Army plans to spend roughly $3B on next-gen command and control in fiscal 2026

The Army’s top modernization priority is slated to get around $3 billion across procurement and research-and-development accounts in the next fiscal year, according to information provided by service officials regarding the 2026 budget request.

Next Generation Command and Control is a clean-slate design for how the Army communicates on the battlefield and passes data for operations, providing commanders and units a new approach to information sharing and C2 through agile and software-based architectures.

In the past, warfighting functions, such as fires and intelligence, were all separate and distinct silos on the network for those communities, creating stovepipes and challenges for sharing timely battlefield information. Now, the Army is trying to fix that with an integrated architecture that allows data to flow more freely, on-the-move, and enable better and faster decision-making.

The nearly $3 billion funding number is an approximation based on figures provided by the Army for its total portfolio request surrounding NGC2, which added up to about $2.95 billion. The Army’s budget request for its network has always been spread across several funding lines, making it difficult to parse out an exact tally.

This year’s request attempts to move toward a clearer portfolio, as officials aim to improve that in the out years.

“The Army is consolidating C2 resources, requirements and funding lines into a combined capability portfolio of hardware and software supporting NGC2 to provide commanders with increased speed, precision, and adaptability for decision advantage,” a spokesperson from program executive office for command, control, and communications network, said. “This shift is a ‘zero sum’ realignment for the Army that uses existing resources and directs funding toward priority capabilities in order to support NGC2 equipping and experimentation at the Division level, while introducing competition for best of breed commercial capabilities.”

Officials have maintained that the Army would not be asking for extra funds at the moment for the NGC2 effort, but rather, using what was already appropriated and realigning it.

The spokesperson noted that the Army realigned funding corresponding to the NGC2 technology stack layers, which include:

—Transport for moving data across the battlefield.

—Infrastructure or integration, which uses artificial intelligence to triage the data that comes in to lessen the cognitive load for commanders.

—Data that proliferates shared information across warfighting systems.

—Applications that provide software apps for all echelons that will replace the stovepiped systems specific to warfighting functions. For example, the fires community will be able to execute their mission via an app on the system, which takes in all shared battlefield data, as envisioned.

The request includes funding for prototyping and experimentation efforts that will be undertaken by the Command and Control Cross Functional Team under Army Futures Command.

Regarding the transport and infrastructure layer, the fiscal 2026 budget request includes roughly $2.58 billion in procurement funds that would go toward satellite communications, radios and other transport, as well as computing infrastructure, for delivery to operational units, the spokesperson said. On the R&D side, the service is requesting $101.4 million for these layers to continue development based on prototyping and experimentation.

For the applications and data layers, the Army is only requesting R&D money, approximately $344.9 million. This includes funding from several programs that previously provided isolated warfighting function systems but now will transition to integrated software applications and data in the NGC2 program, the spokesperson said.

The Army has sought a faster, agile and software-based approach to NGC2, in the hopes it will be able to not only deliver quicker, but make more timely changes based on battlefield conditions.

The aim is to turn what only a few years ago would have been a decades-long process into a two-and-a-half-year process, based on reinvestment efforts as part of the Army’s Transformation Initiative, Gen. James Mingus, vice chief of staff, said Wednesday at an event co-hosted by AUSA and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Army has said it expects to award initial contracts as part of the official NGC2 program of record — for which PEO C3N stood up the office in April — later this year.

Service officials said they had a successful demonstration of a NGC2 prototype “proof of principle” at the Project Convergence Capstone 5 event at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, in March, that will help inform the program of record.

4th Infantry Division as well as elements from 25th Infantry Division will continue that prototyping effort into this year, working to scale it all the way to division to include all enabler units.

Mingus noted that the prototype is quite mature and will likely help speed the delivery to units going forward.

“We are going to give it to 4ID, starting this summer, they are going to experiment with this — prototype is still what we’re calling it, but I would say it’s an advanced, proven prototype. Once we have shown that this is demonstrated … we think we’ll be able to very quickly scale this across the entire Army,” he said.