An Integrated Technology System to Streamline the Military Decision-Making Process for Scalable Cross-Echelon Command and Control (SC3) of the Future (Higher Echelon FY25 Soldier Touchpoint Report)

Author(s):

Gregory M. Gremillion, Jonroy D. Canady, Julia L. Wright, Angelique A. Scharine, Andrea S. Krausman, Robert Smith, Adam Wachsman, Alex Stauff, William Gerichs, Rhyse Bendell, Jessica Williams, Murat Kucukosmanoglu, Vinicius G. Goecks, Nicholas R. Waytowich, Damon M. Conover, Jeffrey T. Hansberger, Stephen M. Fiore, Justin Brooks, Stephen Gordon, Shuowen Hu, and Amar R. Marathe

Abstract:

The Scalable Cross-Echelon Command and Control (SC3) Program Higher Echelon FY25 Soldier Touchpoint evaluated the Integrated Technology System (ITS), a platform comprising three components: the Course of Action (COA)-Generative Pretrained Transformer, a large language model AI; the SC3 Sim, a constructive simulation engine; and the SC3 User Interface, a browser-based GUI. The ITS will assist future planners within distributed, mobile command and control nodes in developing, forecasting, and refining COAs at greater speeds than can be accomplished with existing approaches. Soldier subject matter experts (SMEs) with prior military planning experience from the U.S. Army Mission Command Battle Laboratory (one active-duty Army lieutenant colonel and two retired officers—a former colonel and a former captain) participated in the touchpoint in the roles of brigade-level planning staff. The touchpoint comprised three structured planning sessions with the system, several structured after-action reviews, and several collaborative design discussions. SMEs reported that, even in its current prototype form, the ITS demonstrated strong potential to streamline planning workflows. They estimated that when existing capabilities are more mature and fully integrated into a unified workflow, the ITS could reduce the time and cognitive effort required for COA development by approximately 30% relative to current processes.