The following June 2, 2022, Congressional Research Service In Focus report, The Army’s Project Convergence.
From the report
What Is the Army’s Project Convergence?
Project Convergence is what the Army calls a “campaign of learning,” designed to further integrate the Army into the Joint Force. It is how the Army intends to play a role in Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) plan to connect sensors and weapon systems from all the military services—Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force—as well as Special Operations Forces (SOF), into a single network which, theoretically, could prove faster and more effective in responding to threats from peer competitors.
Designed around five core elements—soldiers, weapons systems, command and control, information, and terrain—Army Futures Command (AFC) plans to run Project Convergence on an annual basis. The Army intends to conduct experiments with technology, equipment, and solicit soldier feedback throughout the year, culminating in an annual exercise or demonstration. In basic terms, the Army reportedly wants to “take the service’s big ideas for future warfare and test them in the real world. The Army wants to figure out what works and what needs fixing—and figure that out as early as possible, when it’s much cheaper to make changes.”
Project Convergence 2020 (PC20)
PC20 took place at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona between August 11th and September 1st 2020 and involved about 500 personnel. PC20 was intended to provide information to support decisions to:
- Change how the Army fights by shaping how it organizes for combat;
- Highlight opportunities to optimize operational processes;
- Evolve how the Army visualizes, describes, decides, and acts on enemy threats; and
- Build soldier and leader trust in emergent technologies.
PC20 concentrated on what the Army calls the “close fight” by integrating new enabling technologies at the lowest operational level so tactical networks could facilitate faster decisions. At the unit level, PC20 focused on Brigade Combat Teams (BCT), Combat Aviation Brigades (CAB), and Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced (ESB-E). At the system level, PC20 involved the Army’s MQ 1C Grey Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the Air Launched Effects (ALE)—a multi-purpose helicopter- launched system—and the tactical network—command, control, communications, intelligence, and computer systems used by the Army in combat.
Download the document here.
