The Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture, or JCWA, was established in 2019 and has been slowly taking shape. The aim is to consolidate and standardize Cyber Command’s big-data tools that help forces share information and plan missions. The command previously relied on tools, personnel and infrastructure from the National Security Agency.

“I would say it’s moving forward, we are getting momentum,” Nguyen said. The command, through congressionally approved defense policy, has been able to establish a program executive office for the JCWA, for one.

The command and the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Acquisition & Sustainment office is working to stand up the PEO, he said, and in 2023, the command obtained system engineering and integration authority over the JCWA.

“What that means is we now have the authority to define the interoperability standards between the different components to help better drive better integration and better interoperability between different systems,” Nguyen said.

The JCWA is currently made up of six components: A persistent cyber training environment and the Joint Common Access Platform (JCAP), which are both run by the Army; a Unified Platform to take in, analyze and pass data, and Joint Cyber Command and Control, both under Air Force purview; and portfolios of sensors and tools, managed by Cyber Command.

Next up, as part of the establishment of the PEO JCWA, the command is working to get more acquisition authority over the program management shops that belong to the services, according to Nguyen.

This would mean the command would be able to approve programs of record as well as acquisition and contracting strategies, he explained. “That will give us a much more holistic ability to move everybody forward singularly.”

Additionally, the command has been able to conduct analysis and gain understanding of the different components of the architecture and a better understanding of the capabilities that exist within JCWA. Through that analysis, several initiatives were born to reduce redundancies, Nguyen said.

For example, he said, the programs of record all have their own software factory where software development is conducted. The command is now working to combine some software factories as a result.

“By reducing software factories, one, there’ll be some cost efficiencies,” Nguyen said, “but more importantly if you think of SolarWinds, SolarWinds was an attack on the software factory, so this will ensure we have a much better ability to defend our supply chain and so on from a software development environment perspective.”

The SolarWinds was a cyberattack in 2019 that led to data breaches for at least 200 organizations worldwide. The attackers, believed to be backed by the Russian government, exploited software or credentials at Microsoft, SolarWinds and VMware.

In another effort to reduce redundancy, the command is looking to combine or develop a singular platform to host applications.

The platform would be government furnished equipment that the command would give to all program shops “and say, ‘Hey, this is a common platform, Kubernetes environment, that we’re going to define and you will just deliver your application as containers or as virtual machines onto this common platform,” Nguyen said.

Kubernetes is an automated workload and services management platform that works within a container system. It was originally developed by Google.

The platform, “allows more efficiencies in the applications and then also, importantly, with this common platform we’re able to deploy it in different environments. We can deploy it within the cloud, we can deploy it on an edge processing or our [joint cyber] hunt kit and so on with a common platform,” he said, “and then the variances will be based on the application sets that were delivered on top of that.”

This setting was markedly different from Moscow’s displays at recent defense fairs, where the regime’s state-owned companies came practically empty-handed and kept a relatively low profile.

Banking on the event to market its full range of weapons, including those used in the brutal invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s outdoor setup placed helicopters and air-to-air guided missiles at center stage.

One prominent presence was the KA-52E combat helicopter, of which at least 58 units have reportedly been destroyed or damaged by Ukrainians, according to the Dutch open-source intelligence website Oryx. As part of the Russian helicopter stand, the X-69 precision strike cruise missile, designed to be employed by the Su-57 fifth-generation fighter, was shown for the first time internationally, according to the manufacturer.

A total of five Russian agencies exhibited here, including Almaz-Antey with mockups of its Viking surface-to-air missiles, Rostec with the small-scale Pantsir-S1M self-propelled, anti-aircraft missile system, Roscosmos marketing the Federal Space Program Khrunichev Center, and Rosoboronexport.

Where’s Rosoboronexport’s Argument-2?

Rosoboronexport had planned to unveil its own spin on an anti-drone gun at the airshow. Dubbed the Argument-2, the company markets the weapon as capable of destroying the wildly effective first-person-view (FPV) drones used by Ukrainian forces on the front lines. The drones are named after their modus operandi of a simple, forward-looking video feed that allow operators to fly explosive payloads near targets for detonation.

But as of Tuesday, the new system was nowhere to be seen at the Rosoboronexport stand. Asked about the absence, a company representative at the show declined to comment.

Experts have placed the number of FPV-type drones flying in Ukraine “in the many thousands per month,” Sam Bendett, research analyst at the U.S.-based Center for Naval Analyses, told Defense News.

Ukrainian forces have reportedly used the weapons in the heavy fighting around Avdiivka, a battle that has inflicted the heaviest casualties on Russian invaders in 2023, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defense.

“I think the value for Russia publicizing here is to promote and demonstrate sustainability and self-sufficiency, that it can produce technology like this on its own as the war drags on, whether that capability is accurate or not,” Matt McCrann, chief executive of DroneShield, an Australia-based competitor in the counter-drone market, said.

Throughout the Ukraine war, the United Arab Emirates has walked a fine line by choosing to remain largely neutral, maintaining close ties to Russia while also providing humanitarian aid to Kyiv.

Last March, Emirati presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said in a statement on social media that the Gulf country “believes that taking sides would only lead to more violence” and that the government prioritizes encouraging “all parties to resort to diplomatic action.”

Drones helping artillery locate targets.

A battlefield so flooded with sensors that it’s impossible to stay hidden for long.

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine and Russia are locked in daily heavy artillery battles. The U.S. and its partners and allies have sent a wide variety of artillery weapons, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, and millions of rounds of ammunition to counter Russia’s firepower.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has credited HIMARS with making a “huge difference” in liberating critical areas of the country under Russian occupation.

The war in Ukraine has also made clear artillery is still critical, said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who previously led U.S. Army Europe. A layered approach to artillery in formations — meaning using towed or mobile systems with different types of munitions that achieve different ranges — is required, he said.

The new artillery strategy will determine both the existing capability and capacity while also detailing future needs, Rainey said. The strategy will also consider new technology to enhance conventional fires on the battlefield, such as advances in propellant allowing midrange cannons to shoot as far as longer-range systems.

The document will also address the role of robotics, such as autoloaders for munitions. The Army has experimented with technology like autoloaders, which take a burden off of artillery operators and improve firing rates.

Army acquisition chief Doug Bush told Defense News in September the fires strategy will drive key decisions within his portfolio, including how to pursue the Extended Range Cannon Artillery requirement.

“The strategy is looking at a combination of factors,” Bush said. “Where do you need towed artillery versus perhaps tracked versus perhaps wheeled? What can you do with munitions to get range versus building new cannons?”

The Army is developing an Extended Range Cannon Artillery system that uses a service-built 58-caliber gun tube mounted on the chassis of a BAE Systems-made Paladin Integrated Management howitzer.

But the service in 2020 also assessed available 155mm mobile howitzers seeking improvements in range, rate of fire, and mobility over the artillery systems used within Stryker brigade combat teams. The Army evaluated at least four foreign companies’ offerings in a shoot-off, but ultimately did not move forward with a new capability.

A new artillery strategy could renew the push for rapid procurement of a field-proven 155mm mobile howitzer.

“Some of our NATO allies have some really good kit [and] capability that we’re interested in,” Rainey noted.

Bush recently visited 18th Airborne Corps, which consist of very light units and they “still value towed artillery, because they can move it around with helicopters. … But other parts of the Army might want something different,” he said.

Taking a new look at an off-the-shelf mobile howitzer is a part of the strategy’s purview, he noted. “From an acquisition standpoint, if I get a requirement, we’ve got some options to go pretty fast, if it is acceptable, for example, to take a foreign system rather than building a new one from scratch,” Bush said.

“The broad lesson is that you still need artillery. It is the No. 1 killer on the battlefield, still in this conflict [in Ukraine],” he said.

A fresh take on tanks

The Army in September, after watching loitering munitions destroy tanks in Ukraine and observing both sides struggle to maneuver tanks on the battlefield, opted to scrap its upgrade plan for the M1 Abrams tank and instead pursue a new variant: the M1E3.

The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in a statement at the time. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protection for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”

The Abrams tank “with all its hood ornaments is already too heavy,” Hodges told Defense News. “Getting heavier is not the answer.”

Part of the new effort will take weight off the tank, increasing its mobility and sustainability. Today, if a tank breaks or gets hit in combat, it requires two recovery vehicles to pull it out of the fight. Reducing the tank’s weight would help, Dean said.

The new design is also intended to integrate active protection capability, including protection from attacks to the roof from loitering munitions and drones.

Dean told Defense News in a recent interview the new design will consider how to reduce the supply chain and make it easier to maintain the vehicle while on the battlefield. It will also improve reliability.

Ukraine has begun to receive its 31 M1 Abrams tanks from the U.S. military, and the U.S. Army is likely to soon learn more about how the tank holds up against the Russians, Dean said.

The tank “remains very, very relevant,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at a recent think tank event. “The claims that we’re seeing the end of the value of tanks were a little bit premature.”

According to reports, in the first two months of the war, Russia lost well over 400 tanks, spurring a debate over whether tanks were too cumbersome for the modern battlefield.

Wormuth acknowledged munitions that can hit the top of armored vehicles and tanks remain a challenge and said “we are working to develop capabilities to defend against that.”

Dean, noting he could not discuss details, said the Army is working extensively on how to protect tanks and combat vehicles from loitering munitions. Loitering munitions regularly destroy tanks and combat vehicles on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.

“We have got to get better at top-attack inbound defeat,” Rainey said at the AUSA Warfighter Summit in July. “It’s solvable.”

While the service has long focused on protecting combat vehicles from the side and has integrated Rafael’s Trophy active protection system on the M1 Abrams tank, the protection has decreased the tank’s mobility. The same problem applies to the APS kits, which provide protection from anti-tank weapons. The service has yet to field APS on either the Stryker combat vehicle or the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.

Moving in minutes

The Army has long set up elaborate command posts on the battlefield, putting up climate-controlled tents equipped with generators. The service has said these tactical operations centers must get smaller, both in size and in electromagnetic signature.

But the war in Ukraine has put more pressure on the service to act.

“Gone are the days where you’re setting up a whole [tactical operations center]. And two hours is too much time,” George said. “We need to be able to move in minutes. We need to be able to command and control on the move.”

He noted the war has also proven the need for open architecture that is mobile and can be rapidly updated.

The Army “has to fix what it has and then pivot to what the C2 architecture is going to be in the future,” George added.

He told Defense News he was struck recently by watching a unit going through a large exercise and only relying on five Stryker combat vehicles and 35 people to provide command-and-control for the entire brigade combat team. The Strykers, equipped with commercial, off-the-shelf laptops, tablets and radios, never had to be together physically as they were connected through a network operating as one node, George said.

Wormuth also recalled a similar visit to a training rotation at Fort Johnson where a unit had designed its TOC to be “much more mobile” and could break down and set up within two hours.

“That’s definitely something that we’re going to be spending time on, developing the capabilities to do that,” she said.

Ukraine has taught the Army it is going to have to learn how to “fight under constant observation of commercially available space, the electromagnetic spectrum, social media,” Rainey said. “We are going to have to figure out how to fight when the enemy’s going to know where we are or prevent him; so concealment, deception, camouflage, constantly good tactics.”

Wormuth also noted the Army must be able to operate even if command posts are cut off due to failed signals or enemy jamming. The Army is experimenting in this type of environment regularly during events like Project Convergence, a large exercise focused on developing a modernized force.

Remote logistics

The U.S. quickly faced a challenge early in the war in Ukraine. It was sending complex equipment to Ukraine — but without the experienced maintainers to fix it.

From a parking lot in Poland just months after the war began, the U.S. Army started answering the call for help, offering remote maintenance support. Army maintainers virtually demonstrated maintenance to their Ukrainian counterparts.

Since then, the Army has expanded its use of remote maintenance support to nearly every platform sent to Ukraine, including those of allies and partners. The service built a facility and a repair parts warehouse in Poland and began offering expertise through text message, prerecorded video or live stream.

This effort is now providing a road map for future logistics. George said at a recent event Ukraine is changing how the service “is looking at things on the logistics side,” citing virtual maintenance and 3D printing of parts.

The Army now weighing how to apply tele-maintenance to the Indo-Pacific region, George told Defense News.

Additionally, the Army, watching Ukraine, is preparing for what it calls contested logistics, meaning its logistical efforts would be under constant attack.

“There’s been a theoretical recognition that logistics were going to be contested, but the Ukraine conflict, I think, has really made that very real to all of us,” Wormuth said at a recent event.

The Army has established a new cross-functional team for contested logistics under Army Futures Command focused on this challenge.

Preparing for the future

The war in Ukraine has, according to service leaders, validated many of the Army’s modernization priorities, laid out a little over five years ago.

The Army was already focused on countering unmanned aircraft systems because of operations in the Middle East and had set up a joint office at the Pentagon. The use of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine has accelerated efforts to come up with a layered approach to defeating the systems, both big and small.

“The scale of [drones on the battlefield] has been sort of astonishing and it has reinvigorated this focus on the lowest sort of short-range air defenses that would be needed for that,” Stacie Pettyjohn, a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security, told Defense News.

And not all technology used to defeat drones needs to be exquisite. While the Army is working on directed-energy and high power microwave capabilities to defend against drone swarms, “you’re seeing that the Ukrainians need things like a smart shooter, a sight that they can put on a rifle that allows them to use [artificial intelligence]. It’s still pretty advanced, but it’s this tech that improves existing guns and allow them to take out some of the smallest quadcopters,” Pettyjohn said.

Formations may also need to change, Wormuth said. The Army “need[s] to probably have organic air defense with our fires in our maneuver units so that they can protect against drones.”

Air and missile defense for threats beyond drones is also receiving new attention. Russia has shown it will use multimillion dollar rockets and missiles against apartment buildings, Hodges said.

Wormuth said the Army is beginning to grow the air and missile defense force. The service is in the process of building an additional Patriot battalion, but it’s not dedicated to a specific combatant command yet. The Army also wants to grow additional Indirect Fire Protection Capability units as well, she noted.

These new units will be able to defend against cruise missiles and drones along with rockets, artillery and mortars at fixed and semi-fixed sites. The Army is still developing prototypes.

Having the ability to see or sense as much as possible at all times, is another way the Army is changing because of Ukraine. “There’s a lot of interest in drones to be able to provide us with [persistent sensing],” Wormuth told Defense News. “But we’re going to have a layered approach to that … we’re investing in the [High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System], fixed-wing platform. … I think you’ll see aerostats.”

Drawing from Ukraine, “there’s no shortage of observations that we should think about,” Rainey said. And the Army is “committed to turning those observations genuinely into lessons learned.”

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, along with other government space organizations, is developing what it calls a Lunar Reference Frame — essentially, the mapping infrastructure that would support a GPS-like capability for the moon.

“Today, we’re working NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command to develop a lunar geodetic system that will guide future visitors around the moon’s surface as accurately and safely as GPS does on Earth,” NGA Director Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth said May 22 at the GEOINT Conference in St. Louis.

The Lunar Reference Frame will serve a similar function as the World Geodetic System, which undergirds navigation capabilities like GPS, providing precise and accurate latitude, longitude and timing data. NGA maintains that system, dubbed WGS 84.

The push to develop a navigation framework comes as the U.S. and other countries — along with commercial companies — plan missions and envision a future economy on the moon.

The U.S. Department of Defense has also made a notable shift in its posture toward operations around the moon, from viewing potential threats in deep space as a far-off future to anticipating that those concerns could present much sooner. In recent years, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have initiated a number of programs that explore satellite sensing and logistics in a lunar environment.

Whitworth noted that while the current focus is on a moon-based system, he expects NGA will eventually develop similar navigation frames for other planets and said the agency is building its workforce to support those future needs.

“We’re working on growing and training the next generation of scientists and bringing geodesy and geomatics skill sets back to the U.S.,” he said.

James Griffith, director of the agency’s Source and Operations Management Directorate, told reporters during a May 22 briefing that while the NGA serves as the lead DoD agency for the Lunar Reference Frame, many other organizations have a stake in the effort.

“NGA brings expertise to the community in how to build a reference frame and in the geodetic sciences. Our role is to lead in that regard,” he said. “There are others out there within the department and elsewhere who say, ‘This is what we need the reference frame to do.’”

While the agency has crafted a navigation framework before, the challenge in developing the lunar system will be understanding how to collect data in the moon environment.

“The moon as a planetary object operates very differently than the Earth,” he said. “We know the types of data we need, but we don’t necessarily know how to collect it in that type of an environment because our tools aren’t built for that. And so, we have a lot of exploratory work to do between now and actually developing a final reference frame.”

As for a timeline for delivering the capability, Griffith said NGA is working with its partners to prioritize their needs and set a schedule. He noted that the agency is partnered particularly close with NASA, which plans to launch a crewed test flight to the moon in 2024 in preparation for its next moon mission, Artemis III, in 2025.

“I can’t promise you that we will be in a place where we’re completing the work in time for the Artemis launch,” he said. “We are certainly working very closely with NASA on what the solution looks like and how it will be rolled out.”

The Terrestrial Layer System-Echelons Above Brigade, or TLS-EAB, is envisioned for use by larger Army formations including divisions and corps with thousands upon thousands of troops and extensive firepower. The system is considered a key part of the service’s “deep-sensing” playbook, or the ability to identify, monitor, target and strike opponents from farther distances and with greater precision.

Mark Kitz, the leader of the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, or PEO IEW&S, said the Army is “evolving our acquisition approach,” specifically for flexibility. Targets and topography in the Indo-Pacific, where the U.S. could come to blows with China, and Europe, where it could clash with Russia, are radically different, for example.

“I don’t think we’re going to get to production with an EAB capability,” Kitz said during the virtual C4ISRNET Conference on April 26. “I think we’re going to build tailored solutions to the combatant commands we’re going to operate in, and iterate that over and over and over again, so that we build, sort of, a specific solution for the different type of contested and congested environments we’ll see.”

The TLS-EAB might not be well-suited for the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles in the Indo-Pacific, Kitz said. In Europe, where far less island-hopping is required, the heavy-duty trucks might be the best option.

“INDOPACOM looks very different than Africa, looks very different than anywhere,” he said. “We can’t just cookie cutter a solution that’s going to marginally work in that combatant command.”

Defense officials consider China and Russia to be serious national security threats. Both have invested in military science and technology, and are thought capable of hampering or withstanding U.S. military communications, targeting and attacks.

The Army in August inked separate deals with Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics Mission Systems for TLS-EAB concepts and demonstrations. The first phase was valued at $15 million over 11 months. Lockheed and General Dynamics are among the top five largest defense contractors in the world when ranked by revenue, according to Defense News analysis.

Kitz said much opportunity exists for both industry and government partnership as TLS-EAB is roughed out and realized.

“We’re keeping an open mind,” he said, “and trying to come up with the right acquisition approach that gets the right capability for our commanders in each of those combatant commands.”

WASHINGTON — Prototype work on combined electronic warfare, cyber and signals intelligence technology to be mounted into U.S. Army armored vehicles will happen this year, with eyes set on operational demonstrations in 2024, according a service official.

The so-called Terrestrial Layer System, or TLS, is designed to provide soldiers greater situational awareness on the battlefield, as well as improved means to disrupt or dismantle enemy networks.

Mark Kitz, who leads the Army’s Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, or PEO IEW&S, said the service “has some very positive momentum” regarding TLS, including the “prototyping for our armored brigades, on an AMPV platform.”

The AMPV, or Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, will replace the Vietnam War-era M113 troop carrier, hundreds of which have been committed to Ukraine to help push back the Russian invasion. The AMPV shares common components with the Army fleet, including howitzers, a factor service officials say will ease logistics and maintenance demands.

“It’s really critical for the Army, and the joint services, to understand that future operating environment that we’re going to fight in,” Kitz said at the 22nd annual C4ISRNET Conference, held virtually April 26. “And being able to see far, being able to sense deep and being able to understand that environment is really critical to the future of how we want to operate.”

Modern warfare often revolves around control of the electromagnetic spectrum, relied upon for weapons guidance, communication with friendly forces and the identification of foes in the field. The Army is attempting to beef up its electronic warfare arsenal for large-scale battles with the likes of China or Russia after years of focusing on counterterrorism and the Middle East.

“I think our investments now are very different, as we get into a multi-domain operations fight,” Kitz said of electronic warfare spending. “In order to deliver an effect, you’ve got to be able to do it much more surgically.”

PEO IEW&S earlier this month tapped Lockheed Martin to fit TLS tech onto Stryker combat vehicles, made by General Dynamics, and kicked off “the system design” for mounting into AMPVs, made by BAE Systems.

The deal is valued at $73 million. Lockheed is the world’s largest defense contractor when ranked by revenue, according to Defense News analysis.

The green light for the Maryland-based company to work on AMPV integration follows both a previous TLS award in July, worth about $59 million, and delivery of the AMPV to the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart in Georgia.