The U.S. Army is continuing its work to overhaul mission command operations through upgrades under the Defense Department‘s Joint Information Environment that could eventually reduce deployments to the field, Federal News Radio reported Friday.Jared Serbu writes that the service’s efforts to establish a distributed mission command aligns with Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno‘s work to foster force readiness through flexible network capabilities.
The updated mission command approach aims to enable Army commanders to manage field operations remotely and communicate with deployed troops through the same network, the report said.
“Home station mission command will give us the ability to keep part of the division main headquarters back in sanctuary — so long as you’ve got a big enough pipe — and only move part of the division forward,” Doug Wiltsie, program executive officer for enterprise information systems at the Army, told Federal News Radio.
Lt. Gen. Robert Ferrell, the Army’s chief information officer, added that standardization of the service’s hardware and software across all military bases aims to drive a new mission command approach.
“This initiative will take a look at how we change that, how those fixed-station command centers connect to tactical communications in their local area, how they maintain the same comms when soldiers go to training centers, and how we maintain consistent communications back to the corps and division headquarters,” he said.
Ferrell said this change should support the exchange of real-time data such as threat intelligence and bolster the communication capabilities of soldiers sent to a contingency zone, Serbu reports.
These efforts are part of the Army’s overall IT campaign that focuses on data throughput, cyber capabilities and network operations, the report said.
