Army officials said the Next Generation Command and Control, or NGC2, is “ready to scale” following an extensive prototyping phase that culminated at a joint force exercise at Fort Irwin, California, in July.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, commanding general of the 4th Infantry Division, called the system “functional but not optimized” and said they will “spend the next year refining how we fight using the technology to share our lessons learned across the Army.”
The Army had been scaling the NGC2 prototype since 2025, an effort that concluded at Project Convergence-Capstone 6. The 10-day event tested NGC2 hardware and software using some 10,000 participants from U.S. and allied forces as well as industry partners using 90 different technologies and a series of complex yet realistic scenarios.
“The dedicated opposing force and the unrelenting Fort Irwin conditions afforded us a great opportunity to stress the full NGC2 stack at PCC6,” Ellis said, adding that he’s “proud to have delivered a prototype at the division scale.”
NGC2 will replace the Army’s legacy C2 systems, which are a collection of systems for managing fire, logistics and airspace on the battlefield. Officials say it will unify data across all functions to increase the speed of decision-making and operational maneuver.
The Army said NGC2 will enable “every echelon from soldier to Corps to run modern warfighting apps and artificial intelligence to support their mission, while providing resilient communications across vast distances for greater dispersion and survivability.”
The Army’s executive leadership stressed the importance of updating its command system but also emphasized the need to implement it rapidly.
“We know the biggest risk to our national security and our national defense is not moving too fast. It’s not moving fast enough,” said Dan Driscoll, secretary of the Army. “The side that can sense a target, process the data, and deliver a kinetic effect the fastest, wins. That is the decisive advantage this capability provides.”
In the Army’s proposed budget for 2027, officials requested $904 million in research and development funding to scale NGC2, saying it will improve its communications and networking technologies. A year before that, Anduril Industries developed the prototype for $99.6 million and has been spearheading parts of the project.
The Army said its I Corps headquarters, which commands tens of thousands of soldiers in the Indo-Pacific region from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, will be the next NGC2 capabilities.
Daniel Terrill is a contributor to Military Times. He’s been reporting on military issues, the gun industry, and the outdoors for nearly two decades. Although writing is his passion, he’s been a Marine, police officer, and, perhaps the most dangerous job of his career, a substitute teacher.
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