WASHINGTON — The Army plans to see how its prototype for Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) architecture operates in the crushing heat of the Mojave Desert ahead of further contract awards.
“Two days ago, it was 106 degrees Fahrenheit out here. So that brings a whole new aspect to anything you do with electronics and communications,” Lt. Gen. Michael McCurry, commanding general of the Army Futures and Concepts Command, told Breaking Defense in an interview Monday regarding 4th Infantry Division’s upcoming participation at Project Convergence Capstone 6 (PCC6).
The experiment, which runs from July 20-29, serves as the culmination of a year-long series to build, scale and refine the NGC2 ecosystem with 4th ID.
NGC2 is one of the Army’s top modernization priorities, updating how units share and pass data across the battlefield. For the last year, 4th ID has been prototyping the architecture, rebuilding its network from the ground up.
Simultaneously, 25th Infantry Division has been prototyping NGC2 components. But unlike the 4th ID layer, the 25th ID has been outfitted with a modernized network baseline called C2 Fix. The separate tests will help the Army determine what mix of capabilities are needed for an architecture across the entire service, which has a combination of legacy and modernized kit.
