Hohenfels, Germany – With the rapid advances of technologies and the ever-changing technological landscape, it remains more important than ever for the United States Army to remain at the cutting edge of innovation. Which is why an event like the Human Machine Integration (HMI) Fight Tonight Excursion is so essential.

The HMI Fight Tonight Excursion is a training event to train today’s Soldiers on how to use the emerging technologies and devices of tomorrow. For three days, Soldiers were given hours of training and hands-on experience to test, experiment with, and provide direct feedback for some of the latest technologies and breakthroughs coming from PEO Soldier.

And the Soldiers of 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division led the way.

“The Fight Tonight Excursion is an Army Futures Command Commanding General priority to rapidly integrate a Common Control Solution for uncrewed systems for the Army,” said MAJ Adam Arnold, assistant program manager of Nett Warrior. “The focus for the excursion centered around bridging Nett Warrior, Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) assets along with other commercial off-the-shelf UAS with commercial controllers to provide Soldiers a common control software solution and reduce the number of controllers on the battlefield.”

Many current SRR drones only come with controllers provided by the manufacturing companies. While these controllers work, they only work for the specific drones they are made for and can quickly add a lot of excess bulk and weight for Soldiers to carry if units are given multiple different SRRs to operate.

That is where PEO Soldier and Nett Warrior come in: Working with the DEVCOM Soldier Center, they designed an all-in-one system that can deploy and control multiple different types of SRR drones, eliminating the need for Soldiers to constantly keep track of different controllers and operating systems.

Getting here has been a collaborative process from the beginning. Taking DEVCOM solutions and partners at Program Manager UAS have been integral to bringing these advanced systems online well before they were ever in the hands of Soldiers. PM UAS has been crucial in receiving UAS vendor support to update their firmware so the systems will work. It is also responsible for sending three of their trainers to join the Nett Warrior team to help train Soldiers on these advanced systems.

The feedback from the Soldiers testing the Army’s cutting-edge system has been very positive.

Soldiers who trained with the Nett Warrior system thought the software was “simpler” and more “user-friendly” than what they were currently used to. They found that the drones they controlled performed better on the Nett Warrior system and that the interface was very easy to use.

That is no small feat given that the training took place in the frigid, single-degree German winter weather.

The Nett Warrior system also adds the same extensibility to platoon leaders and commanders. Now, reconnaissance footage and intelligence can be relayed through multiple touchpoints. Leaders at all echelons can see the video in real time. Nett Warrior also allows commanders to assign tasks directly to their units and even remotely take control of the UAS if necessary.

All that in one easy-to-use system, designed from the ground up with Soldiers in mind.

“The collaborative efforts between PEO Soldier, PEO Aviation, PEO C3N, and our industry partners were in full display in the work required to bring UAS assets into the unit network architecture,” MAJ Arnold said. “The ability to pass Position Location Information (PLI) and video streaming throughout the formation will provide Soldiers with far more extensibility and situational awareness than ever before.”

After this training, the Soldiers had an additional month to use the Nett Warrior system on their own, integrating it with their other duties and training to see how the system performed in the field.

The response was incredibly positive.

The training was “an overwhelming success,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Brendan Henske, Brigade UAS Operations Officer, noting that the overall Nett Warrior devices and systems helped to “reduce and simplify the Soldiers’ workload.”

“Soldiers took to learning the new interface with vigor and did not want to give up the equipment at the end,” CW2 Henske said.

This is far from the end, however. The Soldiers will provide the Nett Warrior team with direct feedback on their favorite features and what could be improved. That feedback will be used to refine, improve, and perfect the Nett Warrior system.

It is that commitment, to put Soldiers at the forefront of everything being done, that helps Nett Warrior and all the teams across the multiple PEOs thrive and continue to deliver the best and most advanced systems in the world to the men and women in uniform.

By Zachary Montanaro

Fort Belvior, Va  –  

In April, Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier introduced its Architectural Assessment Tool (AAT)—a first-of-its-kind government-owned digital engineering ecosystem (DEE). The new suite of tools functions as a cloud-based software hub for a hub-and-spoke ecosystem, providing systems engineers and equipment developers with a centralized data source for 3D modeling and configuration management.

The AAT was developed under the Adaptive Squad Architecture (ASA) program which began in 2018. The AAT addresses the need for a comprehensive catalog that provides the Army Acquisitions community immediate access to authoritative data about equipment for dismounted Soldiers.

In developing the catalog, the team’s primary challenge was answering the question of how best to describe a complex, highly contextualized Soldier platform when the Army enterprise has various needs in developing, producing, and fielding Soldier equipment.

According to Dan Kitts, Architecture Lead for ASA, “Most platforms pay a lead systems integrator (LSI) to perform this function. In the case of the Soldier platform, however, there are seventy to over one hundred distinct items on a given Soldier configuration but without an LSI to manage them.”

The solution evolved into a digital engineering environment with a suite of tools that provides users with immediate firsthand access to the central source of authoritative data. Since no out-of-the-box software solution existed, the ASA team built its own.

The new cloud-native software application is the product of a multi-year effort that included developing the software and preparing it for deployment on the Army cloud network cARMY, with secure enterprise access management through EAMS-A.

For Aaron Copeland, Lead Technical Manager for AAT, having a centralized digital catalog of Soldier equipment is crucial for the future of systems integration. “The complexities of Soldier equipment negate having a single expert. For informed integration, we needed a well-curated system that’s immediately accessible,” Copeland said. “Engineers haven’t had this before. Now they can crowdsource data and look at Soldier systems in detail.”

Functionally, the AAT enables engineers to drag and drop any number of PEO Soldier’s equipment items onto a 3D Soldier model (or digital manikin) and allows them to test-fit items for a clearer picture of potential configuration and interoperability challenges earlier in the developmental process.

The tool also gives engineers immediate access to specific data points like bandwidth, interfaces, aggregate weight, and Soldier load, helping create a common operating picture of the Soldier platform.

To Kitts, the real purpose of AAT is to foster Soldier centered design throughout an item’s lifecycle. “ASA’s mission is to place equipment in the context of the Soldier before Soldier Touch Points,” Kitts said. “The desired outcome is that Soldiers intuitively understand the equipment they receive

from PEO Soldier was built for them, similar to when someone unboxes a new phone or buys a new car.”

The AAT achieved Authority to Operate (ATO) and Authority to Connect (ATC) in April, giving the ASA team the green light to deploy the tool on cARMY.

The journey to achieving a government-owned solution was necessarily lengthy and Kitts appreciates the strategic patience ASA received from PEO Soldier’s senior leadership. “Their patience and support in getting us to this point allowed us to pivot from cybersecurity audit compliance to getting additional functionality, curating data, and onboarding additional DEE tools,” Kitts said.

The vision that drives this strategic patience has a broad focus – looking beyond enhancing PEO Soldier’s capabilities alone to helping close data-sharing gaps to foster more efficient collaboration with Army and Joint stakeholders.

“The real benefit of the Architectural Assessment Tool is helping our strategic partners achieve Soldier centered design,” explained Gary Keller, the Assistant Program Executive Officer for Futures and Integration, PEO Soldier. “With this tool, we can get accurate Soldier equipment data to the right people, when they need it, accelerating integration across the enterprise.”

With input from early adopters, the team continues to innovate with plans for AAT 2.0. The future update will feature an improved database better matched to describe Soldier context and a transition to a more widely used 3D engine.

In the near term, the ASA team is incorporating iPOWER, a power management system designed by the Naval Research Lab, and plans to add Cameo MagicDraw to the suite.

By Kris Hutsell, ARMY