The Army’s Aviation Future Capability Directorate conducted activities connected with a Cross Domains Fires Concept Focused Warfighting Experiment (CFWE) at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) across two weeks in March.
The experiment focused on integrating command and control, sensing, targeting and effects delivery as part of Multi-Domain Operations.
Heavily involving autonomy, YPG’s clear, stable air and extremely dry climate combined with an ability to control a large swath of the radio frequency spectrum makes it a desired location for the type of testing CFWE conducted, as does its long history of testing unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Also vital to allowing the CFWE to achieve its objectives was the participation of personnel from the 1st Armored Division (AD) at Fort Bliss, Texas. The participating Soldiers provided YPG’s data collection teams and participating private industry vendors a warfighter’s insight into the technology under test and the needs of the operational force in addition to serving as exercise controllers.
“The fun part for us was seeing how the Army does experimentation,” said Maj. Thomas Redmond, Operations Officer. “Not a lot of the Soldiers have seen that before and how they interface with vendors and companies that are developing technologies for the Army.”
Aside from being vital to the demonstration’s success, the 1st AD’s participation was also professionally beneficial to their personnel.
“I've never dealt with drones, never flown them,” said Pfc. Amaya Kirkland, Battle System Management Operator. “But it was pretty simple and I was pretty confident in it. I think it was a very good learning experience.”
The contributions of all participants across the two weeks of demonstrations are expected to inform the battlefield use of launched effects, which provide a decisive advantage to ground commanders, giving them the capability to extend the range of sensing and use machines to make first contact with an adversary instead of Soldiers. The Army is rapidly integrating layered UAS and launched effects across formations in a combined arms fight that is synchronized with fires and maneuver across phases to penetrate, exploit, and defeat near-peer adversaries in a complex environment.