Project Convergence: Army Overhauling Networks for JADC2.

• Author: Heckmann, Laura

JOINT BASE MYERHENDERSON HALL, Virginia -- Unifying networks across all services is central to the Defense Department's joint all-domain command and control effort known as JADC2, and it's the driving force behind one of the Army's key modernization priorities.

Officially launched in 2020 with oversight from Army Futures Command, Project Convergence is the service's contribution to the JADC2 campaign, which seeks to seamlessly link sensors and shooters and speed up the decision time using artificial intelligence.

Since 2020, the Army has led yearly large-scale experiments to assess new JADC2-related technologies across the Joint Force. Its latest experiment in 2022 evaluated approximately 300 technologies and their ability to connect as a kill chain, including long-range fires, unmanned aerial systems, autonomous fighting vehicles and next-generation sensors.

As Project Convergence continues to drive modernization, one of the Army's key priorities is a network overhaul called "division as a unit of action" that seeks to simplify operations for fighting brigades by pushing data up the chain of command.

For the past 20 years, the Army has been fighting in a brigade-centric formation, said Maj. Gen. Jeth Rey, director of the Network Cross Functional Team at Army Futures Command.

"As we move to large-scale combat operations, it's going to require us to do a fundamental shift into the division as a unit of action," he said during a media event in May at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Arlington, Virginia.

Current operations in Ukraine have shown "we can't halt," Rey said. "We need to be on the move, and then removing complexity because those [brigade combat teams] are going to be actually in the fight. We have to move complexity up to the division level."

Maj. Gen. Tony Potts, program executive officer for Command, Control, Communications-Tactical, said: "When you're brigade centric, a lot of that capability resided organic to the brigade and that's how they could fight... . They were able to self-sustain."

The idea behind the "division as a unit of action" concept is to "lean out the brigades," he said. "That's where we start talking about the simplicity."

While the goal is simplicity, complexity is inevitable, Potts said. Capabilities are evaluated from "less to more capable, and 'less capable' is not necessarily a bad thing. If the brigade does not need that function, it's okay that we remove some of it and move it to a higher level."

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