The DEVCOM team provides scientific and engineering expertise to support six modernization priorities the U.S. Army established to accomplish Multi-Domain Operations 2028:
- Long Range Precision Fires – DEVCOM’s Armaments Center serves as the command’s lead integrator with the LRPF Cross Functional Team, with support from ARL and the C5ISR, Aviation & Missile and Data & Analysis Centers.
- Next Generation Combat Vehicle – DEVCOM’s Ground Vehicle Systems Center serves as the command’s lead integrator with the NGCF CFT, with support from ARL and the C5ISR, Chemical Biological, Armaments, Aviation & Missile and Data & Analysis Centers.
- Future Vertical Lift – DEVCOM’s Aviation & Missile Center serves as the command’s lead integrator with the FVL CFT, with support from ARL, and the Armaments, C5ISR and Data & Analysis Centers.
- Army Network and Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing – DEVCOM’s C5ISR Center serves as the command’s lead integrator with the Net CFT and APNT CFT, with support from the Army Research Laboratory and the Aviation & Missile, Soldier and Data & Analysis Centers.
- Air and Missile Defense – DEVCOM’s Aviation & Missile Center serves as the command’s lead integrator with the AMD CFT, with support from the Army Research Laboratory and the Armaments, C5ISR, and Data & Analysis Centers.
- Soldier Lethality and Synthetic Training Environment – DEVCOM’s Soldier Center serves as the command’s lead integrator with the SL CFT and STE CFT, with support from the Army Research Laboratory and the Armaments, C5ISR and Data & Analysis Centers.
DEVCOM’s mission is to continually deliver capabilities by proactively exploring basic and foundational research.
DEVCOM defines a Priority Research Area as a research area of particular significance or importance because it aligns with perceived warfighting gaps or opportunities.
The goal of Priority Research Areas is to unlock the realm of the possible by expanding the realm of the known to succeed against any adversary to ensure enduring Army modernization.
The current Army and DEVCOM Priority Research Areas include: Disruptive Energetics; RF Electronic Materials; Quantum; Hypersonic Flight; Artificial Intelligence; Autonomy; Synthetic Biology; Material by Design; and Science of Additive Manufacturing.
PRAs should also have the following key characteristics:
- Knowledge product deliverable – a living document, and reference, capturing the progression of discoveries to the scientific questions in scope and updated impact to the Army
- Qualitative dramatic impact – fostering overmatch and characterizing opportunities in the future Army operating environment
- Ambitious and challenging requiring DEVCOM’s diverse talent working collaboratively in an empowered capacity to investigate the limits of possibility
- High potential to seed future transformational capabilities and priority research
- Envisioned to execute with 6.1-6.2 funding
Project Convergence is the Army’s new campaign of learning, designed to advance and integrate the Army’s contributions to the Joint Force. Multi-Domain Operations ensure the Army, as part of the Joint Combined fight, can rapidly and continuously converge effects across all domains – air, land, sea, space and cyberspace – to overmatch our adversaries in competition and conflict.
PC 20, which was held in September at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, was the largest of the continuous, structured series of demonstrations and experiments held in 2020. The Army is leveraging PC 20 as the model for PC 21.
DEVCOM was a leading member of the team of teams that executed PC 20. More than 100 DEVCOM scientists, engineers, technicians and analysts took technologies they are working on out of the lab and into the dirt to gather Soldier feedback to inform the command’s emerging Soldier-Centered design philosophy.
The DEVCOM team collected data from multiple environments spread over 1,000 miles including Fort Hunter Liggett, California; Fort A. P. Hill, Virginia; and Fort Bliss, Texas. The ARL team alone produced more than 3.8 million labeled images that were used for AI enabled capability development, as well as an additional 76 GB of data to support AI development efforts for PC 21 and beyond.
DEVCOM leverages its Joint Systems Integration Lab at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, as the primary System of Systems lab-based risk reduction, integration and test environment. The JSIL, which became fully operation in March 2020, provides a realistic and challenging “operational environment” that the Army and joint services use to prepare for the Joint All-Domain Command and Control efforts at PC 21.
PC 21 will focus on driving Joint interoperability with Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps participating in an INDOPACOM-focused vignette.