Project Convergence to plant a flag in the Pacific

The military’s massive experimentation event, Project Convergence, will plant a flag in the strategically vital Pacific region next year, the first time that U.S. and allied forces will kick the tires of the Pentagon’s latest warfighting concepts at the edge of America’s sphere of influence.

“Our large experiments need to be concept-informed, and the concepts we’re talking about are the sets of capabilities and relationships that we think we’re going to need to win in the operating environments we are going to face in the future,” said Army Brig. Gen. Zachary Miller, who heads the Joint Modernization Command at Fort Bliss, Texas. “And the priority theater for the Department of Defense is the Pacific.”

The joint force has simulated Pacific scenarios in the United States during previous iterations of the exercise, which began as an Army-only event in 2020 at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona . But the experimentation campaign has never been held forward in relevant theaters aside from some peripheral activities at the Army Pacific headquarters level earlier this year, Miller said.

The vast majority of the experimentation at Project Convergence is now slated to take place in Hawaii and Guam, then all the way out along the first island chain from Japan to the Philippines, and down under in Australia over the month of April.

“We are 100% taking what you saw in a bunch of tents next to each other at Camp Pendleton last year and putting it in the Pacific across both sides of the international date line in the headquarters of all the actual operational units,” Miller said.

Japan’s Ground Self Defense Force will be a full participant as well as Australia and the rest of the Five Eyes partners — Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The Philippines will be considered an observer for this round.

The Army’s 3rd Multidomain Task Force will be in Australia for the event, and the 1st MDTF will be in the Philippines. This summer, Australian officers embedded with the 3rd MDTF , and the 1st MDTF has already participated in exercises in the Philippines , including Balikatan in May.

The campaign is expected to more closely align the Army and the other services with the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept and to work closely with the air service’s Battle Network, Miller said. “We want to bridge air and space with the land and the sea.”

The Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment doctrine prescribes that formations of planes and drones must be prepared to take off and land from dispersed, less-than-ideal runways during a future conflict, especially one involving China. The efforts grew from the expectation that enemies will first target large U.S. air bases hosting concentrated air power if war breaks out, thereby decimating the strategic advantage of aerial overmatch.

At the spring event, the U.S. military services and international partners will try to bring their massive array of sensors across all the different domains into one picture. “We’ve made a lot of strides in that, we want to push forward on how we quickly turn that information into action,” Miller noted.

U.S. soldiers take part in a human-machine integration demonstration at Fort Irwin, California, on March 15, 2024. (Spc. Samarion Hicks/U.S. Army)

While Project Convergence will feature a complex scenario in the Pacific, officials will still conduct another scenario at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. That vignette is focused on the land domain, but with joint and international participation as well. Other U.S. locations include the Nevada Test and Training Range and San Clemente Island off the shores of Camp Pendleton, California.

“We will have live aircraft doing sensing, shooting live fires,” Miller said, and the Army will have every echelon of the 18th Airborne Corps participating.

A fair amount of experimentation will bleed over into what the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George is calling “transforming in contact.” The initiative gives up-and-coming capabilities to brigade-size units at scale to gauge their expected impact in the field.

Portions of the Army’s initiative to fix the current network and command-and-control capabilities to better fit into a next-generation C2 framework will also be under evaluation.

And the Army will build off its first major attempt in early 2024 to examine how humans and robots will fight together on the battlefield — an effort known as human-machine integration , according to Miller. The experimentation event will use the Army’s Next-Generation C2 capabilities — a pilot program based on a new battlefield network and C2 architecture — to coordinate it all.

Guided by Next-Gen C2 features, the human-machine integration event “is going to lead off with a breaching of a complex obstacle, meaning that’s going to have mines, it’s going to have wire, it’s going to have fires on it from the enemy and it will be done completely autonomously,” Miller said. “Normally you think about people having to drive vehicles up to explosively destroy things or cut wire or whatever and that will be done completely with some pretty novel approaches to it.”

The Army will also focus on bringing in launched effects that can be fired from a wide variety of platforms like helicopters, drones, high-altitude balloons or from the ground, according to Miller. “The air will be contested and congested,” he said. “It will be very hard to distinguish whose thing is there in the air, and it’s going to be hard to control that airspace.”

The Army will also increase its experimentation on maneuvering in the electromagnetic spectrum. As the service crafts its next warfighting concepts, Miller said, one of the emerging ideas calls for effective maneuvering in the electromagnetic spectrum just like the Army conducts ground maneuver. “It is a sea change in how we would operate because we can’t see the electromagnetic spectrum, but we have to protect ourselves. We have to attack the enemy in it. We have to identify, we have to deceive the enemy.”

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

明年，美军将在具有重要战略意义的太平洋地区开展大规模试验活动——“融合计划”。这将是美国及其盟军首次在美国势力范围边缘检验五角大楼最新的作战理念。

“我们的大型实验需要以概念为指导，而我们所说的概念指的是我们认为在未来将要面临的作战环境中取胜所需的各种能力和关系，”驻德克萨斯州布利斯堡联合现代化司令部司令、陆军准将扎卡里·米勒说道。“而国防部的优先战区是太平洋地区。”

米勒表示，联合部队此前曾在美国境内模拟过太平洋地区的各种场景，该演习最初于2020年在亚利桑那州尤马试验场以陆军专属活动的形式启动。但除了今年早些时候在太平洋陆军总部进行的一些周边活动外，这项试验性演习从未在相关战区展开。

“融合计划”的大部分实验目前计划在夏威夷和关岛进行，然后沿着第一岛链从日本一直延伸到菲律宾，最后在四月份前往澳大利亚。

“我们百分之百地将去年在彭德尔顿营地并排搭建的帐篷里的景象，搬到了太平洋上，跨越国际日期变更线，安置在所有实际作战部队的总部，”米勒说。

日本陆上自卫队将作为正式参会方，澳大利亚以及“五眼联盟”其他成员国——加拿大、新西兰和英国也将参会。菲律宾将作为观察员参加本轮会谈。

陆军第3多域特遣部队将赴澳大利亚参加此次活动，第1多域特遣部队将赴菲律宾。今年夏天，澳大利亚军官已随第3多域特遣部队和第1多域特遣部队在菲律宾参加了演习，包括5月份的“肩并肩”联合军演。

米勒表示，此次行动预计将使陆军和其他军种更紧密地与空军的敏捷作战部署理念保持一致，并与空军的作战网络密切合作。“我们希望将空中和太空与陆地和海洋连接起来。”

美国空军的“敏捷作战运用”理论规定，在未来的冲突中，尤其是在涉及中国的冲突中，飞机和无人机编队必须做好准备，能够在分散的、条件欠佳的跑道上起降。这项准备工作源于这样的预期：一旦战争爆发，敌方会首先攻击驻扎着大量空中力量的美国大型空军基地，从而削弱美国在空中优势方面的战略优势。

在春季活动中，美国军方及其国际合作伙伴将尝试把他们分散在各个领域的大量传感器数据整合到一个统一的系统中。“我们在这方面已经取得了长足的进步，我们希望继续推进如何快速将这些信息转化为行动，”米勒指出。

2024年3月15日，美国士兵在加利福尼亚州欧文堡参加人机融合演示。（美国陆军下士萨马里恩·希克斯/美国陆军）

尽管“融合计划”将在太平洋地区进行一场复杂的演习，但官员们仍将在加利福尼亚州欧文堡国家训练中心进行另一场演习。该演习侧重于陆地作战，但也包括联合和国际参与。其他美国演习地点包括内华达州试验训练靶场和加利福尼亚州彭德尔顿营海岸附近的圣克莱门特岛。

“我们将派出真正的飞机进行侦察和实弹射击，”米勒说，陆军第18空降军的每个梯队都将参加。

大量的实验成果将融入陆军参谋长兰迪·乔治将军所说的“实战转型”之中。这项计划旨在将新兴能力大规模地提供给旅级单位，以评估其在实战中的预期影响。

陆军为改进当前网络和指挥控制能力以更好地适应下一代 C2 框架而采取的举措的部分内容也将接受评估。

据米勒介绍，陆军将在2024年初首次大规模尝试的基础上，进一步探索人类与机器人如何在战场上协同作战——这项工作被称为人机融合。此次试验将利用陆军的下一代指挥控制（NGC）能力——一个基于新型战场网络和指挥控制架构的试点项目——来协调所有行动。

米勒表示，在下一代指挥控制功能的指导下，此次人机融合演练“将以突破复杂障碍物为开端，这意味着障碍物上会有地雷、铁丝网，还会遭到敌方火力攻击，而且整个过程将完全自主完成。通常情况下，人们会想到驾驶车辆进行爆破或剪断铁丝网之类的操作，而这次演练将采用一些非常新颖的方法来完成这些工作。”

据米勒称，陆军还将重点研发可从多种平台发射的导弹，例如直升机、无人机、高空气球或地面发射。“空域将会竞争激烈且拥挤，”他说，“很难分辨空中目标的归属，空域控制也将十分困难。”

陆军还将加大在电磁频谱机动方面的试验力度。米勒表示，随着陆军制定下一代作战概念，其中一个新兴理念是像地面机动一样在电磁频谱中进行有效机动。“这将彻底改变我们的作战方式，因为我们无法直接看到电磁频谱，但我们必须保护自己。我们必须在其中攻击敌人。我们必须识别敌人，我们必须欺骗敌人。”

珍·贾德森是一位屡获殊荣的记者，为《防务新闻》报道陆地战争。她也曾为《政治报》和《内幕防务》工作。她拥有波士顿大学新闻学硕士学位和凯尼恩学院文学学士学位。