US Army leveraging GenAI to test, mature NGC2

A US Army captain assigned to the Artificial Intelligence Integration Center conducts field testing at Fort Irwin, California. (US Army)

US Army officials are looking to leverage generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)-driven tools to develop digital replicas of the tactical combat networks, as a way to mature capabilities for the service's Next-Gen Command and Control (NGC2) programme.

The army-led GenAI-Enabled Tactical Network programme is viewed as a vehicle to potentially sharpen electronic warfare (EW) offensive and defensive capabilities, as well as drive improvements to data management and distribution within those networks, according to a US Department of Defense (DoD) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) solicitation.

The army initiative is designed to “create a realistic modeling and simulation environment” of the service's current and future tactical command-and-control (C2) battlefield networks, according to a May SBIR presolicitation notice. The official solicitation is expected to be released in July.

GenAI is an evolved variant of the traditional predictive AI technologies. Predictive AI is a technology that leans on statistical algorithms to analyse raw data through machine learning (ML) applications and then attempts to decipher patterns from the data and provide predictive outcomes for a given scenario.

GenAI uses similar statistical algorithms for data analysis but also incorporates neural network technologies, which are essentially ML applications where the dataflow through the application is designed to mimic synapses and functions of the human brain.

“GenAI would be used to create realistic tactical data streams to create a diverse set of scenarios representing current threat, blue force … logistics, command-and-control, and maneuver operations,” army officials said in the notice. Through experimentation, these GenAI-developed data streams and networks will allow service leaders to specifically develop and refine data management elements of its NGC2 programme.

NGC2 experimentation