FT. JOHNSON, LA -- Gen. Randy George, nearly a year into his job as the Army's chief of staff, is working to implement his strategy for modernizing the force, envisioning a process in which weapon system users, developers and testers work alongside soldiers who are training on the ground, and someone rewriting software code if equipment doesn't work.
“I think I've been very clear that we have a sense of urgency about doing this. And I always tell the formation we're urgent, but we're not frantic,” George said.
In February, the Army announced its “transformation in contact” initiative, in which soldiers in select formations test and provide feedback on technologies such as unmanned systems, counter unmanned systems, electronic warfare and network modernization.
The Army’s 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division along with the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division and 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division have been participating in a Transformation in Contact exercise. Reporters visiting the exercise last week as part of an Army-organized trip saw the 2/101 at the Joint Readiness Training Center transition from the “defend” portion of an exercise to the “attack” portion.
George, who spoke to reporters on a plane returning to Washington, said the Army shouldn’t be focused on buying a single system, but investing in many capabilities.
“What we don’t want is to buy something and then say we’re going to have it for the next 20 years,” he said. “We want to have the ability to buy UAS and buy the best thing that’s out on the market and do it quickly.”
The Army, George said, is focused on reviewing its requirements for systems being tested and rapidly making midcourse adjustments. The important question, he said, is whether the technology being tested is “something that we actually need.”
“I think we can still get better at making corrections at the point of need where you actually have a developer,” he said. “What we talk about is having user, developer and tester on the ground while we’re doing this. So that somebody’s there when you say, ‘This doesn’t work right. I need this.’ Somebody’s writing code for it.”
Responding to world events
A central aspect of transformation in contact is that Army leaders must prepare for potential real-world scenarios using lessons learned from ongoing conflicts.
Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, told reporters last week that in looking at the war in Ukraine with Russia, now more than two years old, “what you see is an artillery barrage that precedes any activity, and then it is a piecemeal integration of effects that move into the battlefield, which is much different from how we fight.”
“And we converge our effects, whether they are, you know, standard, conventional effects, or whether they are new multidomain effects, you know, space, cyber, [electronic warfare]. That is what makes us different. And so, when we look to modernize, we have to modernize the entire division,” he said.
Sylvia said the division is working on the ability to conduct large-scale, long-range air assaults. Prior to the training exercise at JRTC, the division conducted a long-range air assault from Ft. Campbell, KY, where they are based, to Ft. Johnson. It involved employing all division artillery, the majority of the division sustainment brigade and the entirety of the aviation brigade.
Multiple drone capabilities being tested
The Army has been testing UAS capabilities that include drones with artificial intelligence technology integrated onto small circuit boards.
Sylvia said the drones have information about what the adversary vehicles look like and can identify something as small as a wheel, a bumper or part of a windshield.
“In this case, they ran this over our opposing force’s motor pool,” he said, describing the training at JRTC. “They ingested what all of those vehicles look like, put it into that learning model. And so then, now, when they fly that UAS, they can identify a vehicle that is well camouflaged, even by just finding a small portion of that vehicle.”
Sylvia said all the AI-enabled drone capabilities the Army is testing as part of transformation in contact have humans in the loop.
During the training, soldiers also used Raspberry Pis, a type of single-board computer, which they attached to the bottom of a drone, then flew over various positions to identify electromagnetic signatures. One night during the defensive portion of the exercise, the strike brigade programmed two dozen drones as decoys, which appeared to the opposition force, code named Geromino, as a command post.
“And what we found at the beginning of Geronimo's attack during that defensive period was that they opened up with an artillery barrage. There was a large volume of fire that went from their artillery down into a corner of the training area where the strike brigade had no forces,” Sylvia said. “But they had put in a bunch of these decoy emitters and Geronimo thought he had found a battalion command post when, in fact, it was nothing but the decoy emitters.”
Sylvia acknowledged last week that there is work to be done when it comes to counter UAS.
The Army, he said, still “doesn’t have the density or the quality” of systems needed to give soldiers the optimal defensive capability.
Solving geographical challenges
During the exercise at JRTC, the Army has been experimenting with four of Anduril’s “Ghost” drones, which the company describes as an “expeditionary, quiet and modular” platform that delivers “intuitive autonomy at the tactical edge,” extended range and multipayload capacity. The drone is among the candidates that could replace the Raven system, which is being phased out as part of the service’s aviation rebalance, according to Sgt. Thomas Towery of the 1st Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment (Geronimo).
The forested environment of Louisiana is “one of the worst environments” for the Ghost drone due to the presence of leaves and pine needles, Towery told Inside Defense last week. The opposition force, he said, has had problems with extending the range of the Ghost’s radio link because radio waves lose signal strength when they pass through solid matter.
“Pine needles are full of water. So just like your microwave works by shooting [radio frequency] into your food to heat it up, it kind of works in a similar fashion for radio,” he said. “So, it’ll go through the pine and interact with all that water, and it’ll absolutely demolish the signal strength.”
Performance-wise, a Ghost battery gives soldiers about 60 minutes to 75 minutes of flight time per double set, Towery said.
“You can drop that down to one battery, but we found that not to be very effective, just because you don’t get enough flight time out of it to do anything,” he said.
Alex Miller, George’s chief science and technology adviser, said last week that the Ghost is an example of the type of drone the Army is considering for equipping the company level with UAS.
Miller said the Army is wrestling with is how to “harden,” or make changes to drones in a targeted way that doesn’t drive up the cost.
“So, what we're trying to figure out is, how do we drive that Blue List cost down into the hundreds of dollars instead of the tens of thousands of dollars? And then how do we create the demand signal,” he said, referring to a list of commercial drones vetted by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit. This approach, he emphasized, is part of a broader strategy.
“How do we inform not just the Army, but [the Office of the Secretary of Defense]? How do we make sure the Hill is tracking this? How do we tell the rest of the American public we are really moving out on this and here are the limitations,” he said.
The need to constantly evolve
Col. Matthew Hardman, commander of the operations group at JRTC, used the metaphor of a Navy carrier strike group to describe an Army maneuver unit equipped with the proper drone capabilities.
“We’re going to build all these packages to sense the enemy over the horizon, to isolate the enemy over the horizon,” he said. “And this is at the battalion level. I’m not talking . . . strategically or tactically.”
Forces will need to deceive the enemy, Hardman said, which could involve flying in different emitters to give off a different signature, and conduct suppression of enemy counter UAS systems, and ultimately get closer and destroy enemy formations “in one fell swoop.”
“When we’re closing with and destroying the enemy with direct fire, the outcome is a foregone conclusion,” he said. “Because they have been physically destroyed, and they have been psychologically devastated by the effects we’re having on the battlefield. And I don’t think that’s science fiction. I think that’s right around the corner if we embrace it.”
George said he thinks the UAS capabilities the Army has currently are better than they were even a year ago, although the service is still absorbing lessons from world events in Ukraine and Gaza. The key will be to constantly iterate, he said.
“So, when people use [phrases] to me, like ‘program of record,’ and saying that they're going to be something and we’re going to buy this for the whole . . . I think we have to look at how we buy things differently, and we're going to have to buy the best that's out there,” he said.