Maj. Gen. Pat Ellis addresses the AUSA Meeting

The Army is pushing prototypes of Next-Generation Command and Control, the service’s top modernization priority, to the division level, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division said.

“If you’re not sure if the Army is serious … we’ll prototype an entire division,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ellis, said. “We're not just going to have a soldier touch point for a couple of days and then walk away from this. We own the solution.”

Next-Generation Command and control enables commanders to make better and faster decisions to outpace adversaries. As the division continues to integrate evolving technology, soldiers can adjust the technology and troubleshoot through their hands-on experience, Ellis said, citing the division’s use of the artillery execution suite, which utilizes artificial intelligence-enabled targeting software.

“The big lesson learned is we'll take” emerging technology, Ellis said. “We don't need it to be perfect.”

Ellis, who most recently was director of the Next-Generation Command and Control Cross-Functional Team, said soldiers want to utilize emerging software and improve upon it. “The team is hungry for that” because soldiers “feel like that's the best approach for us,” he said.

The division is embracing apps and software that is “intuitive,” so soldiers can adopt new technology quickly. “The technology we're building, the applications that we're building, are massively, massively intuitive,” Ellis said. During testing, “the software showed up, and seven hours later,” soldiers were “ready to use it live with minimal training. That'swhat we're asking for. In fact, our soldiers are demanding this.”

The future fight will require leaders to distill large amounts of data and target quickly, Ellis said.

“With the volume of stuff that’s going to roll in, you’ve got to empower commanders to make better and faster decisions. You’ve got to help them process and figure out what is important,” he said. “How do you go from target detection” to engaging targets “as fast as possible? We’re on the verge of breaking through that in some really interesting ways.”

Story by — Karli Nelson

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