Army finalizing network plan in next few months

The Army is changing its approach to network modernization, creating a unified network for both enterprise and tactical purposes, and within the next few months will finalize its "network plan," according to the service's deputy chief of staff (G-6).

Speaking at a virtual AFCEA TechNet August event April 20, Lt. Gen. John Morrison said the Army over the next couple of years will experience a significant shift to network modernization as the service focuses on breaking down an “artificial divide” between enterprise and tactical networks.

“Our enterprise modernization efforts have been focused on modernizing our installations. . . . Meanwhile, our tactical modernization efforts have been really focused on the brigade combat team level,” Morrison said. “We need to move that echelon up and get back to where our corps and our divisions are units of maneuver. We need to seamlessly link that back to the enterprise to where our investments at the enterprise are supporting what we would want our tactical formations to be doing in a multidomain fight.”

The Army Requirements Oversight Council recently just approved a requirements document that “lays out that unifying requirement to operate, maintain and defend the network end to end,” Morrison added. The service is also finalizing its network plan over the next couple of months, which will give it the framework to start moving the unified network forward.

“The reason we want to have it done over the next couple of months is we really want to start making the shift towards this construct in” fiscal year 2022, he said. “We don’t want this to be something where we push it several years out before we start making the turn, especially based off of previous Army decisions.”