The Army’s EDGE 2023 exercise will zero in on needs for an Indo-Pacific fight. (US Army)
This story was updated on 5/2/23 at 2:05 pm ET with additional details from the Army.
AAAA 2023 — Nine nations and dozens of partners will join the US Army aviation community this month for the Experimental Demonstration Gateway Exercise, or EDGE 23, to focus on ways of operating and sharing information in the Indo-Pacific theater, according to a two-star general leading the charge.
More than 80 partners, including other Army offices, are expected to attend the exercise from May 1-18 at a western range to test out 120 technologies, Aviation Cross Functional Team chief Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen told reporters on April 27. The list of foreign participants this year includes Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and he said the event will be closely “nested” with Northern Edge, a joint training event that includes events in Fort Wainwright, Ala. and Joint Base Lewis–McChord, Wash.
“It’s getting after interoperability: Obviously, we don’t fight alone and it’s going to take a team of teams to fight,” he said. “We want to generate those teams, build those teams, and generate interoperability and integration.”
Although Rugen did not detail the various scenarios involved in this year’s EDGE 23 event, he said participants are tasked with examining ways of better operating in the vast distances of the Indo-Pacific region and learning to “control land” land there.
That means finding new ways to sustain the force, sorting through other challenges associated with contested logistics, to include testing autonomous resupply capabilities, and ways to shore up lodgment operations, added Maj. Gen. Michael McCurry, the commanding general of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Novosel, Ala. Lodgment refers to essentially establishing and holding a forward presence in hostile area.
The Army is also being tight-lipped about what specific weapons or capabilities may be tested out this year, but Rugen noted that the service will again use Air Launched Effects, essentially mini-drones carrying different payloads, and continue examining ways to operate uncrewed rotorcraft on the battlefield.
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The Netherlands, one of nine coalition partners there to participate, will also bring a 5th generation fighter aircraft — presumably one of the nation’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighters — to the exercise, Rugen said. He also noted that “classified” communication between the nine partner nations is a critical component of this year’s exercise.
“Message traffic in our call for fires is going to be very aggressive,” he added. “We’re hoping to get to hundreds, if not thousands, of iterations on machine-machine call to fire where in the past we have not been able to do that.”
This is the third time the Army has held an EDGE exercise designed, in part, as a risk-reduction event ahead of the service’s larger, multi-domain Project Convergence. Although the service will not hold its capstone Project Convergence demo series this calendar year, it is expected to return in early 2024.
