US Army to begin deploying DCGS-A beyond the battlefield

The US Army received full deployment approval on 14 December for its Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), enabling the service to provide the intelligence gathering and analysis tool to troops outside combat zones.

The acquisition decision is for the first increment of DCGS-Army, Major General Harold Greene, deputy for acquisition and systems management, said during a 20 December briefing at the Pentagon.

The army can now begin fielding the quick reaction capability variant of DCGS-A across the entire intelligence enterprise, he said. "[The decision] will allow us to standardise the training and the programme that we use across the army. That ADM (Acquisition Decision Memorandum) also allowed the army to continue development and testing for future improvements of DCGS-A."

DCGS-A is the army's intelligence enterprise system for tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination of intelligence, and is the intelligence component of the army's network modernisation strategy, Gen Greene said.

DCGS-A replaced nine separate legacy intelligence systems, he noted. "This is a change in methodology. Where in previous times we would have had one sensor and one ground station, we are now bringing the sensor processing, exploitation, dissemination, and tasking together into one system that forms an enterprise."