Army official to industry: Don’t ‘bring negativity’ about NGC2 to Congress

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — A senior Army official had a warning for companies who would criticize the service’s “clean sheet” approach to Next Generation Command and Control: It’s better not to complain to lawmakers.

“Try to avoid being negative about competitors or current solutions. We have seen vendors bring negativity in the interactions on Capitol Hill. I’ll be clear for the Army, it’s a non-starter,” Michael Obadal, under secretary of the Army, said at the service’s Technical Exchange Meeting Friday. “If you have concerns about acquisition strategy, the development, technology that’s being used, bring it to us. Bring it to this team. Mixed messages on the Hill create doubt and then that doubt slows the solutions that we can field to our soldiers. Engaging in productive, regular and transparent discussions with us allows this team to move forward effectively.”

Obadal said that Congress believes in the importance of the NGC2 effort, the Army’s number one modernization initiative, and that it’s on the Army to keep lawmakers informed in “real time” about the interwoven complexities of the initiative.

Lawmakers have “very hard questions for us and very legitimate questions for us. We work really diligently to be transparent and consistent in our message with them,” Obadal told the audience.

NGC2 “brings us the most critical element in warfare, which is information dominance. Our systems will not deliver their full combat value if they can’t share data, see the fight and enable decisions at the right speed,” he explained. “Information about enemy forces, the environment and our own forces, real time data, combined with select artificial intelligence, it’s going to drive faster decision points, better informed decisions, and it’s providing the ability to control assets and formations in real time.”

Obadal’s warning about industry’s interactions with lawmakers come as the Pentagon in general has sought to more tightly control the services’ own interactions on the Hill. In October, Breaking Defense first reported on a memo that mandated that all Defense Department personnel would have to coordinate interactions with Congress through the DoD’s central legislative affairs office.

“This requires coordination and alignment of Department messaging when engaging with Congress to ensure consistency and support for the Department’s priorities to re-establish deterrence, rebuild our military, and revive the warrior ethos,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his deputy, Steve Feinberg, wrote in the memo.

Changes For The Faster, A ‘Balance’ With The Hill

The Army has sought to upend many traditional practices as it has built out NGC2, from consolidating budget line items to asking industry to self-team ahead of contract awards — a departure in that companies are teaming earlier and can partner across different team leads while providing the Army to have insight and discussions with each team member.

Budget line item consolidation was meant to streamline capabilities and portfolios for the C2 effort. Obadal said the plan is to reduce budget line items by about 30 percent from fiscal 2025 to FY26 with an additional 35 percent consolidation going into FY27 combined with growing the NGC2 top line by 20 percent.

“That combination tells you two things: We’re simplifying how we fund the effort, and we’re increasing the resources behind it,” he said.

For example, there were several line items for similar capabilities such as tactical radios, mounted radios, satellite communications, satellite communications transport. Obadal said Congress has to view NGC2 and all the associated capabilities as parts of a whole.

“We don’t want Congress to see it as here’s a transport capability. Over here, completely unrelated, is a software capability. And over here is a network capability,” he said. “We need them to see it as the entirety of Next Gen C2 and if you decrement one side, you might as well decrement all of it, because we’re not going to be able to advance it.”

While each of those capabilities are important, if they’re locked in their own line item, they have their own life, Alex Miller, chief technology officer to the chief of staff, said.

“And if they have their own life, then we don’t actually have flexibility, because there’s a constituency that really wants tactical radios to maintain the status quo,” he said in an interview.

The Army has also sought to have the ability to rapidly reprogram funds inside select portfolios where technology moves faster than the pace of the traditional system.

Obadal said the Army must also communicate that innovation cycle with Congress early to prevent legislation that might hinder those efforts.

“Because of the rapid nature of the innovation cycle, we do have to make reprogramming changes in the year of execution that incurs on us a responsibility to communicate with them in real time when that’s happening. Or a better case is when we see it potentially happening, we tell them early. And that’s a two way street because as we make changes and we reprogram inside of a more flexible structure, we communicate with them,” he said. “What we can’t do is have legislation that comes down that puts the brakes on it. There is a level of trust between the Hill and the Army that has to be there that will continue to communicate and maintain that they maintain their visibility as the statutory oversight of how we spend our money.”

Obadal was careful not to characterize the Army’s communications with Congress as resistance. The service’s sweeping transformation initiative, unveiled May 2024, was met with some consternation on the Hill as members asked to see the Army’s “homework.”

“There’s a balance there because we want to communicate with them early, but we won’t have all of that fully fleshed out,” he said. “I talked to them about this, and I say, like, we will bring you things really early, but don’t turn around and tell us that we need a fully flesh strategy.”