On Point: Q&A With Brig. Gen. Jack (Shane) Taylor

What should we expect from your office in the coming months?
The biggest opportunity is that normalized architecture, that continuous delivery that is the follow-on to Next Gen C2 [Next Generation Command and Control]. We’re seeing tremendous improvement through artificial intelligence (AI) agents, automating some of our workflow processes, and in digital kill chains and how much faster we’re able to execute those. 

The ability to bring that forward to the rest of the Army is probably what you’ll see in the near term as we scale from two prototypes to next year, as we get into fiscal year 2027, I Corps and their enablers. As we get into FY 28, we’re targeting three divisions, or division equivalents, a year, so you’ll start seeing some real scale and speed.

How much has the Army accelerated its digital kill chain?
At 4ID [4th Infantry Division], prior to Next Gen C2, it was taking tens of minutes to emplace an M777 and execute a fire mission. With Next Gen C2, the system’s up and going before the team even has the gun in place. So, we’ve seen significant reduction from the amount of time they can execute those missions to where the network is not the limp pack. 

How does that affect the battlefield?
The practical effects of everything we’re talking about with Next Gen C2—access to the apps, the common data integration layer where everybody has access to all that same data depending on their mission set, the new tactical-edge compute, which gives us a lot of AI-enabled capability down to the edge, and then a lot of new transport capability, which is so much faster, and the resiliency associated with those multiple transport mechanisms. 

All that capability is nested in a single solution that’s much more intuitive, that’s AI-enabled to help with some of those manual processes—not decision-making. That’s still the commander’s role. 

We’re working to develop some of those metrics, things like a single COP [common operating picture]. We’ve been chasing a single COP for many, many years. The fact that now we have access to all the data within the data layer across war-fighting functions and the ability to toggle those on and off within a COP is going to be a huge enabler for a commander. They’re not having to do the mental gymnastics, the mind meld of the different screens that were involved from the war-fighting functions. 

What benefits are you seeing from your reorganization? 
We’re definitely seeing benefits from that shift to a portfolio of capabilities because it enables us not to be tied down to individual product solutions. 

And then, each war-fighting function had their own hardware, their own data collection, their own data sets. We had all that integration work to do after the fact. Now, they’re all pulling from the same data source. 

[At CPE C2IN] we’re going to continue to evolve as new technologies come online. As the data layer matures and we get more comfortable with that, you’re going to see a lot more focus on the AI layer. And as we bring more AI capabilities and tools and the AI version of the application marketplace to bear, you’ll see the organization ebb and flow based on user needs. 

It’s about what we’re doing today but also about positioning our organization to be flexible, so that as we need to make future pivots, they’re much easier, as opposed to very product-centric, siloed structures within the CPE.

Are you seeing uses for AI that you didn’t see a year or two ago?
There’s so many use cases, from the edge to internal to my organization, where there’s opportunities to leverage those tools to be more efficient and effective at how we deliver capabilities. 

You’ll definitely see it in the sustainment space, the ability to use AI to do significant data mining very fast. As we talk about having this common data layer, you’re reaching back to pretty large data sources, so leveraging AI to do queries is a huge enabler. 

We’re just scratching the surface on some of those capabilities. There’s tremendous opportunity across the board with AI.

Editor in Chief George I. Seffers edited this column for clarity and concision.