The 75th Innovation Command (IC), based in Houston, Texas, employs reservist Soldiers who have been recruited from the civilian world because of their sought-after technical skills and expertise.

The 75th IC team also bring decades of combined military experience with countless deployments under their belts.

“We are here because we are engineers, we are scientists, we all have STEM degrees and backgrounds, so it’s easy for us to talk the talk with these developers and innovators,” explained Chief Warrant Officer 3 Steven Dixon, an innovation technician with the 75th IC.

“I can see where these technologies could be applied on the battlefield, because we have been there. All of us,” added Dixon, who has been deployed six times.

Lt. Col. Martin Plumlee, officer in charge for 75th IC from the Huntsville Innovation Detachment said, “That’s sort of the beauty and secret sauce of the 75th. We are looking for those people who have those unique skills and abilities who can help the Army when they are wearing this suit [Army uniform] and still help the Army when they are wearing a different suit.”

So, who better to provide Soldier feedback during the aviation-centric Experimentation Demonstration Gateway Event, better known as EDGE, that took place at Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) in late April through mid-May than the 75th IC?

The three-week event brought Army Futures Command’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Cross-Functional Team and industry and international partners to the Yuma desert to work through network connectivity, frequency communication and flying maneuvers. The event culminated with a live capabilities demonstration for senior leaders and members of Congress.

“Our job here is to integrate and to be embedded with FVL to support all levels of their mission,” Plumlee explained.

That meant boots on the ground at YPG for the duration of the exercise to assess the technology and provide feedback. The 75th IC Soldier feedback in some instances provided the missing link to get a system just right.

Capt. Eric McClure, an Innovation Officer with the 75th and UH-60 Blackhawk pilot by trade, said there were several moments with technology creators where the collaboration led them to think, “Oh, I never really thought about this” or “The feedback you just provided will help us go back and fix a software error or bug we saw, or potentially help improve a system to make it more user friendly.”

EDGE provided the unique ability to gather creators, engineers and software developers with Soldiers for their instant assessment and recommendations.

“Failure is a gift” is a term McClure said someone coined during EDGE. He went on to explain, “It’s a great learning moment, so they can take that back and improve their system. You can see there is care in the eyes of these industry partners to fix those problems, and some have been doing that rapidly on the fly. They have their engineers and their software coders on site. They experience a problem one day, they immediately go back and try to fix it.”

EDGE’s location in the hot Arizona desert made for a perfect training ground. Yuma Test Center at YPG provides unrestricted airspace to allow for air and ground testing.

“You can design something, but if you don’t know how it’s integrated, if the person who is putting in the equipment, or the crew members landing, don’t interact on true missions, or mock missions where they are actually flying the aircraft in the dust with sweaty hands using the equipment, it makes a huge difference,” explained Chief Warrant Officer 4 Gerrit Jenniskens, a tech scout with the 75th IC.

“You see where the failure points are here in a test experimental environment. So, when they get out in the desert or mountain or wherever they are going to be operational, those variable points are reduced. Let’s get it right in the experimental phase,” Jenniskens added.

And that’s ultimately the goal of EDGE — looking to see if the presented systems will be effective solutions and useful for the Army of the future.

“We want to win and bring all our men and women home,” remarked Plumlee.

By Ana Henderson

CAMP MAGSAYSAY, Philippines — As one of Army Futures Command’s first forays into in-theater persistent experimentation, a team of observers/assessors were in the Philippines looking at the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force’s capabilities in the Pacific.

This Joint Warfighting Assessment, or JWA, team observed the 1st MDTF’s concepts and capabilities during Balikatan 23, a Marine-led exercise. The JWA23 team is led by the U.S. Army Joint Modernization Command and includes experts from various capability development integration divisions. The assessment is meant to build on the lessons learned during past Joint Warfighting Assessments and Project Convergence capstone events. With persistent experimentation, regular assessments like this throughout each year will allow Army modernization and transformation efforts to maintain momentum and speed.

Brig. Gen. Bernard Harrington, commander of the 1st MDTF, underscored the significance of initiatives like JWA23 in shaping the future of the Army in the Indo-Pacific.

“JWA23 is an opportunity to get multiple teams together to figure out how we get the Joint force into position in the Indo-Pacific” Harrington said. “Over the last two years, [U.S. Army Pacific] has steadily increased investments in the first island chain, placing combat-credible forces on key terrain to build interoperability with key partners. JWA23 is one feedback mechanism to evaluate how we prevent conflict and prevail in competition.”

The MDTF is the newest formation in the Army and is at the forefront of Army experimentation. Many of the new capabilities the Army is looking to in the future would come from the MDTF. During JWA 23, the JMC-led team assessed the 1st MDTF’s ability to integrate with joint partners and allies, joint sensor-to-shooter efforts, joint networking and joint force protection. As part of preparing for future conflict, the MDTF is being asked to do things the Army has never done before.

Balikatan is the largest annual bilateral exercise conducted between the Philippines and the United States. This year’s exercise, which took place in late April, was the largest to date, with more than 17,600 participants. Balikatan advances combined military modernization and capability development efforts by providing realistic rehearsals of concept, as well as numerous subject matter expertise exchanges.

From the beginning, the build of the MDTF was designed to be a joint force enabler. Looking specifically at the Pacific, adversaries have spent the past 20 years designing a network to keep out the Army’s joint force partners, focusing on high-flying aircraft and large maritime vessels, said Lt. Col. Ben Blane of the 1st MDTF.

“When we talk about the Balikatan exercise, we do have this relationship with the partners here in the Philippines,” Blane said. “But we’re also bringing in our partners from the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Marines. We’re connected with our partners afloat in the Pacific and also in our main operations center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord who are helping us with some of these concepts. It’s that partnership, and then together, really building those capabilities forward in the Pacific. So, if we do rise to the point of conflict, we have some survivable positions here that can support the joint force.”

The Joint Modernization Command and its Joint Warfighting Assessments have been important to the MDTF’s experimentation and development from the start, Blane said. And as part of AFC’s persistent experimentation efforts, JWAs continue to be an integral part of developing the right capabilities with the right people for the future of competition and warfare.

“To take you all the way back to JWA19, the assessors saw the value in filling some of these gaps that we were talking about,” he said. “There was a quote in the final document that said the Army needs to immediately prioritize this formation and get into both PACOM and EUCOM as fast as possible. You saw the activation of the MDTF soon after.

“Bringing in this team here during JWA23, we refine these ideas, talk about these concepts, talk about the things we’re learning, and then get it through that other lens where we’re bringing in experts with the JMC team and all of the Army Modernization Enterprise,” Blane said. “We’re really honing in on what we’re doing here, why it’s important and then taking that refined message and then being able to push that back out to the rest of the force. That’s huge. And I’ll tell you what, the Soldiers are super excited about what they’re doing.”

MDTF experimentation is critical to getting the formations and capabilities of future warfare correct. Joint and Combined multidomain operations are key to the future, and the MDTF is at the cutting edge of that concept.

By Jonathan Koester