Today’s operational environments demand more from our warfighters than ever before. In Ukraine, we’ve seen how contested communications and GPS jamming can cripple even the most technologically advanced forces. Soldiers must operate on the move, maintain situational awareness and communicate across diverse networks amid chaos. To achieve a true level of decisive overmatch, communication systems must be as enduring as the Soldiers who rely on them.

Interoperable and survivable systems are critical. Without them, speed and maneuverability lose their value. Proven capabilities can utilize full bandwidth to create ultra-high throughput data transfer, enabling communication systems that excel in real-time connectivity for modern warfare. We can also use multi-mode products to their fullest extent and speed up acquisition with commercially available solutions. By leveraging software updates and innovative technologies, forces can field effective solutions more efficiently.

Most importantly, we must study the lessons being learned in today’s conflicts and compare them to what history has already taught us.

Learn from History: Speed is Now the By-Product of Robust Communications

In his seminal work, “On War,” Carl von Clausewitz introduced two concepts to describe the chaos and unpredictability that define combat, known as the “fog of war” and the “friction of war.” He emphasized that even the simplest things will become very difficult in war. Since ambiguity clouds decision-making, it is imperative to keep communications crisp and simple across every level of the chain of command.

Although the contours of conflict have changed radically, the fog of war still blankets battlefields today. When Clausewitz’s book was published almost 200 years ago, no strategist at that time could have predicted friction points like contested electromagnetic environments, hypersonic weapons, rapidly evolving unmanned threats, or theater-wide joint operations. For centuries, communication gear has been seen as support tool now, it has emerged as a true discriminator of warfighter effectiveness.

Clausewitz would consider reliable communication networks to be a gravitational force on today’s rapidly evolving battlefields, because these tools are necessary for commanders to make decisions and send actionable information. Resilient networks and systems that perform effectively under pressure, evolve in real time, and persist through electronic and kinetic attacks will help clear the fog of war. Conversely, adding unnecessary nodes increases complexity and confusion, contrary to his principles.

Field-Proven, Field-Ready

As the Army continues to Transform in Contact, we must develop solutions that are proven and ready. Industry must continue to provide the U.S. Army with unmatched capability, agility and adaptability to ensure warfighters stay tactically connected, even in the most challenging conditions.

• Commercial Speed: We applaud the Department of Defense’s desire to utilize more commercial technology, move to data layer management, and to rapidly test and field solutions. By leveraging these best practices, we accelerate development, reduce costs and bring new capabilities to the field at operational speed. The commercial model enhances innovation cycles while reducing lifecycle cost and training burden, enabling rapid deployment at scale, without sacrificing resilience.
• Next-Generation Communication Software: Modern communication systems must be secure, scalable and interoperable with allied forces, avoiding reliance on additional gateways or hardware. Newly fielded multipurpose hardware delivers ultra-high-throughput, self-forming and self-healing waveforms and rapid frequency agility for reliable connectivity in challenging environments. API-based interfaces enable real-time data routing and seamless interoperability across joint operations. While these systems have proven their battlefield effectiveness, new software updates can further enhance bandwidth and throughput capabilities.
• Enhanced Night Vision Capability: Integrating advanced night vision with AI-driven situational awareness, Enhanced Night Vision Goggle–Binocular (ENVG-B) empowers faster, smarter decision-making in any environment. Operating within a CJADC2, Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2), or Soldier-Borne Mission Command (SBMC) ecosystem, it transforms Soldiers into critical nodes, enabling real-time data sharing, point-to-point protection and seamless interoperability through a software-defined architecture.
• Open Systems Architecture: Designed for interoperability and scalability, the modular systems being fielded integrate easily into existing infrastructure. This future-proofs investments and supports rapid upgrades as threats evolve. Additionally, this architecture reduces complexity for operators while enabling faster deployment of new capabilities.

Adaptability & Interoperability: Critical for Global Connectivity

Modern battlefields span domains and geographies, featuring challenges like cyber warfare, electronic jamming and GPS spoofing. Communication systems must adapt to these complexities. Rigid systems fail; survival depends on versatility.

Secure, interoperable communications are essential across platforms, units and domains. The Army’s handheld, manpack and small form fit (HMS) radios and ENVG-B systems exemplify with software upgrades supporting resilience, adaptability and interoperability. With hundreds of thousands fielded, these systems double as tactical data routers for next-generation command and control.

Effective Communication Systems: The Weapon & The Shield

We are now in an era where communication systems act as both a weapon and a shield. As the Department of Defense continues its modernization journey through CJADC2, NGC2, SBMC and related initiatives, companies must be committed to delivering communication solutions with survivability and agility. Battle-tested communication systems offer unmatched spectrum agility, higher throughput and advanced gateway functionality with high assurance and SBU-E capabilities.

These tactical data router radios and sensors are interoperable and fiercely tested to endure in dynamic, contested environments. We ask military services test and exercise all products to the same extremes. The modernized products being fielded today provide deeper clarity, faster throughput and resiliency to make more effective decisions. The Army needs a Trusted Disruptor and partner that is proven and tested to continue to provide our forces with the best communication equipment that we know will burn through the fog of war and create a decisive tactical advantage.

The Defense Department’s quest to fulfill JADC2 — a strategy for connecting every sensor to every shooter across the services — has elevated the need for fast, secure and efficient data sharing between US forces and their allies. To achieve this vision, the Army has just released a new Digital Transformation Strategy establishing key objectives and action steps for delivering overmatch in joint multi-domain operations. In this episode of Removing Stovepipes, C4ISRNET will speak to Army leadership about how the new strategy will help transform the organization to be JADC2-ready between now and Army Waypoint 2028.

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Guest Speakers:

• Raj Iyer, Army Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of the Army
• Kevin Andryc, Sr. Scientist, Advanced Technology and Strategy, L3Harris Technologies

Special Operations Command is a military leader in trying to adopt artificial intelligence and machine learning for all aspects of warfare. With that commitment, operators have become the military’s top AI testers. We caught up with Chief Data Officer Thomas Kenney to talk about what challenges remain and what insights operators are learning that could help the military scale successes. Some SOCOM AI projects include streamlining logistics, harnessing big data for better-informed battlefield decisions, and even predicting when a tank or a jet needs maintenance to avoid failure at a critical moment.

Watch Webcast Recording:

Guest Speakers:

• Thomas Kenney, Chief Data Officer, United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM)
• Dr. Kevin Andryc, Sr. Scientist, Advanced Technology and Strategy, IRAD & Technology, L3Harris

At Project Convergence 2020, the Army conducted the most high-profile test of its beyond-line-of-sight targeting capability, taking data from on orbit sensors, transforming that into targeting data, and feeding it to the best fires system. During this episode of C4ISRNET’s “Removing Stovepipes” webcast series, we asked how the capability has improved ahead of this year’s event and look at the role of new position, navigation and timing technologies for this project.

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Guest Speakers:

• Willie Nelson, Director of the Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing (APNT) Cross-Functional Team (CFT), U.S. Army
• Derek Boyer, Business Development, Assured PNT Solutions, L3Harris