“The strike company is designed to be the lead echelon of the battalion, which combines manned and unmanned sensors in order to make contact with the enemy and to attrit enemy forces before they come in the range of our traditional infantry companies,” Col. Joshua Glonek told Breaking Defense.
“Maybe it didn't work the way we wanted to, but we have the capability of giving feedback to the Army, to development, to industry to try and make it work a little bit better,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Shaun Curry.
The network transport architecture for NGC2 could be a hybrid approach that combines high assurance communications with 5G, WiFi, and multi-orbit satellites.
PEO CS&CSS is retaining a separate ground autonomy competition designed to field self-driving PLS trucks.
The service awarded both companies a total of $22 million for each to produce eight prototypes for evaluation.
“It's a very draft requirement [with] a lot of work to do on how to refine it, but we have PLS systems – the larger tactical resupply [tucks] – and you have the S-MET and there's really a gap between the two,” said Kevin Mills.
The Army is pushing for companies to integrate lasers on JLTVs, while eyeing a future where ground robots don the directed energy weapons.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
For several years the company has been eyeing entry points into the US market and has also teamed up with Aundril for the S–MET Increment II competition.
"The baseline program, so far, [is] going well. It's a building block," Doug Bush, the head of Army acquisition, said. But for the next iteration, "What else can you do with that chassis? Weapons? Sensors?"
The second increment of the Army's Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport will likely include requirements for a platform that would provide a weapons system, a communications retransmission asset, extra batteries or a launch platform for small drones.
New technologies and organizations will give soldiers an edge, Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe said, but tanks and foot troops will still face brutal close combat.
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.