Experimenting Today to Shape the Fires Force of Tomorrow
FORT SILL, OKLA. – As the Army transforms for large-scale combat operations, future Fires formations must deliver greater lethality and survivability while remaining sustainable. The Fires Experimentation Division, Fires Future Capability Directorate, recently brought together experts from across the Army, joint force, and defense community for the Mid-Range Fires Tabletop Experiment to examine how future Fires formations and capabilities could meet that challenge.
FED used Fire Support Simulation for the 21st Century and Extended Air Defense Simulation, U.S. Army constructive combat modeling and simulation tools, to execute a tabletop experiment supporting a Total Army Analysis. FIRESIM XXI provides the Field Artillery simulation capability, while EADSIM provides the Air Defense simulation capability. Subject Matter Experts from across the enterprise compared a Blue Base Case representing current capabilities with three advanced Blue force designs incorporating projected capabilities against the 2040 threat. The simulations account for variability in battlefield conditions, allowing the team to examine how different force designs perform. The resulting data helps inform future force structure decisions focused on lethality, survivability, and sustainment.
FIRESIM XXI supports Army and Joint experimentation, demonstrations, Fires training exercises, and tactical training. By interfacing with tactical command-and-control systems, the simulation can represent indirect fire missions, target acquisition, counter-battery radar and weapon trajectories with greater fidelity. During the MRF TTX, FIRESIM XXI also supported the assessment of future Maneuver Short Range Air Defense capabilities in a simulated operational environment. These capabilities allow the FED to evaluate promising concepts, systems and munitions before the Army makes future force design and capability investment decisions.
“The reason we do these experimentation events is to evaluate future concepts and identify ways to bridge capability gaps, ensuring the Army can rapidly synchronize multi-domain sensors, integrate offensive and defensive fires and protect our forces against complex threats,” said Col. Carrie A. Brunner, FED Director. “Ultimately, these collaborative learning events ensure our warfighters can confidently synchronize cross-domain fires and deploy layered tiered air defense, maximizing our lethality and survivability against peer threats during LSCO.”
The experiment focused on four interconnected areas: identifying combinations of offensive and defensive Army Fires capabilities that maximize lethality and survivability for the Joint Force; generating data-driven recommendations to inform Future Capability Workbooks, future Long Range Precision Fires requirements and capability investments; examining how artificial intelligence and machine learning could improve sensor-to-effector information flow and timeliness; and exploring sustainment strategies that preserve effects delivery and operational tempo.
“By blending rigorous simulation results with subject matter expert input, we learn valuable insights about our future forces capabilities and strategic plans,” said Dr. Woody Gebhart, Chief of Experimentation and Wargaming Branch for the FED.
FED and the Concepts Division planned, coordinated and executed the experiment with participation from organizations across the Army, joint force and defense community, including the Command and Control, Intelligence, Cyber, Aviation, Formation-Based Layered Protection, Sustainment FCDs; U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command; U.S. Army Pacific; Space Development Agency; Multi-Domain Targeting Center; U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command organizations; and the Army Artificial Intelligence Integration Center.
The value of the experiment extends beyond the event itself. The data, observations and human insights generated through the Mid-Range Fires Tabletop Experiment provide Army leaders with evidence to refine future formations, requirements and capability investments. The experiment also informs recommendations across doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities and policy. In practical terms, it helps the Army identify not only what future capabilities may be needed, but how they should be organized, integrated, sustained and employed before those decisions reach the battlefield.
By bringing operators, computer scientists, developers and SMEs together in a collaborative environment, FED helps turn emerging concepts and technologies into informed choices about how the Army will fight, sustain and protect the force in future LSCO. By combining quantitative simulation data with qualitative SME insights, experimentation helps reduce uncertainty, inform modernization and support decisions about the future Fires force.
About Fires FCD: The Fires FCD coordinates modernization efforts for Integrated Offensive and Defensive Fires, delivering materiel solutions and future capabilities to Warfighters by developing future concepts, conducting experimentation, and coordinating requirements across the Fires Enterprise that complement other joint, interagency and multinational capabilities to support modernization and operational readiness for future challenges.
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