The U.S. Army can no longer count on the unfettered sanctuary of bases inside the United States to project power abroad because major adversaries like China and Russia are showing increasing willingness to threaten American forces in the homeland.
That was a key message that emanated from Army leaders at a recent roundtable discussion with reporters, during which officials cited the increased threat as a driving factor behind the urgency of the Pentagon’s current modernization push.
“During the Global War on Terror, we took a lot of things for granted because we could,” Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s acting chief of staff, said during the roundtable at the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference last week.
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“The way I think about sanctuary now, based off these sophisticated adversaries, is we don’t have sanctuary anywhere,” Gen. LaNeve said.
He went on to assert that U.S. Army development and integration of new technologies — especially new command and control communications systems — is critical to remaining ahead of what he described as the “pacing threat” currently being presented by China.
“If we’re going against a pacing threat, power projection will be contested,” said Gen. LaNeve, whose comments dovetailed with the messaging of a recently published U.S. Army strategy document that he oversaw. The strategy specifically calls out China, saying the U.S. needs to shift its approach to “project from our homeland all the way forward.”
The acting Army chief of staff told reporters that the service will continue to be a “a huge piece of the power projection platform,” but soldiers will now be engaged with adversaries before they even leave the U.S. homeland.
“That’s a completely new way to think,” Gen. LaNeve said.
A key aspect of the new thinking centers on staying connected and sharing data across the force, according to acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle, who also participated in the roundtable discussion.
“We like to talk about the devices, right? The edge,” said Mr. Telle. “The magic in the middle, as I say it, is Next Gen C2.”
He was specifically referring to the Army’s fast-evolving new AI-integrated communications platform known as Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2), which was championed by former Army Chief of Staff Randy George and former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.
Mr. Telle told reporters that the plan for the Army is to lead a Pentagon-wide effort to connect the different command systems of all the different services. “We’re investing a lot in Next Gen C2,” he said. “We believe in that magic in the middle.”
Gen. LaNeve described the NGC2 development push as his “number one modernization priority” in order to operate on a battlefield that has “changed.”
One major aspect of that change has been the introduction during recent years of autonomous weapons, many driven by AI.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently announced plans to establish an entirely new Autonomous Warfare Command within the Pentagon to more quickly bring artificial intelligence, uncrewed systems and modern computing power to the battlefield.
The four-star command, which is becoming known by military shorthand as AutoWarCom, could be at the center of a modernization push that connects all of the AI-enabled weapons of the future.
The model, according to Mr. Telle and Gen. LaNeve, is NGC2.
Gen. LaNeve’s recently published Army strategy, titled “How the Army Fights,” emphasizes how modern conflicts, specifically the Russia-Ukraine war, have shown that “the proliferation of sensors challenges a force’s ability to remain concealed.”
Ukrainian soldiers have had success in integrating new technology solutions with old methods — using encrypted signals to keep communications secure, while simultaneously relying on metal-lined Faraday bags to keep signals from revealing battlefield positions.
When it comes to addressing the “pacing threat” of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Gen. LaNeve’s Army strategy document says U.S. forces, along with allies and partners, must “organize, train, and equip…with the same institutional focus that the Cold War generations brought to the Soviet Army.”
That means being prepared for constantly being watched by a sophisticated enemy, capable of tracking the signals emanating from all of the new NGC2 equipment currently being developed by the U.S. military.
The Army’s existing Combat Capabilities Development Command, or DEVCOM as it’s known inside the Pentagon, has a Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center that’s trying to learn how to solve that challenge.
“You can’t just give up this amazing capability that we have for integration,” Maj. Andrew Durfee, a deputy at the center’s Research and Technology Integration Directorate, told Threat Status at The Washington Times in an interview.
Maj. Durfee and his colleagues are trying to address how to ensure that all of the new technologies the Army has can still be used when they are required to have a communications blackout.
“We need to prepare to be in those contested environments,” he said. “If I lose connectivity, I might have a degraded ability, but I still have the capability at the edge.”
Private defense contractors are trying to solve the problem.
The Colorado-based commercial intelligence firm Vantor has developed new ways to transmit information needed for targeting to the frontlines in Ukraine by allowing data to disconnect from the traditional need for satellite communications or even GPS.
The company has developed a 3D spatial intelligence platform called “Tensorglobe,” which is accurate enough to be used to verify targets.
A 3D reference of the globe allows for a “fifty-centimeter resolution” and has three-meter targeting accuracy, according to Will Cocos, Vantor’s executive vice president and general manager for U.S. government systems.
“We used to rely on GPS,” Mr. Cocos told Threat Status in a recent interview. “[GPS] is completely unavailable in Ukraine. Unavailable in the Middle East right now. So with that being gone, you have to have a way to navigate without GPS.”
Drones that lose signal can still navigate through space, from buildings and power lines to trees, by downloading the up-to-date version of the Vantor map and connecting it with a known point. “You don’t need to be connected to anything,” said Mr. Cocos. “So now you’re self-sufficient as long as you have some accurate base layer.”
Army leaders say new advanced-tech realities are already also at play on the U.S.-Mexico border, where American soldiers have become adept at intercepting drug cartel drones by interfering with or taking control of the drones’ command and control systems.
Mr. Telle told reporters that on a recent visit with soldiers conducting operations along the border, he saw “three cartel drones just that day” taken down.
The soldiers “all said ‘We are doing real things,’” Mr. Telle said of the Army’s use of new communications and drone warfare technologies.
“It’s building unit cohesion,” the acting Army secretary said. “It’s building our understanding. It’s making us more ready as a unit for the next challenge that we have to face.”
“The momentum is real,” Mr. Telle said of the Army’s continued modernization. The challenge, he added, is that “agility and standardization are competing against each other.”
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