More international forces will join the US Army’s Edge aviation experiment

NASHVILLE, Tenn. Now entering its third year, the US Army plans to bring more international partners to the Gateway Experimental Demonstration Exercise next month to improve the ability to connect, share information and execute missions together more effectively. quiet, according to the services of two-star general responsible for the modernization of aviation.

We have a much larger coalition presence, Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, head of the Armys Future cross-functional vertical lift team, told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Army Aviation Association of America summit in Tennessee.

Australia, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, which all observed the exercise last year, are now taking part, Rugen said. Those nations will join the Netherlands, Italy and Germany, which participated in the 2022 exercise at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah.

I don’t want to overdo it, but we have seven that are bringing technology, two that are observers, and we actually have others that have sent in some late requests, so that number could go up by the time May rolls around. It could be up to 10 with us, he added. We’re working on the foreign intelligence documents and stuff, but that part of the coalition is really good.

As more partners are added, the Army will continue to work on its secret enclave that connects countries on the battlefield at a classified level never before achieved. The coalition force plans to go through hundreds, if not thousands, of repetitions of a car-to-car fire call, while also testing texting traffic, Rugen explained.

If the force in the Gateway Experimental Demonstration Exercise aka Edge can solve such a challenge, I will be very, very excited, he said at a press conference during the AAAA summit.

Edge will take place at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, in May, where events will challenge the US Army and its growing number of partners as the service experiments with concepts and capabilities aimed at improving mission performance at the air level.

The campaign applies space, aviation and network capabilities to show how the Army and the joint force would fight in different theaters. The 2021 iteration focused on the Indo-Pacific region.

The exercise is intended to feed into Project Convergence, a larger learning campaign that examines and tests how the Army plans to fight advanced adversaries across all domains of war using capabilities envisioned for the 2030 campaign and Further. The next major Convergence Project event will take place in the spring of 2024.

Last year, Edge focused on the European theater and focused on a wet passage. The US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and other allied units were tasked with defeating an integrated enemy air defense system. This led to a second phase, deploying maneuver forces through airstrikes to capture two different pieces of terrain.

This year, the exercise will focus on the Indo-Pacific theater and test the capability across a large expanse of territory by linking the Yuma-based exercise with Northern Edge, a joint military training event at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, to at Joint Base Lewis. -McChord at Washington State. Two of the three established units of the army’s multi-purpose task force will participate in the exercise. The other task force is European based.

Participants will use more than 120 technologies in the exercise, an increase from previous years, Rugen said.

The military will continue to experiment with what it calls deep sensing capabilities using aircraft, air-launched effects, drones, sensors and command and control capabilities to see further, communicate faster and penetrated into enemy territory while keeping piloted aircraft out of range of threats.

To achieve deep battlefield sensing, Rugen said, the Army is working to integrate technology developed at the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Task Force and within the Army Cyber ​​Command.

Edge will also help the Army develop and refine its Ariel Tier Network. The Army Requirements Oversight Council will make a decision on the path forward for the capability this calendar year, Rugen noted.

Contested logistics will also have a stronger training focus, Rugen said, given its increasing priority as the Army modernizes and prepares to operate in environments under constant surveillance or threat from fort to port.

With the introduction of new partners, some new skills in development with allies will also undergo testing. For example, Rugen said, Canada is bringing an unmanned rotorcraft to continue work on related concepts, and the Netherlands is bringing a fifth-generation fighter jet.