and] it works really good in connected high-bandwidth areas of some level of safety and security” that’s not good enough, Crall said. If “it’s not battle tested for the mission use that we think it’s going to have, [that’s] not the kind of experimentation that’s useful because the war fighter will not have access to those things.”

Military officials across the services have long stressed that the process of constructing JADC2 systems must prioritize delivering battlefield-ready technology to war fighters first, working backward to then deliver the innovations across the enterprise. In order to enable JADC2, the military must hand war fighters tools that work regardless of adversaries’ interference techniques. One area the military is exploring is how communications needs differ on battlefields across the world.

Leaders have to consider: “What’s the minimum viable information exchange that has to occur in a particular fight? And depending on which COCOM [combatant command] you’re talking about and which mission set you’re talking about, those are a bit divergent,” Crall said.

The department has made progress on its promise to design JADC2 with information sharing with allies in mind with new developments for its mission partner environment, a battlefield information-sharing platform, he noted.

“We really do have, we think, an IOC [initial operating capability] … at the secret and below releasable environment,” he said.

According to Crall, U.S. Central Command could begin using the capability in fiscal 2022. The tool will be a virtual, hybrid cloud environment with zero-trust cybersecurity capabilities and identity, credential and access management tools to bolster cybersecurity.

Mark Pomerleau contributed to this report from Augusta, Ga. Andrew Eversden reported from Washington, D.C.

So as Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey takes over the N-CFT he has a clear priority: Soldiers must be able to access data while sharing it with allies alongside them.

“It was definitely a struggle to share information and figure out how to have full interoperability between all the partners within the region,” Rey said of his time as commander of the 516th Signal Brigade based out of Fort Shafter, Hawaii. “I think that continues today.”

He faced a similar challenge has chief information officer and J6 of CENTCOM, he said. But as the U.S. pivots out of the Middle East and recalibrates on the Chinese military’s threat in the Indo-Pacific, it needs to deliver a resilient network that can pass and share data across dispersed land masses, while delivering the Army’s contribution to Joint All-Domain Command and Control. The Pentagon’s strategy to win future fights relies on the sharing sensor data across a connected, joint force and with allies.

As N-CFT director, Rey oversees the Army’s effort to build its future battlefield network by delivering new network tools to soldiers every two years in batches it calls capability sets. Rey said he doesn’t plan to make changes to that process.

Rey’s goal is to create a data-centric environment where the information is “reachable, understandable and secured, but is aggregated in a way that it can be rendered to the user at the edge.” Pushing data down to the individual soldier on the contested battlefield is “one of the most important” areas for the N-CFT, and its acquisition partner Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications-Tactical to deliver to soldiers, he said.

“How I believe we can do that is to create a transport-agnostic environment,” Rey said, relying on 5G, satellites in low Earth and medium Earth orbits, and other terrestrial transport options.

That’s particularly important in the Indo-Pacific region, which is more than 50 percent water and where military posts are spread across disconnected land. It’s an area where “network modernization … has always been a challenge,” said Rey, who started at the N-CFT two months ago.

To have adequate communications capability in the dispersed Indo-Pacific region, the tactical network team is focused on providing multiple transport options. Brig. Gen. Rob Collins, director of PEO C3T, said that communication in the Indo-Pacific region requires flexible and mobile networks. To achieve that, the N-CFT and PEO C3T are focused on space capabilities, as well as transmission and communications security with the pivot to the Indo-Pacific.

“We need to make sure that we maximize on the multilayered architecture, [not just] traditional just terrestrial reliance. We got to think air, we got to think space and even within space, multiple layers,” said Collins, who joined PEO C3T as its second director just over a year ago. Another challenge is “the weather over there and how we plan different elements of the spectrum operate differently in different aspects of the weather.”

The tactical network modernization team is progressing through fielding INDOPACOM-based units with new tactical network tools. The 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division just received Capability Set ‘21, according to Paul Mehney, PEO C3T communications director. That brigade is the first INDOPACOM brigade fielded. Fielding of expeditionary signal battalion enhanced network gear is nearly complete for the South Korea-based 304th Expeditionary Signal Battalion. Mehney added that “multiple” INDOPACOM outfits have received more expeditionary network equipment in the last several years.

As the network team moves toward future capability sets, Rey wants to explore advanced tools that would provide secure data access to partners. New cybersecurity approaches, such as zero trust and identity, credential and access management, or ICAM), could help people access data securely and potentially allow work below the standard secret, releasable security enclave, meaning teams could share data more easily with partners.

“We have to look at policies and how our policies are restricting us as we’re sharing data, not only from our enterprise to our tactical environment but with our partners from a mission partner environment perspective,” Rey said, noting the policies have to be changed at the Pentagon level. “So that’s going to be something that we have to look across the board.”

To that end, the network team is working on a battlefield data fabric, a data management environment with common standards and tools that allows systems to easily data pass data back and forth. It’s a capability that the N-CFT tested out last year at Project Convergence, the Army’s new annual multidomain operations experiment. Collins called the data fabric “foundational” and said the environment needs to handle unstructured, semistructured and structured data.

In Rey’s words, the Army’s future tactical network must function like a bank’s network. Financial institutions have mountains of data from millions of customers, but they only share an individual’s data with an authorized user.

“We have to look at it in the same manner,” Rey said. “But again, I get back to: Our policies have to be able to be adjusted in order for us to share data from the enterprise all the way to the tactical and then in a mission partner, coalition partner [environment] as well.”

The broad agency announcement from the Austin, Texas-based command comes as the service and the Defense Department work to connect sensors and shooters across the battlefield. Artificial intelligence will be key in that effort by analyzing data and assisting commanders in the decision-making process.

The announcement, released by the command’s Artificial Intelligence Integration Center, said the service is “particularly” interested in AI research of autonomous ground and air platforms, “which must operate in open, urban and cluttered environments.” The document specifically asks for research into technologies that allow for robots or autonomous systems to move in urban, contested environments, as well as technologies that reduce the electromagnetic profile of the systems. It also wants to know more about AI that can sense obscure targets and understand terrain obstacles.

The document identifies several needs pertaining to data analysis over the next five years. The Army is interested in human-machine interfacing research and needs additional research in ways it can predict an adversary’s intent and behavior on the battlefield. In the same category, the Army wants to be able to fuse data from disparate sources and have analytical capabilities to “exploit” classified and unclassified sources to make “enhanced” intelligence products.

The Army also wants to be able to combine human insight with machine analysis and develop improved ways of “efficiently” conveying analytics results to humans.

“The Army is interested in AI/ML research in areas which can reduce the cognitive burden on humans and improve overall performance through human-machine teaming,” the announcement read.

Similarly, the Army needs more research over the next five years into how to better display data to humans. Data must be presented clearly to users — through charts or graphs, for example — so they can understand what the information means.

“The Army is interested in research that enables improved situational awareness and the visualization and navigation of large data sets to enhance operational activities and training and readiness,” the announcement read. Along that same vein, the service is also seeking novel ways of visualizing sensor data and large data sets with multiple sources.

The service also wants more research into AI for sensing on the battlefield, including detecting people, equipment and weapons, even when obscured. It wants to sense these targets based on “physical, behavioral, cyber or other signatures.” Additionally, the Army wants AI-enabled sensors and processors that can detect chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threats.

Network and communications security is another area in which the Army wants more research. The service is seeking more research into autonomous network defense and AI-based approaches to offensive cyber capabilities. It also wants novel cyber protection technologies and methods.

Additionally, to prepare for potential GPS-denied environments of the future, the Army is interested in research into algorithms and techniques to fuse sources of position, navigation and timing to provide “robust” capabilities.

The Internet of Things, or the massive network of devices connected to the internet, presents more artificial intelligence needs for the Army. According to the solicitation, the service is interested in AI research into “new approaches to enable secure, resilient, and automatically managed IoT networks in highly complex, mixed cooperative/adversarial, information-centric environments.”

“The Army needs to better integrate a wide range of capabilities and equipment and capitalize on commercial developments in industrial and human IoT,” the solicitation said.

The two companies will participate in the development, production and sustainment of the Next Generation Load Device-Medium, a cryptography tool to secure the service’s network from adversaries’ cyber and electronic warfare threats. The contract, worth up to $774.2 million over 10 years, was awarded by Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications-Tactical.

The advanced cryptology device that will replace the Army’s legacy Simple Key Loader devices. The new capability will allow network managers to reconfigure cryptographic products, remotely download new software and improve operational environment awareness, according to a PEO C3T press release.

“The NGLD-M will enable delivery of the strongest NSA-generated cryptographic keys to tactical, strategic, and enterprise network systems operating from secret to the highest levels of security classification,” said Paul Mehney, communications director for PEO C3T. “Through over-the-air capability, modern cryptographic algorithms will be transferred by NGLD-M to counter the threats posed by increased proliferation of adversarial cyber and electronic warfare.”

The vendors will share an initial $74 million award for development and low-rate initial production, scheduled for fiscal 2024 along with an operational test.

Full-rate production of the encryption device will begin in fiscal 2025 with up to 265,000 products fielded. Once in production, the loaders will be available by units across the services, federal government and foreign military partners. The Army expects to stick with its multivendor approach through the production process and could add vendors in the future as industry capabilities mature, Mehney said.

“NGLD-M will be the biggest materiel change in cryptographic key delivery in twenty years,” Michael Badger, product lead communications security, said in a statement. “It will transform COMSEC both in the strength of keys NGLD-M can handle and in the security of its delivery mechanisms.”

The release of the NGLD-M request for proposals was delayed last summer after the Army decided to adjust its acquisition strategy. The RFP was released in November.

Then last year, leaders evacuated Travis Air Force Base in northern California due to nearby raging wildfires.

And today, Arctic Air Force bases hosting radar early warning systems and communication equipment are suffering coastal erosion, which is damaging seawalls, runways and infrastructure. Thawing permafrost and erosion threatens bases in the Arctic, damaging infrastructure. NASA tracks the extent of Arctic sea ice and estimates a declining 13.1 percent rate of change per decade.

“Climate change is going to cost us in resources and readiness,” Joe Bryan, senior climate adviser at the Pentagon, said during a July webinar. “The reality is that it already is.”

Now, after years of the Trump administration sidestepping the issue, the Biden administration has asked for $617 million in fiscal 2022 for climate change preparation, adaptation and mitigation. In addition, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, having already identified climate change as a top priority, launched a Climate Working Group in response to a January executive order signed by President Joe Biden. Climate change is no longer a problem for future defense leaders; it is an immediate challenge.

According to NASA, climate change is driven by increased levels of greenhouse gases causing global temperatures to rise, the ocean to warm, polar ice to melt and sea levels to rise. Since the late 1800s, Earth’s average surface temperature has risen 2.12 degrees Fahrenheit, and the last seven years have been the warmest. The year 2020 is tied with 2016 for the warmest year on record.

Biden warned in his executive order that the world is facing “a profound climate crisis. We have a narrow moment to pursue action at home and abroad in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of that crisis and to seize the opportunity that tackling climate change presents.”

The problem is becoming clearer. The Congressional Research Service found that the Department of Defense manages more than 1,700 global military installations on coastlines that could prove vulnerable to rises in sea level. A 2019 departmental survey involving 79 installations warned that about two-thirds are vulnerable to recurrent flooding and that another half are under threat by drought or wildfires.

Melting Arctic ice opens new avenues to potential conflict; sea level rise threatens hundreds of millions of people globally and impacts military installations; and extreme heat can influence training and operations.

With the White House and the Pentagon signaling the prioritization of climate measures, Defense News reached out to the Army, Air Force and Navy about their efforts to adapt.

Innovation at the Air and Space forces

Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton, Virginia — home to Air Combat Command and host to critical fighter aircraft as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities — sits just 8 feet above sea level.

Diego Garcia — an atoll in the Indian Ocean that often hosts deployments of U.S. bombers and is central to operations in Afghanistan, South Asia and East Africa — sits only 6.5 feet above sea level. And the Marshall Islands — where the Space Force is building a $1 billion radar installation to track satellites and space junk, known as the Space Fence — sits just 10 feet higher than the ocean.

“Nearly all of our installations are exposed to some natural or climate-related threat such as hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, and extreme winter weather,” Air Force spokeswoman Sarah Fiocco told Defense News. “These climate considerations have a direct impact on our ability to launch our missions, as our installations are a platform from which we project air power.

“The Department of the Air Force is actively working toward making our installations more resilient to the potential impacts of climate change and extreme weather.”

For example, Fiocco said, construction projects deliberately located in flood plains for mission purposes are built 3 feet above the design flood elevation (or the highest point of a possible flood that a retrofitting method is designed to protect against).

Amid ongoing disaster recovery at Tyndall Air Force Base, the service is constructing new buildings 19 feet above sea level if they are near the Gulf of Mexico. Fiocco said the projects at Tyndall are also built to withstand a minimum of 165 mph.

“Due to integrating severe weather and climate change design into our DoD building code, every project accounts for future changes in the climate and possibility of increased severe weather events,” she said.

The changing climate, particularly underway in the Arctic, also creates new mission challenges for the U.S. military. For example, a 2020 report from the think tank Rand said the melting Arctic ice and Russian military activity in the area means the U.S. Air Force must prepare for “an increase in demand for intercept flights” in the region.

“That’s a sensing challenge [because] we need to know what’s coming over the poles, which can be difficult,” said Raphael Cohen, acting director of strategy and doctrine program at Rand’s Project Air Force. “It’s a communications challenge because the way communications work in the high north are somewhat different. And then there’s a military capability question too. How much … resources you put up there? That is also a thing that we have to consider.”

Fiocco told Defense News that the service recognizes climate change “may drive increased mission demands or contingencies in new regions (e.g., Arctic) in response to resource competition, geopolitical instability, and a growing need for humanitarian assistance and disaster response to recover from climate-related events.”

“The Department of the Air Force is reviewing its current posture to inform necessary pivots in operational planning, locations and activities based on climate change considerations,” she added.

That includes projects with the Air Force Research Laboratory dedicated to improving communication capabilities in the high north. Arron Layns, the lab’s Arctic portfolio manager, said the organization is specifically working on new satellite and laser communications, and on bolstering high-frequency communications in the region.

Space-based communication for the Arctic is particularly challenging, as forecasting capabilities beyond Earth’s atmosphere are still maturing, and the North Pole’s environment is especially “dynamic,” Layns said. That’s in part due to the aurora — or northern lights — and how it interferes with satellite communications.

“The space environment is woefully under-observed, and the models are coming up, but they’re just not quite there for what we need,” Layns said. “The space environment has huge impacts on a variety of things. And if you don’t get that environmental information right, you might not know how your satellite’s going to work, or you might not know how your communications or [if] your navigation is really going to work properly.”

The Air Force, which is itself a major contributor to climate change, is looking at novel ways to improve the combat capability of its fleet while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. According to Fiocco, the service wants to increase the fuel economy of its legacy aircraft, in particular its mobility fleet.

In congressional testimony in July, Jennifer Miller, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and energy, said the service is funding “small items” that can increase efficiency, such as modifying aircraft with little winglets or adjusting the angle of windshield wipers.

Additionally, the planning tool JIGSAW, developed by the Air Force software factory Kessel Run and the Defense Innovation Unit — the Pentagon’s liaison for nontraditional contractors — now saves the service 180,000 gallons of fuel per week.

The Air Force is also exploring advancements in airframes and engines that would be “significantly more efficient” and increase combat power. According to Fiocco, the service is eyeing third-stream engines, which would be 25 percent more efficient than engines currently in use, as well as blended wing body aircraft, which would be about 30 percent more efficient.

However, she said, the potential for those capabilities is “limited by both technology and budgetary issues.”

Army strategies

The Army is currently writing its own climate change strategy, which is scheduled for release this fall, according to Jack Surash, the senior official performing the duties of assistant secretary of the Army for installations, environment and energy. Following the release, the service will unveil a “very detailed” climate change action plan that outlines a broad, “multiyear effort” for how the Army will tackle climate issues, he told lawmakers in July.

Asked by Defense News how the Army plans to adapt to potentially harsher environmental conditions, the service’s answers largely focused on energy storage.

“The Army is examining improved energy density and reliability of energy supply and storage technologies, [artificial intelligence]-enabled system-level power distribution (microgrids) and the use of renewable energy sources for use in operational contexts, including forward operating bases, tactical vehicles and on the battlefield,” Surash said in a statement.

He added that the Army wants “increased battery capacity, auxiliary power, electrification and alternative fuel sources that will increase operational endurance within the force, while reducing carbon emissions.”

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, also emphasized the military’s need to generate power on the battlefield in challenging environments.

“Coming up with new ways to generate power is going to be essential. Not just because of the ‘feel good, we need to be more clear’ military perspective to combat climate change, [but] because the military is going to operate in places where the host nation may have made those choices already and therefore they don’t have a bunch of electric power available for us to use,” he said.

The service is also exploring hybrid and fully electric vehicles, though top Army leaders said this year that hybrid vehicles are more likely to be a successful option in the near term. In congressional testimony, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said the service is considering hybrid vehicles that reduce fuel consumption by 25 percent. Meanwhile, Bruce Geil, chief of the power integration architecture branch at the Army Research Laboratory, said his portfolio is focused on making hybrid power systems more capable, but also smaller.

The lab also has several ongoing efforts related to climate prediction and planning that help commanders map out operations.

“If you have a climatological sense of what’s going to be in that area, then commanders can plan for those regions and know what weapon systems are going to work,” said Robb Randall, chief of the lab’s Atmospheric Science Center and the Atmospheric Dynamics and Analytics Branch. “How do I outfit my personnel and supply your need? How much water do I need to bring?”

The lab is also working on risk-assessment and decision-aid technology for desertification, in which fertile land becomes desert, to predict areas that are more prone to the change in the long term, Randall said. It’s also developing predictive capabilities for flash droughts — a rapid onset of drought — which can cause regional instability.

In a 2019 report to Congress, the Army listed desertification as the top climate threat to nine of its top 10 most vulnerable stateside bases. The service listed drought as the secondary threat to all 10. The same year, the Army War College released a report naming challenges the service will face due to climate change, including rising temperatures and an increased need for water. The report warned that the service is “precipitously close to mission failure concerning hydration of the force in a contested arid environment.”

In addition, the Army Research Lab and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency each have ongoing projects tackling hydration. The lab is exploring how to decontaminate polluted water using an aluminum panel that concentrates solar energy for purification. DARPA has chosen six partners to find unique ways to extract potable water from the atmosphere.

The Army Corps of Engineers is also contributing to departmentwide efforts, having designed the DoD Climate Assessment Tool, which projects the effects of climate change on almost 1,400 DoD locations. Additionally, the corps is researching unique approaches to developing construction materials to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Navy preps for new missions

A Pentagon report this year on the impact of environmental changes to installations found the Navy had a “greater range of climate exposure” than the other services, with it facing drought, heat and coastal flooding in the United States as well as East Asia and the Middle East.

The Navy did not answer questions from Defense News by press time about how it is adapting to the changing environment.

In congressional testimony in July, Todd Schafer, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, stated broadly that the service is working to “build climate resiliency” into its installations.

Sea level rise particularly threatens naval bases. The Hampton Roads, Virginia, area, home to the largest concentration of military infrastructure in the world, is already under threat of flooding, with the sea level near the area expected to rise 1.5 feet in the next 20-50 years, according to the Congressional Research Service. The worst effects are expected at the end of this century.

John Conger, former acting assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment, told Defense News that in areas like Hampton Roads, the emphasis must be on protecting investments rather than taking the costly step of moving them.

“What the smart play is, in the near term, is to make your infrastructure more resilient,” said Conger, who leads the Center for Climate and Security and serves as a senior U.S. adviser to the International Military Council on Climate and Security.

DARPA is exploring new solutions to mitigate the effects of a rising sea level and the subsequent flooding. The agency’s Reefense program is looking to use reef-mimicking ecosystems to reduce the impact.

Lori Adornato, the Reefense program manager, said the Army Corps of Engineers is interested in the project. “Because we have a number of bases on the coast, one of the ways that we can think about protecting them is taking advantage of how nature has protected coasts over time.”

The Navy will also need to adapt to new missions, as fresh sea routes spring up amid the melting of Arctic ice — pathways for which U.S. adversaries Russia and China might take advantage.

The service will also need to improve its weather forecasting capabilities. That effort is underway with the Office of Naval Research, which is collecting data in the Arctic about waves, sea ice, and atmospheric and water circulation.

But there’s a lack of data.

“We don’t have the pattern of operations in the Arctic to have built the type of expertise that the Navy has, in terms of conducting things like detailed weather forecasting” in other regions, said Joshua Tallis, research scientist at Virginia-based think tank CNA.

To operate more frequently in the Arctic, the Navy may need ice-hardened ships — an expensive capability. In Senate testimony in July, Vice Adm. Jim Kilby, deputy chief of naval operations for war-fighting requirements and capabilities, said the service would make future ship design decisions based on where “we think we are going to operate.”

Tallis noted that the investment in ice-hardened ships is a tough choice for an armed service that operates globally.

“Part of what the Navy has to think about as it is building the force that combatant commanders will use in the future: It is this question of, is that demand for a specialized, ice-hardened capability sufficient in order to warrant the expense for the relatively niche capability that they would purchase? And so far, at least from a Navy standpoint, the cost benefit hasn’t worked in that favor.”

In the future, soldiers sealed inside Strykers will learn the locations of their objective and enemy soldiers, watching on a screen the virtual pins dropped by other soldiers on mobile devices strapped to their chests. At this demonstration at Aberdeen Proving Ground last month, the Stryker teams entered the fight and traversed the battlefield to a mock Islamic State group weapons cache while their locations, in turn, pinged to soldiers and vehicles across the Stryker brigade.

“When you’re in a fight, things are always moving around. I thought it was very useful to have as a soldier because before you even drop that ramp you know what to expect,” said Sgt. Connor Smith, who took part in the demo.

This is the Army’s battlefield network of the future for Stryker brigades. No longer will soldiers have to scan the battlefield after the hatch falls to find the enemy. Soon, new tactical network tools will show soldiers inside a Stryker where enemy soldiers are positioned before they dismount, marked by other soldiers on the battlefield.

“You know that, ‘Hey I’m positioned this way, my enemy’s right there.’ So if I get out the Stryker, I’m going to aim that way when I get out,” said Col. Garth Winterle, project manager for tactical radios with the Army Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical. “Or the vehicle commander can position the vehicle so I’m not in the line of fire.”

For the last several years, the Army worked to outfit several infantry brigades with dismounted tactical network tools that increase situational awareness and enhance battlefield communication. With that effort nearing completion, the exercise at Aberdeen last month was a critical step in designing how the Army’s new integrated tactical network tools will fit onto Stryker platforms for its next iteration of tactical network tools, known as Capability Set ’23.

“What we see in the Strykers really is really cool because it does fundamentally change how our soldiers see the battlefield,” said Maj. Gen. Anthony Potts, head of Program Executive Office Soldier.

PEO C3T, the Army’s Network Cross-Functional Team and its research partner the C5ISR Center, which makes up the core of the service’s tactical network modernization located at APG, are now working to modify tactical network tools to fit into Stryker vehicles and set a common baseline for future capability sets. That way, the tactical network team doesn’t have to “redesign the whole thing” for each new capability set.

The group is working with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Vilseck, Germany, to integrate Capability Set ’21 tools onto Strykers and help improve the network design of Capability Set ’23, which undergoes critical design review in April next year.

The service is integrating several new hardware tools onto Strykers, including tactical servers and Wi-Fi capabilities, to improve soldiers’ situational awareness. The Army wants Stryker vehicles to connect to each other and dismounted soldiers both on-the-move and at-the-halt. The service plans out outfit 64 vehicles in the 2nd Cavalry Regiment with the CS21 gear and is running a communications exercise before the Stryker brigade goes to Saber Junction, a major United States Army Europe and Africa exercise.

Perhaps most importantly, company commanders’ vehicles will have a tool that integrates unclassified and classified data into a single common operating picture — a small box called a cross-domain solution, a critical new capability for commanders. Winterle said that commanders usually have a secret and unclassified common operating picture, but they have never been integrated.

“[By] actually putting the cross-domain solution on platform, you’re getting that integration right there on the platform for the first time so that the vehicle commander … can now see everything. Vehicle icons, he can see his dismounts,” Winterle said. “He’s got full visibility of where things are so if he has to call for fire or he has to make key decisions on maneuver, or link up to reload his dismounts, he can do that on one screen.”

Network modernization is a priority for the Army as it prepares for future conflicts against advanced adversaries including China and Russia, and it requested a $537 million increase over fiscal 2021 in its 2022 budget request. For FY21, the PEO C3T received $1.76 billion for modernization efforts.

Back inside the Stryker, the dismounted soldiers raiding the fake depot appeared as blue dots that moved in coordination with their location on the Joint Battle Command Platform, a command and control tool inside the vehicle. Those soldiers on the ground could mark enemies’ positions and their weapons cache on their devices, which transferred that information to the JBCP inside the Stryker. While soldiers are inside the Stryker, their own chest devices sync up and receive communications through a Wi-Fi bubble on board.

“With this you can tell where you’re at on the road, it’s directional,” said Sgt. Zach Sheets, one of the demonstrators. “It’s got everything you need to tell what’s going on.”

It’s all part of the Army’s goal of providing its soldiers and commanders with the most up-to-date information on the battlefield to quicken the decision-making process, a critical capability as the Pentagon talks about Joint All-Domain Command and Control, in which commanders and soldiers have the latest information on the battlefield.

When soldiers dismount, they switch their end user devices to transmit through their tactical radios so they remain connected to the tactical network to send out data. Sgt. Shane Smolskis, who participated in the demonstration, said that flipping between the radio connectivity and Stryker Wi-Fi is “pretty simple,” positive feedback for the Army network team focused on making tools easy for soldiers to use.

Another participant, Sgt. Breanna Bowie, added to that: “The newest private in the Army can pretty much use the system.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, who serves as a key gatekeeper for Pentagon nominees and policy, told Defense News that the job of undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment ― which involves the tricky balance of affordability, modernization and cohesion between systems ― is “a critical job.”

“You have to find the best possible candidate, not simply just filling the job,” said Reed, D-R.I. “Then that candidate has to be vetted, and it takes a while. So there’s a process of very, very rapidly identifying a top-notch candidate and then as fast as possible getting him vetted.

“That’s a key position, and without that position being filled you’re going to require a lot of people to have multiple duties and not just one responsibility.”

In another setback for the Pentagon, the official performing the duties of the job Brown was to take, Stacy Cummings, is expected to depart in the coming weeks, Politico reported Friday.

Pentagon spokeswoman Jessica Maxwell confirmed the report for Defense News, said the department had succession plans in place and that its acquisition work would go unhindered by Brown’s withdrawal. “The department’s work on acquisitions and focus on mission continues, guided by the expertise of the professionals in Acquisition and Sustainment,” she said in a statement.

Between the White House vetting a new nominee and the Senate’s crowded schedule, announcing and confirming a new candidate before Congress leaves town for its August recess could be a heavy lift. Reed’s panel will be occupied next week with its markup of the annual defense policy bill, but he said he could try to advance the nominee before August if the administration produces one that soon.

Brown said he withdrew from the running on July 13 because an ongoing investigation into allegations against him were expected to take up to a year to be resolved. The DoD inspector general is probing allegations that Brown violated federal hiring practices while serving as director of the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley outreach arm ― allegations he denies.

“Due to lengthy delays in proceeding with his nomination, Michael Brown has chosen to ask the President to withdraw his nomination to the Department of Defense,” White House deputy press secretary Chris Meagher told Defense News in a statement. “We agree that this is the best course and will be immediately moving to fill this critical role.”

The likely delay in filling the job comes at an inopportune time for President Joe Biden, who focused his Pentagon budget proposal on divesting legacy weapons systems in favor of research and development.

Reed is not the only one who wants the White House to move fast. “I hope they have somebody that they send over quickly. I know Mike, he’s very talented,” said Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who chairs the SASC Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support. “I was very discouraged when I heard that, and I hope they will send us somebody top-notch very fast.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has only one nominee offered for its acquisitions arm: Deborah Rosenblum, who was tapped for assistant secretary for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs. Vacant positions include the deputy undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, the assistant secretary for sustainment, the assistant secretary for acquisition, and the assistant secretary for industrial base policy.

Arnold Punaro, a former SASC staff director and the current board chair of the National Defense Industrial Association, suggested the administration could fast-track the process by redirecting another nominee or offering a one who has already been through the confirmation process. However, Punaro and other observers agree there is no obvious replacement for Brown as yet.

There were high hopes for Brown’s ability to reform the Defense Department’s purchasing practices to prioritize nontraditional companies offering innovative solutions, an area considered key in winning the military technology race with China. A tech sector veteran, Brown spent nearly three years as director of the Defense Innovation Unit, where he focused on connecting small, innovative companies with departmental components.

Experts say it will be a challenge for the White House to find a nominee like Brown. He had a unique understanding of government acquisition and the needs of cash-strapped startups offering transformational technologies, and how that translates to the department’s competition with China.

“There are so few people that get this,” said Bill Greenwalt, nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy. “There are so few people who have an understanding of the ability of Silicon Valley and small business innovation to radically change the Department of Defense. And Mike Brown was one of them.”

Former Rep. Mac Thornberry, who led acquisition reform efforts in Congress for years as House Armed Services Committee chair, felt much the same way.

“I think it’s a loss, really, for the country because of his background in industry, his knowledge of finance: what it takes for private companies to come up with financing, the investment to do business with the government,” Thornberry said. “I just thought that was a home run, and now it’s not.”

The next undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment will be charged with quickly developing cutting-edge systems and turning them into formal programs, especially if the Pentagon plans to retire legacy systems. It’s an area where the Pentagon has historically lagged, and it happens to be the specialty of the Defense Innovation Unit.

Thornberry said that, generally, the lack of confirmed nominees undermines the Biden administration’s goals of making tough and contentious decisions on the Pentagon’s investments.

“Any acting person in any capacity is going to be hesitant to make big decisions,” Thornberry said. “It will be hard to impossible to make significant decisions with the number of acting folks that they have.”

In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin obtained by Defense News, Brown said he was withdrawing because an inspector general investigation into hiring practices at DIU was expected to delay consideration of his nomination by up to a year.

”While I am confident the Office of the Inspector General will ultimately find no wrongdoing on my part, I know there are other qualified candidates who can focus on the urgent business of making our acquisition process faster and more cost-effective,” Brown said in the letter. “I must put the interests of the Department above my own enthusiasm for serving as Under Secretary for Acquisitions and Sustainment.”

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Austin respects Brown’s decision and thanked him “for his willingness to be nominated for this challenging position.” Austin “remains grateful for Mr. Brown’s continued service at the Defense Innovation Unit,” Kirby said.

News of Brown’s withdrawal was first reported by Inside Defense.

Numerous defense innovation experts expressed dismay over Brown pulling out as nominee. Because of his past career in the tech sector and work at DIU, many had high hopes for Brown’s ability to reform the department’s arcane acquisition practices that doesn’t suit small innovative, nontraditional contractors offering new technologies that primes don’t.

Chris Brose, former Senate Armed Services Committee staff director, said Brown had a “proven track record of rapid acquisition and fielding of advanced technologies” and called his withdrawal a huge setback.

“You need someone who understands what that ecosystem looks like, that understands what the cutting edge of advanced technology is and who’s developing it, what nontraditional defense companies and new entrants are going through in trying to begin and scale their work with the Department of Defense,” said Brose, now chief strategy officer at defense tech firm Anduril Industries. “He, better than anybody, understands all of that.”

As undersecretary of defense for acquisitions and sustainment, Brown would have overseen a budget of more than $100 billion for major defense programs — such as the F-35 fighter jet, aircraft carrier elevator and efforts to speed up software acquisitions. He would have been highly influential over defense industry matters and been responsible for maintaining America’s military edge.

Brown has led the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley outreach arm since 2018 and worked to connect small startups developing innovative technologies with Department of Defense components. Brown’s initial nomination was praised by observers, including several former senior DoD officials, because of his tech industry background and understanding of the challenges nontraditional contractors face working with the DoD.

“One of the exciting aspects of his nomination was the combination of a few different skill sets and knowledge bases that he would have brought to the role,” said Lindsey Sheppard, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Brown’s withdrawal is another setback for the president’s efforts to fill key roles at the Pentagon.

“Whenever you don’t have confirmed leadership in senior positions at the Department of Defense, you’re losing,” Brose said. “You don’t have people with the mandate and the legitimacy to take decisions and risky decisions to the fullest extent of the authorities of that office.”

Brown joined government in 2016 as a White House presidential innovation fellow after a long career in the tech sector capped by two years as CEO of cybersecurity software giant Symantec. As a fellow, he wrote a detailed report on the threat the Chinese government posed to the U.S. venture capital system.

Under Brown’s guidance, DIU has transitioned increasing amounts of projects to DoD components. In 2020, DIU transitioned 11 projects, up from four in 2018. One of DIU’s most significant achievements under Brown’s leadership was providing an alternative to Chinese-made small drones under a DIU project called Blue sUAS, which made trusted small drone options available to the whole federal government.

Bill Greenwalt, nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy, called the news “sad and depressing.”

“He had the potential, based on his background, to really bring in and leverage this massively innovative sector of the U.S. and international economy and then fold that into how we can create better capability against China,” Greenwalt said.

Arnold Punaro, a former staff director with the Senate Armed Services Committee and the National Defense Industrial Association board chairman, said he is disappointed to see Brown out of the running.

“The DOD acquisition system needs strong leadership to implement innovation, speed, and cost-effectiveness, and Mike was the perfect choice for the position,” Punaro said in a statement. “Mike’s strong leadership will continue to benefit DIU and the Department moving forward, and we are lucky to have him there.”

Speaking at the Defense Department AI Symposium, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks described the Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration Initiative, an effort that will deploy technical teams to combatant commands to prepare military networks for Joint All-Domain Command and Control, the Pentagon’s plan to quickly pass the best data from AI-backed systems to war fighters.

“Its goal is to rapidly advance data and AI-dependent concepts like Joint All-Domain Command Control,” Hicks said.

Though light on details, the initiative will rely on combatant commands’ experimentation events and exercises to test new artificial intelligence and data capabilities that could be critical to JADC2. Building the future war-fighting concept into reality will require top-tier artificial intelligence tools that can process data rapidly on a contested battlefield and speed up a commander’s decision-making.

“The AIDA initiative will generate foundational capabilities through a series of implementation experiments or exercises, each one purposefully building understanding through successive and incremental learning,” Hicks said. “Each exercise pushes the boundaries of the one before, building on the knowledge gained.”

The military plans to send “operational” data teams to the 11 combatant commands, Hicks said. These teams will provide the commands with expertise in cataloging, managing and automating data. According to Hicks, the teams will stay at a command until it can “leverage the data needed to create decision advantage.”

The initiative includes additional “flyaway” teams staffed by technical experts to assist combatant commands with integrating artificial intelligence to streamline and automate workflows. According to Hicks, the teams will build “real capabilities that can be evaluated in real operational environments.”

The information gathered by the teams and collected at the combatant command exercises will allow the department to update network infrastructure, remove policy barriers and ensure the “reliability and effectiveness of our global war-fighting capability,” she said.

“Through successive experiments, we seek to understand the obstacles and challenges that impair our current ability to rapidly scale AI across the department and the joint force,” Hicks said. “As we complete these episodic exercises and experiments, we intend to leave behind capability in our wake.”

The department will apply capabilities gained at one combatant command to other commands that face similar issues, she said.

“This will ultimately produce data and operational platforms designed for real-time sensor-data fusion, automated command and control tasking, and autonomous system integration. It will allow data to flow across both geographic and functional commands,” Hicks said.

Hicks’ announcement is significant given its emphasis on combatant commands. Much of the work on JADC2 so far has been driven by service projects, such as the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System.

The AI acceleration plan is a step toward achieving the DoD’s mission to link sensors and shooters on the battlefield. Most recently, the Pentagon announced that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin signed off on the Pentagon’s JADC2 strategy, though the document is classified.

At a separate event this week, Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall, the CIO/J6 and JADC2 lead for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon started an analysis to understand the technology gaps it needs to address to prepare for the battlefield of the future; however, its findings are classified.

“Despite all the capability that we have, there’s a pretty long list of things that we believe we need to improve upon and really fulfill,” Crall said.