While they made no mention of it, the officers\u2019 comments also come amid the Iran war, now in its sixth month, which has tested the U.S. military\u2019s ability to manage its<\/a> electronic signature<\/a> at a much smaller scale than that playing out in Eastern Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even before Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, senior leaders had warned that the American military was behind<\/a> in the electromagnetic spectrum.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, and over the course of nearly a year, the Army has worked to develop its Next Generation Command and Control network, or NGC2, a burgeoning ecosystem of hardware and software the service says can securely transfer data across a future contested battlefield so commanders can make faster, better decisions against a sophisticated enemy.<\/p>\n The signal officers relayed what such a future might look like.<\/p>\n They described the network of sensors and drones hunting for dug-in Ukrainian command posts and tactical-level units that are constantly needing more bandwidth than common commercial transports can typically offer.\u00a0<\/p>\n The proliferation of drones down to lower-level units and the abundance of sensors has Ukrainian soldiers producing more than 600 terabytes of data every day, Ansell Jr. said, which puts a heavy demand on the network and requires them to rely on AI to analyze heaps of information human analysts simply cannot assess quickly enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n They echoed concerns from senior Army officials about bygone eras of comparatively untouched medical evacuations, the difficulties infantry and armored units will face trying to move across a drone-saturated battlefield, and the need for industry to quickly develop capabilities that can connect across commercial-forward and legacy systems alike.<\/p>\n But the junior officers also offered finer details to several of those conversations, acknowledging that while military culture and innovation typically comes from the top, \u201cit is very, very wise\u201d for leaders to hear from soldiers getting hands-on experience at the bottom, Turner said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maneuver, logistics and most other tactical missions are now predicated on intense spectrum awareness and the modern battlefield is ripe with all-seeing eyes that can spot exposed cables from space. So, the Army\u2019s signal corps needs to adapt, in-part by burying their equipment, dispersing quickly and being hyper-aware of every way their unit\u2019s signature can be seen.<\/p>\n \u201cAs communicators, every electromagnetic signature produced by our equipment, every cable laid on the ground, every antenna, and even the heat from our generators carries the risk for detection and subsequent targeting by adversary forces within a matter of mere minutes,\u201d Ansell Jr. said. \u201cGiven the sensor-rich environment, signal soldiers have to be some of the most tactically proficient soldiers on the battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n Both officers pointed to a mix of equipment and updated training as areas for improvement, however.<\/p>\n Having served in mostly Expeditionary Signal Battalions, Ansell Jr. said \u201ca lot of times the soldiers who arrive are coming having learned systems that have been deprecated for a long time, and I think we\u2019re all well aware of what that pain looks like.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Turner said current training validation for signal units doesn\u2019t adequately consider the scope of the modern EW space, arguing that it could be reformed to better test soldiers\u2019 ability to quickly displace, make networks function in degraded environments and deploy contingencies across different kinds of transport.<\/p>\n Instead of waiting for a rotation to one of the service\u2019s training centers, \u201cwe\u2019re leaving a lot on the table for the majority of where soldiers are working at, which is in the garrison environment, and that\u2019s where we can really nail down those principles,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n Expensive, clunky and unexpendable equipment poses risks to modern signal operators, according to officers. Systems requiring extensive tear-down time \u201cis simply a liability and unrealistic\u201d in an environment where targeting happens in as little as a few minutes, Ansell Jr. said.<\/p>\n During a recent test of the Army\u2019s NGC2 prototype, soldiers reported displacing their command post nodes much faster than GWOT-era \u201cTOC Mahals\u201d offered, but even then disassembly could take 30 minutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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