The aircraft, a modified Bombardier business jet outfitted with Northrop Grumman’s Battlefield Airborne Communications Node payload, or BACN, is lesser known than the Air Force’s stalwart fleet of bombers, fighters and cargo jets. Now, with U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, the E-11 has taken on a new behind-the-scenes role supporting the multinational mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Since March, the 430th Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron, the only unit in the Air Force to fly the aircraft, has supported more than 30 of the service’s airdrops in Gaza while operating out of an undisclosed location in U.S. Central Command. Pilots with the squadron who spoke with Air Force Times in an interview declined to discuss specific missions, but offered brief insights into their work in the region.

The Air Force has participated in 40 airdrops alongside coalition partners since March. Those missions were paused for more than a month as Israel’s invasion of the city of Rafah began in early May. The U.S. flew its most recent airdrop June 9.

“The BACN mission provides the Air Force, as well as joint and international partners, line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight interoperability, and that’s between dissimilar platforms with varying electronic capabilities,” 430th EECS Commander Lt. Col. R. Clayton “Vector” McCart said. “We capture, translate, combine and, ultimately, relay and extend legacy and modern comms and data links.”

That means flagging potential threats to the cargo aircraft ferrying shipments of food, any course corrections or other important details from mission planners and other troops around the area.

In a region as large as CENTCOM, airdrops can be derailed by a number of variables, from weather to other flight safety issues. The BACN aircraft, which carries two pilots, can quickly relay real-time changes coming from the Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar to mission partners on the front lines.

“We can monitor progress in a way that other platforms may not be able to see … as far as locations of the assets, the weather calls, etc. Weather plays a big factor in the airdrops off the coast of Gaza,” Capt. Britton “Rad” Ellington, an E-11A pilot who previously flew the service’s now-retired E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, aircraft, said.

With a range of more than 6,900 miles and a typical sortie time of around 10 hours, the aircraft can take over where satellite phones fail, and interpret transmissions between the military’s myriad communications systems that can’t otherwise connect. While AFCENT declined to say how many of the service’s seven E-11As are operating in theater, the 430th acts as a data lilypad for more than 1,000 hours every two weeks.

“We’re just not relegated to an airdrop. For instance, we could do that as a part of a larger expectation from CENTCOM leadership, and just move around the battlespace. … We’re not really tethered to any one location,” McCart said.

The E-11A is in the process of establishing its new home at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, within the 18th Airborne Command and Control Squadron. It’s one of four missions replacing JSTARS planes at Robins over the next several years; the squadron is expected to become fully operational by 2027.

The 430th EECS, which deploys out of the Middle East, and doubles as a training unit, will shift its training mission to Robins.

“Every sortie is a training sortie, in the sense that we learn every day that we fly,” McCart said.

At the TechNet Cyber conference presented by the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association International in Baltimore, leaders from the Pentagon discussed capabilities for public, private and hybrid networks. Officials acknowledged there’s a natural appetite for the most exclusive, secure networks in the national security space. And sometimes there is no wireless network infrastructure available in remote warfighting locations far from population centers.

So as the services determine appetite for private networks that offer more control over information sharing, the DoD is guiding them to use open radio access networks, or ORAN, said Juan Ramírez, the director of the 5G Cross-Functional Team at DoD.

“I think what industry wants to hear is there’s actually going to be requirements that come out that … necessitate an open RAN architecture,” he said at the conference. “So you’ll start to see those come out in the next couple of years, pending budgets.”

Certainly, private networks aren’t the only way to go. In fact, sometimes that’s not the best solution, said Lt. Col. Benjamin Pimentel, who leads the Camp Pendleton 5G experiment for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.

“Think about when we deploy in a theater,” he said. “A lot of countries that we go to or locations that we go to already have roads and bridges, and it’d be silly to then go and build my own private roads and my own private bridges separate and apart from that to get where I need to go. If those roads and bridges meet my transportation requirement, and they’re not going to fall under the weight of a ‘seven ton,’ we’re going to drive over it.”

But, somewhere like the first island chain, for example, may not have adequate coverage to put up sensors for long-range precision fires. In cases like those, he said, it would make more sense for units to bring private capabilities.

Given China’s rising aggression and U.S. efforts to deter it in the Taiwan Strait, what Pimentel described is the type of environment where current threats seem to colocate.

Regardless, to ensure there is connectivity wherever the need is, Ramirez said the department is looking at ORANs, which allow multiple vendors to operate as one network and provide more flexibility to scale.

ORAN is something the DoD has been pushing aggressively to explore as it simultaneously journeys toward more standard 5G adoption on military installations and “smart bases.”

Ramirez said the department is hopeful it will get additional support from Congress via future defense spending bills that will backup forthcoming requirements with dollars.

The Pentagon’s 2024 budget requested $143 billion in research, developing and testing of emerging technologies including 5G, but also artificial intelligence. Much of the spending in recent years has been for prototyping, and though the Office of the Secretary of Defense has the lion’s share, Ramirez said his office is offering direction to the services for them to budget for 5G.

“We think that pursuing ideas like [ORAN] advanced by the ORAN Alliance all the way to fully open-source code … provides the feature velocity the DoD needs and the ability to innovate quickly,” said Pimentel.

The Joint Fires Network is a U.S. Indo-Pacific Command initiative to improve coordination between commanders and network any sensor from any platform to feed targeting guidance to any weapon system. Valiant Shield is focused on integrating forces across domains with thousands of U.S. military personnel participating along with 200 ships, aircraft and ground vehicles.

The JFN demonstration during Valiant Shield “integrated technologies with third-party capabilities as part of an enterprise architecture,” Lockheed said in a June 20 statement.

“The exercise showcased the seamless integration of Lockheed Martin’s advanced command and control functions, employing Operational Planning to coordinate real-time decision-making across the theater of operations, with all the Services and operational domains,” it said. “This approach enhanced the agility and responsiveness of joint operations, using live real-time data, and producing joint tasking orders in an operationally relevant environment.”

Lockheed’s digital C2 system combines its fielded battle management, command and control software with other technologies from industry, the company notes.

To participate in Valiant Shield, the company said it made improvements to its C2 Planning Software that included “streamlining operator workflows by making machine interactions intuitive, enabling real-time monitoring, and facilitating seamless integration with other technologies.”

The company also trained operators on high-fidelity mission simulators prior to the exercise to learn how to use the C2 planning system.

Lockheed has now participated in seven exercises to continue to work on refining its digital C2 capabilities, it said.

For example, the company participated in Northern Edge, an experiment in the Indo-Pacific theater that demonstrated synchronization of technology that could feed into the Pentagon’s connect-everything-everywhere campaign called Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2.

The company plans to continue to bring technology to exercises and demonstrations in the Indo-Pacific to help build joint, networked capability.

In a December 2023 paper for Aether: A Journal of Strategic Airpower and Spacepower, former U.S. Space Command Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. John Shaw posited that the U.S. must build a dynamic and dominant force specifically for future military space operations.

“The paradigm of positional space operations must be replaced by a paradigm of dynamic space operations, where spaceborne combat forces are no longer static and predictable,” Shaw said in the paper.

While the paper lays out the importance of maneuver to dynamic space operations, or DSO, that concept alone isn’t sufficient to address demands of orbital warfare. The Space Force must take a more expansive view of DSO to include several other principles of warfare — starting with concentration of force and flexibility — in order to protect U.S. interests and achieve military objectives in space.

Putting a finer point on DSO

As our adversaries posture to make space the next battleground, agencies including the Space Force will play a pivotal role in defining how dynamic U.S. operations become. But what does DSO really mean for this scenario?

Put simply, DSO gives spacecraft the ability to move from a static role to one where they can act in real time to defeat any threats, assure combat effectiveness, or provide alerts about any anomalies outside of their regular mission.

This happens through three main capabilities:

Concentration — The ability to distribute or centralize military effects at the right place, at the right time, and in such a way as to achieve a decisive result. Given the expansiveness of space, DSO will not have the ability to mass forces of traditional battlespaces. As such DSO will require the ability to take inventory of those assets that might support a desired and decisive result, in turn orchestrating them in some form of concentration that drives the intended military objective. These could be assets near and far with multiple capabilities and effects coming together to achieve a clearly defined objective.

Flexibility — The capacity to adapt plans and operations to account for unforeseen circumstances, ensuring success in the face of “fog and friction”. DSO will need to consider multiple options and generate potential courses of action in near real time to properly preserve freedom of action in space. Given adversarial action in the space domain is likely to be the precursor to any peer conflict, being able to quickly switch gears from peace time cat-and-mouse operations to full orbital warfare will be necessary. The success of being able to do so will likely act as a key deterrent and inhibitor to escalating adversarial action.

Maneuver — Giving satellites the mobility within or between orbits to evade threats or position near objects the U.S. may want to observe more closely. As Shaw suggested, Guardians will need to master the manipulation of energy, orbit, and angular momentum over time to move space assets into superior and enabling positions. This includes but is not limited to avoiding threats or projecting ISR capability. It becomes a key enabler to the concentration as well as flexibility principles.

These capabilities required to apply these principles to operations are important across the space domain, from being able to better collect information during specific missions to outfoxing a potential enemy satellite or weapons system.

Transitioning to DSO

The move to a broader definition and implementation of DSO can only occur by continuing to mature application of the principles of warfare to space operations. Using broadscale on-orbit experimentation will create the greatest and most rapid progress.

Taking such a course would greatly enhance our expectations of orbital warfare and strengthen education, training and exercises as well as the development of our tactics, techniques and procedures. Additionally, it would have the added benefit of triggering other countries’ SOSI systems and unique characteristics of their on-orbit behavior.

Implementation of such a strategy will require a conscious decision by Space Force leadership towards greater integration of the space acquisitions and operations communities. Together these two groups must rapidly iterate on technologies, system designs, and operational deployments.

Initial focus should target the key underlying capabilities inherent to the theory, including:

— On-orbit propulsion;

— Autonomous mission management and command and control;

— Advanced processing at the edge;

— Hi-fidelity on-orbit threat characterization, identification, and warning; and

— Precision guidance and navigation.

A second tier of capabilities will become more important over time, including on-orbit servicing and maintenance, and autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations.

Technologies like AI/ML and advanced processing will ultimately play critical roles in solving some of these challenges outlined above but are not necessary to capability deployment today. The Space Force and other defense agencies are taking steps in this direction with advanced algorithms and human-machine interfaces, but partners in the private sector have been maturing these capabilities to make sure they are reliable, affordable, effective and ready for use now.

By moving out to implement within Space Force practices and leaning on industry innovation, the U.S. can begin to implement and iterate today on those with a wider view of DSO, incorporating the key principles of warfare to military space operations without having to wait a decade.

Josh Hartman is Chief Strategy and Growth Officer of LightRidge Solutions and is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space and Intelligence.

This story has been corrected remove an extraneous word from Lt. Gen. John Shaw’s title in the second paragraph.

Col. Josh Koslov, commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, has set an ambitious goal of updating EW systems within three hours, instead of days.

In a webcast hosted by C4ISRNET, Koslov said that three-hour goal — which he once referred to as a “moonshot” — is now within reach.

“We’re very close to that, if not exceeding, in most of the systems that we cover in the spectrum warfare wing,” Koslov said. He went on to say that more than half of the 70 EW systems his organization touches across the Air Force are either at or below the three-hour mark for updating.

But many of those systems have unique elements, he said, and the Air Force’s EW systems need to make more use of interoperability and open architecture standards to simplify the process for rapid data updates.

And Koslov said his wing will need enough resources to develop these data production methods that will allow the military to process this data on a large enough scale to work in war, and then transport the data back to the field.

Koslov and Brig. Gen. Ed Barker, the Army’s program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said in the webcast that in a future war against an advanced adversary, conditions on the battlefield, threats and targets will likely change so quickly that rapid updates to EW systems will be critical.

‘Data is the weapon’

“We have to be able to continue to add pressure to the adversary in a war in order to seize the advantage and achieve our objectives,” Koslov said. “Data is the weapon that will allow this to happen, and data processing is the way to do that.”

This will include combining data from all sources in the joint force, such as Army units on land, naval ships in the Pacific, or airborne platforms, he said, and then combing through that information to find new threats. The military must then use that data to develop a way to counter that new threat, and then get that new capability back to the field.

To achieve these kind of rapid data updates, Koslov said, the Air Force has revamped its tactics, techniques and procedures to have more of a “warfighting” focus.

When asked whether data updates could be made to systems remotely, or whether they would require something to be physically plugged in, Koslov said that would depend on the EW system. He said information would be transported to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, where the 350th is located, or other reprogramming centers where more people can process the data.

That will be especially useful during a major conflict against a nation such as China or North Korea, he said, in which joint forces would be spread out across the Pacific region.

“When you come out with a new capability, it’s not good if you just get it into one pocket,” Koslov said. “You have to be able to get it across the force. And so centralizing that is going to be the right way to do that as we move forward.”

The Air Force activated the 350th in 2021, and has since been building up its capabilities by adding more units. Earlier this year, the wing stood up two new electronic warfare squadrons — the 388th at Eglin and the 563rd at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas.

The 563rd is focused on building new EW software for operational units to respond to the threats they encounter in the field. And the 388th is focused on studying adversaries such as China to find ways to breach and thwart their digital capabilities.

Koslov said his wing is next focused on building out the 950th Spectrum Warfare Group at Robins, which is expected to be fully activated in 2027. The 950th will be in charge of assessing the EW systems in Air Force’s combat aircraft and improving EW capabilities.

“Everything has to be assessed from a platform perspective — does the platform do what we’ve asked it to do?” Koslov said. “But also our [tactics, techniques and procedures] have to be assessed. … How good are we at fighting and training in the [EW] spectrum?”

In the early days of the Defense Department’s pursuit of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2, the focus was on full interoperability among and within all of the military services. Bryan Clark, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, said the vision, while well-intentioned, was too broad in its scope.

“That was a little bit too ambitious for what the technology and our requirements and acquisition process can achieve,” he said June 5 at a virtual C4ISRNET Conference. “I think by building it from the bottom up to a larger aggregation, we’re going to see more success with JADC2 going forward.”

That bottom-up approach, Clark said, has meant that rather than try to connect everything, the department is addressing the most urgent operational problems through joint and service-level experimentation campaigns.

The military services each have their own versions of this. The Army calls its approach Project Convergence, the Navy Project Overmatch and the Air Force has the Advanced Battle Management System. The Chief Digital and AI Office also holds regular technology sprints through an event known as the Global Information Dominance Experiment, which bring together the services, combatant commands, Joint Staff and international partners to test out CJADC2 capabilities.

In February, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced the Defense Department had delivered a baseline CJADC2 capability that was validated through a GIDE event held late last year. The department hasn’t revealed specifics on what was fielded but Hicks said it was improving information-sharing in the field.

Mark Kitz, the Army’s program executive officer for command, control, communications-tactical, said during the conference that experiments like GIDE and Project Convergence have helped highlight the sensor-to-shooter connections that are highest priority for the services.

They’ve also led to a heightened focus on interoperability, which has yielded some tangible results, he said.

For example, during the most recent Project Convergence event that wrapped up in March, known as Capstone 4, the Army and the Navy directly integrated their kit and were able to bring together their data environments.

“And so, Project Convergence offered sort of this real opportunity for us to bring these capabilities together in a real operational way and . . . get through sort of the challenges of data interoperability,” Kitz said.

During the same exercise, the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management team, led by Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, brought a tool that allows the service to see how its air picture integrates with its sensing environment — a capability that could directly benefit the Army.

“The investments that Gen. Cropsey and his team were making were directly related to a gap in the Army’s architecture,” Kitz said.

Now in its fourth year, the service has increasingly turned to commercial solutions for enhancing resiliency. Thus far, Space Force has leveraged private sector contracts to proliferate and diversify its satellite constellations as part of an acquisitions strategy to exploit what it has and buy what it can.

While redundancy and diversification are crucial for resilience, commercial space systems are increasingly vulnerable to digital compromise. Cyberattacks have become the most cost-effective means for adversaries to disrupt satellites, ground stations, and user devices for accessing space-based networks. They are a constant, daily threat that spans competition and conflict. With the acquisition of new space based capabilities, including commercial elements, it is vital that these systems have adequate protections against cyber threats.

Now is the time for the Space Force to address system cybersecurity in commercial acquisitions.

Cyberattacks can target the ground, space, and user segments of space systems. One of the most impactful attacks—the hack of U.S. commercial company Viasat by Russia during its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine — exclusively targeted ground and user elements. Russian operators infiltrated Viasat administrators’ virtual private network (VPN) to access ground management networks and send out data-wiping software to customer modems through a fake update.

After rendering thousands of modems useless, the hackers overloaded Viasat servers with traffic to prevent customers from reconnecting to company services. This disrupted Ukrainian military communications relying on Viasat and caused blackouts for thousands of European customers.

Satellites themselves are also at risk. The Space Force’s recent Moonlighter challenge demonstrated that hacking a live, in-orbit satellite is no fantasy. A similar exercise sponsored by the European Space Agency reinforced the digital insecurity of satellites. More alarmingly, adversaries like China are building cyber capabilities to hijack satellites.

And the options for attackers are growing exponentially. An increasing reliance on commercial off-the-shelf software for internal satellite operation and the proliferation of private sector satellites provide greater incentives for hacking the private sector to access U.S. military data.

Given these challenges, the Space Force can address cybersecurity through acquisition by prioritizing the ground segment, incentivizing secure-by-design procurement, and regularly auditing supply chains for cyber hygiene. First, ground segments require greater emphasis. While “delivering ground before launch” is one of the service’s acquisition tenets, commercial efforts have focused on satellites to the detriment of ground systems.

The aggressive pursuit of launch capabilities without corresponding ground elements means the Space Force cannot fully exploit its new satellites. It also leaves ground systems more susceptible to cyber disruption.

For ground acquisitions, Space Force must design multiple smaller, focused contracts and enforce stricter deadlines leveraging all tools in the acquisitions tool kit. Major development failures and schedule delays only increase the exposure to cyber threats. For example, the Enterprise Ground Services program—meant to develop a unified ground system for military satellites—fell apart last year and was replaced with a smaller-scale plan for satellite command and control (C2).

The Advanced Tracking and Launch System Analysis System (ATLAS), which would replace Space Force’s 1980s-era computer systems for satellite C2, has also faced multiple delays over an inability to coordinate across disparate hardware and software elements. Similarly, the Next-Generation Operational Control Segment (OCX) for the Space Force’s newest Global Positioning System satellites is already seven years behind delivery.

Second, the Space Force’s new commercial acquisitions should prioritize systems that are “secure-by-design.” Cybersecurity standards are explicitly built into products from the outset, not as an afterthought. Secure-by-design should also extend through sustainment and maintenance to include deliberately planned security updates. Designing preemptive security features into product development will only enhance cyber threat-hunting initiatives like Space Force’s Digital Bloodhound program by elevating the baseline for security across systems.

The Space Force must incentivize secure-by-design through contract bonuses and prospects for follow-on work. Secure-by-design will require transparency into commercial satellite design and the software acquired to communicate within and across military space systems. Understandably, the Space Force has prioritized interoperability. Connecting the military’s disparate satellite networks makes for a more effective force. But greater communicability across networks also creates new attack vectors. Secure-by-design is critical to reduce vulnerabilities for new software solutions that must interact with legacy networks operating on outdated and insecure software.

Finally, the Space Force must have deep insight into the cyber risks to its supply chains. The complex and convoluted supply chains for space systems present multiple points of potential compromise for state-sponsored hackers to exploit. Early concerns about exposure to potential Chinese hacking did emerge with the 2014 Chinese acquisition of IBM’s personal computing business that underpinned OCX. The Russian hack of Viasat’s VPN service finally put upstream software vendor risks on the agenda. Despite numerous vulnerabilities, cybersecurity remains a glaring problem for the space industry and contractors have no common framework for network security, user authentication, systems management, and incident prevention and response.

Cybersecurity cannot stop after purchase. The 2020 SolarWinds compromise highlighted the need to regularly audit supply chains. Russian cyber operators infiltrated Fortune 500 companies and U.S. government agencies with existing SolarWinds contracts by corrupting a single software product upstream in supply chains.

The lesson for Space Force is that sustainment requires supply chain security verification at annual or semiannual intervals. The service must ensure that “safe” contractors remain safe over time and that products acquired from those companies are not critically dependent on components or vulnerable to disruptions from geopolitical adversaries.

Even as we get Guardians into orbit, Space Force remains a digital force reliant on satellite data. Prioritizing cybersecurity may result in higher initial costs and longer schedule times that clash with the Space Force’s drive to acquire commercial solutions cheaper and faster. Striking the right balance between these prerogatives will be essential for the implementing the service’s recently released commercial space strategy. But cyber protections are a necessary investment: paying more upfront reduces the costs of an adversarial comprise later through protection and mitigation. In a wartime setting, the last thing the U.S. wants is a collection of satellite networks that are easily crippled due to its own inaction.

Jason Blessing, Ph.D., is a Research Analyst at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. His research focuses on cybersecurity as well as transatlantic relations. All views are his own and do not represent the views of the Institute.

This shift in focus has caused the development and distribution of technologies that accelerate the demand for tools that drive a decision advantage that enables improved U.S. and partner nation decision making along the edge.

The rapid development of edge computing and network solutions continually forces the evolution of technology driven C2 and ISR systems that warfighters rely on in multi-domain operations.

These ongoing multi-domain operations currently allow the U.S. and our partner nations to establish integrated deterrence, while supporting interoperability within a mission partner environment.

It also allows joint and service planners to realize scalable decision-making advantages for agile basing and contested logistics missions while assuring communications in denied/degraded environments and enhancing intelligence collection capabilities.

So, What’s Next?

Three things are needed to take advantage of the first island chain edge focus:

1) Develop and sustain a persistent decision-making advantage;

2) achieve an accelerated, more accurate, data, information and intelligence decision cycle; and

3) training and experience.

Persistent Decision-Making Advantage

The U.S. and partner networks are performing in the future operating environment now. Our adversaries, through their Gray Zone warfare tactics or anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) deterrent capabilities, are expected to continue their bullying efforts.

The good news for the Joint Force and partner nations is represented by our precision and our persistence to achieve decision advantage effects outcomes along the first island chain edge.

In short, this signals an opportunity for the key decision makers to apply decision advantage tools more rapidly across the range of multi-domain operations (adversary electronic warfare, cyber, long-range missiles, and advanced air defense threats) to deter, or if deterrence fails, fight and win.

Three of the IndoPacific multi-domain missions that now rely on decision advantage include Precision Fires, Agile Basing and Contested Logistics.

For Fires, our tactical and joint command centers – using their decision-advantage – will be able to direct long-range precision fires including Extended Range Cannon Artillery; Precision Strike Missile; Strategic Long-Range Cannon; Long-Range Hypersonic Weapons; and the Navy’s Navy SM-6 and UGM-109 ground launched missiles.

For Agile Basing, command centers at their air force base locations and nodes along the first island chain edge will be able to conduct air superiority, support sea control missions, or air or fleet sustainment missions.

For Contested Logistics, sustainment planners using tactical, joint or expeditionary command center nodes and their logistic staff will be able to conduct logistics operations along the first island edge to pre-position or provide ammunition, fuel, food and medical supplies.

Finally, as we accelerate decisions in tactical and joint operational command centers, we in effect create new decision advantages all along the first island chain edge.

Decisions within the Combined, Joint All-Domain environment require the integration of a myriad of intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and communications capabilities on the edge of the operations area.

Edge integration must take place within the evolving agile tactical operations centers and communication nodes along the edge of the first island chain.

The U.S. Air Force Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, from these bases will need decision advantage tools to achieve an accelerated decision cycle to build tempo and sustain combat operations along the first island chain.

These adaptive bases directly support the operational maneuver of air forces, assured command and control and sustain combat sorties from the edge.

Training and Experience

Our people remain the critical factor when achieving decision advantage at the edge.

Tactical and Joint Operations Centers can now have internal multi-domain scenario driven exercises while partner exercises build experience and drive interoperability within the different formations along the edge.

An important training goal in these operations center scenarios is the experience garnered from the involvement of different organizations, services, and partner nations to achieve command and control objectives while working through interoperability challenges driven realistic multi-domain training and exercises.

Effective multi-domain operations training requires the management of multi-level classification enclaves requiring cross-domain screening for all source display and decision making.

With geographical focus, multi-domain training to achieve decision advantage combined with the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) software, has the potential to accelerate and add quality data, information and intelligence to decision makers.

In conclusion, the focus for U.S. and partner nations to operate in the multi-domain environment along the first island chain edge has created opportunities for decision makers to leverage this important geographical architecture.

Going forward, our Leaders must improve their decision advantage posture and accelerate decision making to achieve integrated deterrence and to counter gray zone tactics.

Lt. Gen. James Terry (Ret.) is senior vice president at Cubic Defense.

Acquisition experts with U.S. Special Operations Command laid out current projects here at the Special Operations Forces Week conference, including the Day and Night Heads Up Display.

“Think of it like Google Glass,” said Lt. Col. Tosh Lancaster, program executive officer for USSOCOM’s lethality programs.

The ballistic eyewear will likely feature augmented reality to feed information into the user’s view that could be used during the day. But it would also pair with existing night vision devices.

Lancaster said the command is interested in displaying only the data needed in the moment and noted that displays must be configurable.

“We want to give them the right information at the tactical edge, already analyzed so they can make quick decisions where they are,” the officer added.

The Army has been working on the Integrated Visual Augmentation System since 2019. The $22 billion program’s device is scheduled for final testing this year. It is a helmet-mounted device that combines thermal, night vision and augmented reality features.

But the ideal eyewear for special operations would be a much lighter, single item that combines eye protection with an information display.

Lancaster also discussed the digital projection close-quarters sight, a short-range weapons optic that would cut the need to mechanically boresight the optic with the weapon. If successful, the new optic would eliminate “thermal drift,” Lancaster said, which is a technical problem where temperature can cause a holographic weapon sight’s point of aim to shift off target by as much as a foot.

Also on the eyewear front, Adam Fields, the program officer for protection and integration with USSOCOM, asked industry for the “magic lens” that would solve many vision device problems for operators. The preferred lens would offer ballistic and laser protection as well as transition from clear for indoors or nighttime use to tinted for daytime use.

That way, Fields said, “I don’t have people with a big bag full of lenses going: ‘Hold on, I got to switch my lens out to the smoke lens because I’m going outside.’ ”

Top leaders in weapons training and marksmanship shared a series of technologies that the service is experimenting with that would give Marines more accurate and realistic ways to practice shooting while also instantly gathering data on how they’re performing and how to improve.

Col. Howard Hall, chief of staff for training and education command, said that a 2018 Operational Analysis Directorate study showed that Marines in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan only had a 30% chance of making a lethal hit on a target if the target or Marine was moving, if there were multiple targets or if the target was at an unknown distance.

Hall told the audience at the Modern Day Marine Expo that study helped drive changes to the annual rifle qualification in 2021 ― the first major overhaul in a century.

The changes included switching the order of fire from starting at the 100-yard line and moving back to the 500-yard line to the reverse, starting farther out and moving closer in, as a Marine would do in combat.

The qualification also added shorter range, quick drill fires at 25 yards, added moving targets and the use of barricades, among other changes.

The new tech that Marines are experimenting with aims to tighten those shot groups and speed up Marine shooting to make it more lethal. Much of that is coming in the form of making more training options off the range in weapons drills and simulators. Other efforts include more accurate data collection and real-time feedback for shooters to adjust their technique.

The package of tools includes the Mantis X10 and Unit 4 equipment that can be inserted into an M4 or M27 and allow users to practice dry fire, use a laser and feel recoil without using live rounds.

These provide corrections to shooting techniques the Marines never got from the “snap-in” barrel.

A snap-in barrel is a barrel, typically an empty 55-gallon oil drum or similar sized item that is painted white and then painted with small versions of the target shapes used on the rifle range. Those smaller shapes simulate the size of the target like what a shooter would see on the range but at a shorter distance.

Marines then dry fire their rifles on those targets, practicing breath and trigger control.

“This is a digital snap-in barrel, and it provides you feedback,” said Col. Greg Jones, commander of weapons training battalion.

The Mantis system is being experimented with the Marine Corps recruit depot shooting ranges at Parris Island, South Carolina, and Edson Range, Camp Pendleton, California.

The joint marksmanship assessment package uses either a smartphone or tablet, with software application, an acoustics measuring device and smartwatch to monitor movement.

It measures shooting in the short-range portion of the annual rifle qualification that goes from the 25 yards in. The joint marksmanship assessment package can gather up to a company’s worth of data in under four hours and develop plans to improve marksmanship based off the results.

The Corps is currently looking at a radar-based system that also would measure shooting from the 500-yard to 100-yard line for the rifle qualification. If both are adopted, it would fully digitize rife qualification.

In September 2023, the Marine Corps awarded an $11.3 million contract for the advanced small arms lethality trainer to Valiant Global Defense Services, Inc, subcontractor Conflict Kinetics owns the technology. The simulation system adds more scenarios and capabilities to the long-running indoor simulated marksmanship trainer.

The advanced small arms lethality trainer will be fielded to all major installations such as Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Camp Pendleton, California; Quantico, Virginia and Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California.

Correction: This article has been updated to include the correct date of the advanced small arms lethality trainer contract award and the name of the company that received that contract.