JOINT BASE McGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. — The Army completed its annual capstone Network Modernization Experiment, or NetModX, after 10 weeks of experimentation spanning 62 technologies.

Across three locations in New Jersey and Maryland, the Army’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center and partner organizations experimented with a broad spectrum of network-related capabilities in an operationally realistic, threat-informed environment. The C5ISR Center is an element of the Combat Capabilities Development Command.

Because of the Army network’s vast reach, NetModX 23 encompassed 17 focus areas and five modernization priorities: Future Vertical Lift, Long-Range Precision Fires, Network, Next Generation Combat Vehicle and Soldier Lethality.

“As an enabler for multiple Army technologies, the network and its performance in multiple dimensions becomes critical to overall mission success,” said Joe Saldiveri, NetModX 23 lead strategic planner.

NetModX 23 featured projects leveraging a live, virtual and constructive environment that enables experimentation in a distributed manner. LVC assists the NetModX project management team to provide an all-inclusive service by combining real and simulated capabilities to simulate technologies under experimentation. The LVC environment fills in gaps where real systems are too expensive or too scarce to include.

“The C5ISR Center offers a critical service to the C5ISR community by providing the environments and engineering expertise to experiment and inform complex C5ISR integration decisions. LVC is a tool that enables us to answer more complex questions with greater fidelity and more efficiency. We continue to invest and work with our partners in building out our LVC capabilities — to ensure we are pushing the state-of-the-art boundaries,” said Seth Spoenlein, assistant director for system integration.

As part of NetModX, the C5ISR Center routinely partners with a fellow Army R&D organization, DEVCOM Analysis Center, to create an operationally relevant experimentation environment. This environment is vital to experimentation as it exposes emerging technologies to realistic threats for greater learning.

In addition to the work of Army scientists and engineers, the event included Soldier participation from the 75th Innovation Command, 101st Airborne Division and Fires Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate. This allows real-time Soldier feedback on how emergent technologies affect mission threads and performance within those threads.

“Soldier participation in NetModX allows technology developers to gain insights into how Soldiers would interact with the technology in an operational setting, providing valuable lessons across a broad range of technology readiness levels,” said Noah Weston, chief of C5ISR Center’s Strategic Experimentation Office.

New this year was Innovation Week, a two-week extension of NetModX with a focus on sensor-to-shooter experimentation, augmented by LVC capabilities to enhance realism. The intent was to explore high-risk, high-reward experimentation, to push the boundaries of learning by exercising a common sensor-to-shooter mission thread using uncommon technologies and network architectures.

Innovation Week resulted in a series of firsts for the Army network enterprise, providing a basis of knowledge for further exploration, Weston said.

“Leveraging initiatives such as Innovation Week, the Army can discover potential leap-ahead technologies or architectures that are distinct advantages over currently deployed systems. Innovation Week is focused on reducing risk for both our internal science and technology programs and, more importantly, our transition partners. It provided an operationally relevant “safe to fail” environment to conduct systems of systems experimentation,” he said.

By Dan Lafontaine, DEVCOM C5ISR Center Public Affairs

Some photos by James Lee, RJ Regars, and John Tang, DEVCOM C5ISR Center

By SGT Cesar Salazar, Jr.

PABRADE, Lithuania — Task Force Marne Soldiers and their Lithuanian Allies honed their combat skills during a force-on-force training exercise at Pabrade Training Area, Nov. 16-17.

Known as Strong Griffin 2023, the exercise saw U.S. Soldiers with 3rd Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, serve as an opposing fighting force for the Griffin Brigade of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, which provided the NATO Allies an opportunity to share each other’s defensive and offensive tactics, strategies, and standard operating procedures.

“Strong Griffin is an opportunity for us to train together and build towards interoperability procedurally, technically, and the human domain,” U.S. Army Lt. Col. David W. Griffith, commander of 3rd Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, said. “It allows us to train tactics, techniques, and procedures so we can operate better with each other.”

Task Force Marne Soldiers conducted infantry and armored offensive operations against Lithuanian Armed Forces partners in a series of training exercises across rural and urban environments to test their combat readiness. Lithuanians, in turn, prepared a defense to counter the American attacks. In the training scenario, the American forces worked their way through a forest environment in an effort to seize a town, while the Lithuanians defended the territory.

Both armies were able to adapt and adjust to their situations which allowed them to learn how each other operated as well as their respective strengths and weaknesses in real time.

“The end goal, of course from the tactical perspective… we check the abilities and the gaps we have within the training cycle,” Lithuanian Army Col. Aurelijus Alasauskas, commander of the Griffin Brigade, said. “So if we see that everything goes so well, I don’t think we’re really organizing our exercise the proper way. We happened to see some gaps already, which might be training points for the next year.”

Lithuanian Soldiers trained on their light and anti-tank infantry tactics against an armored force with the help of Task Force Marne tanks.

“We have tanks. We have larger vehicles than they do [in the exercise],” U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jaden Brown, a tank commander with Alpha “Ares” Company, 3rd Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, said. “Bringing in all that heavy machinery against a much lighter force allows them to develop how they would act against a much better equipped, much larger force,”

In turn, Task Force Marne tank crews adapted their tactics to the forested terrain, which meant tankers stayed vigilant by looking out for smaller, light infantry in the tree lines versus much more visible larger vehicles, according to Brown.

Having the opportunity to face each other in a force-on-force exercise during Strong Griffin ultimately made the two NATO allies stronger together. The exercise also allowed the two allies to familiarize themselves with the tactics and techniques they’d employ together as well as similar terrain and environments they might encounter one day on the battlefield together.

“It’s not about fighting [against] each other, it’s about fighting together with a purpose,” Alasauskas said. “So with the U.S. providing offensive capabilities, and Lithuania providing defense capabilities — when you combine those two into one — you have a very mobile, aggressive defense, which is not letting the forces penetrate you or to maneuver in front of you. So you’re leading even in the defense position. This is the main purpose: To lead the battle the way you want to.”

“It’s been an incredibly rewarding experience working with the Lithuanians,” Griffith said. “They’ve been a great partner here in Pabrade. We’ve worked together to define each other’s training objectives. We built an exercise that allowed us both to reach them.”

The 3rd Infantry Division’s mission in Europe is to engage in multinational training and exercises across the continent, working alongside NATO allies and regional security partners to provide combat-credible forces to V Corps, America’s forward deployed corps in Europe.