U.S. Army Expects Signal Reorganization Approvals by Year’s End

U.S. Army officials expect approval of a force design update by year’s end, possibly within 90 days, according to Lt. Gen. John Morrison, deputy chief of staff, G-6.

Gen. Morrison was the afternoon keynote speaker on the first day of the TechNet Augusta conference in Augusta, Georgia.

He said during his presentation that the service must “significantly relook [its] organizations” as it moves toward a centralized delivery of services under plans for a unified network, combining tactical, strategic and enterprise networks.

“It is not a bunch of brigade combat team architectures that we kludge together and call it a division architecture. We have to reorganize our divisional force structure,” he said. “We've got a signal FDU—force design update—that is out there to reestablish division single battalions. We are working through that with the Cyber Center of Excellence and the broader Army.”

Asked during a Q&A session for more information, Gen. Morrison added that the FDU is now at Department of the Army headquarters (HQDA) and could be approved in the coming months.

“Inside the tactical space, the signal FDU is up at HQDA. It's in its final staffing. We will be working our way through that over the next 60 to 90 days, and we anticipate getting the decision to move forward with that,” Gen. Morrison said.

He indicated the suggested timeline comes with caveats but that it could come “over the course of the next 90 days, certainly before the end of this year.”  

That said, he added, units are not waiting. “You're going to start seeing provisional units start standing up through the course of the fall and then the next year because commanders see the benefit of these pooled assets from a training and readiness perspective that will allow them to rapidly task organize based off of the division's mission—not trying to figure out what each of the BCTs [brigade combat teams] is doing with an asset and whether or not that fits the divisional scheme of maneuver. So, [it] could be a Texas two-step, and we'll learn a lot as these provisional units start to stand up.”

Fielding capabilities—technical or otherwise—learning lessons, adjusting and improving are the new Army model.

“The capabilities are not just tech. Matter of fact, I would submit to you, the tech is mildly interesting. The transforming contacts are new organizational designs, new capabilities, new integrated formations,” he added.

Organization changes at the strategic and operational levels are being worked on different timelines. “At the strategic and operational level, I would submit to you, it's ongoing,” Gen. Morrison said.

Gen. Morrison suggested that Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, Army Cyber Command commander, in her remarks later in the conference, might address the Army Global Cyber Center that will now be responsible for overseeing the “global look of a network” delivered to theaters, as well as the central delivery model the Army is rapidly implementing. “As that continues to mature—and it'll vary a little bit by capabilities—that organization, that reorganization, is going to happen over the course of time.”  

Gen. Morrison began his speech asking the audience to imagine a division conducting a 475-mile, joint, forced-entry, air assault mission with a “distributed command footprint” that covers the entire space. The unit could have a tactical command post of just four vehicles that can establish communications in minutes rather than hours or days. And a brigade commander could use commercial capabilities such as fifth-generation mobile communications and proliferated low Earth orbit satellite communications to access enterprise cloud capabilities such as 365 or the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command cloud initiative for intelligence. Voice over internet protocol might be another of the unit’s capabilities.

“Imagine this layered unified network under the overwatch of our cyber team secured so that it works. And then to top it off, imagine a call for fire being processed from a forward observer based off of intel they received through that layered unified network, and a shot being fired within three minutes, a live round being fired within three minutes— actually rounds. Imagine that world,” he said. “That was Saturday at the Joint Readiness Training Center.”

The demonstration took place with the 101st Airborne between Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and Fort Polk, Louisiana. “That was in a contested and congested environment, and it was a part of the unified network. It was a part of C2 Fix, and it was a unit in the dirt against a thinking adversary. And it was working,” Gen. Morrison reported, using the shorthand expression for Command and Control Fix, an effort to refurbish the service’s existing network architecture.

Gen. Morrison recalled a brigade sergeant major with the 101st, who said, “You know, Sir, I actually have to think when I come on site to do a site recon, where are we going to put the antenna fields, and how do we remote them away so we lower our signature? How do we displace our [tactical operations center] so much to the point that we had trouble finding it and even when we were on site with it?”

The general indicated that the entire exercise demonstrated effects-based operational capabilities and gave the Army a taste of what a unified network can do.

“I get asked sometimes, ‘What is the unified network?'” he said. “Hopefully, that was just a little bit of a description of what it is, and the promise of what bringing all three echelons together in a coherent operational architecture, the power that it will bring to our Army."  

He also quoted a brigade commander who said, “We just can never go back.”

He added that automation is one of the top capabilities the Army needs from industry. “It all comes down to automation so we can gain speed; we can see ourselves; and quite frankly, we can take some of that analytical load off of what our cyber defenders are trying to do,” he said, adding that automation will also help the service be more proactive instead of always being reactive.

And that automation will come largely from generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Integration is another major need. “We talk a lot about common operating pictures, you know, where a commander is able to see their battle space, see friendly forces, the enemy forces, see what is happening in that battle space. Well, if the network is truly going to be a weapons system—and I believe everybody in this room believes it is—then the folks that operate, maintain, secure and defend it and maneuver it, need that same level of visibility.”

“I think [AI is] going to be essential over time. We are not there now, though,” he said. “I will tell you as walking the [conference demonstration] floor, I've seen some pretty promising capabilities, and I think we all need to be on that adventure together.”

Although he uses the term “automation,” he explained, in reality, “it's automation that drives you toward that level of artificial intelligence that allows you to get predictive and proactive vice where we are today, which is far more reactive than we all want to be.”

Gen. Morrison, who indicated this is his last TechNet Augusta conference because he will be “getting off the stage” in January, offered his thanks to the audience but also laid down a bit of a challenge to adjust to the service’s evolution.

“Be very, very comfortable with change because everything I just described to you, if it's the same capability the Army's fielding in five years, this entire room—to include me—failed.”