https://crsreports.congress.gov
Updated June 2, 2022
The Army’s Project Convergence
What Is the Army’s Project
Convergence?
Project Convergence is what the Army calls a “campaign of
learning,” designed to further integrate the Army into the
Joint Force. It is how the Army intends to play a role in
Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), the
Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) plan to connect sensors
and weapon systems from all the military services—Air
Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force—as
well as Special Operations Forces (SOF), into a single
network which, theoretically, could prove faster and more
effective in responding to threats from peer competitors.
Designed around five core elements—soldiers, weapons
systems, command and control, information, and terrain—
Army Futures Command (AFC) plans to run Project
Convergence on an annual basis. The Army intends to
conduct experiments with technology, equipment, and
solicit soldier feedback throughout the year, culminating in
an annual exercise or demonstration. In basic terms, the
Army reportedly wants to “take the service’s big ideas for
future warfare and test them in the real world. The Army
wants to figure out what works and what needs fixing—and
figure that out as early as possible, when it’s much cheaper
to make changes.”
Project Convergence 2020 (PC20)
PC20 took place at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona
between August 11
th
and September 1
st
2020 and involved
about 500 personnel. PC20 was intended to provide
information to support decisions to:
Change how the Army fights by shaping how it
organizes for combat;
Highlight opportunities to optimize operational
processes;
Evolve how the Army visualizes, describes, decides, and
acts on enemy threats; and
Build soldier and leader trust in emergent technologies.
PC20 concentrated on what the Army calls the “close fight”
by integrating new enabling technologies at the lowest
operational level so tactical networks could facilitate faster
decisions. At the unit level, PC20 focused on Brigade
Combat Teams (BCT), Combat Aviation Brigades (CAB),
and Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced (ESB-E). At
the system level, PC20 involved the Army’s MQ 1C Grey
Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the Air Launched
Effects (ALE)—a multi-purpose helicopter- launched
system—and the tactical network—command, control,
communications, intelligence, and computer systems used
by the Army in combat.
Figure 1. Representative Exercise Operational
Scenario
Source: From Army Briefing provided to CRS dated September 10,
2020.
One of PC20’s experiments reportedly included using low-
earth orbit satellites and Grey Eagle UAVs to perform
sensing for air targets and a ground system to detect a
ground target. Data from the two systems was passed back
to an organization at Joint Base Lewis McChord,
Washington, where the target was processed.
The data was then passed back to Yuma Proving Ground,
Arizona, to a system to engage the target—either a self-
propelled artillery system such as the Extended Range
Cannon Artillery (ERCA) system currently under
development, a Grey Eagle, or another ground platform.
This entire sequence was supposedly accomplished within
20 seconds.
Project Convergence 2021 and 2022
(PC21 and PC22)
Project Convergence 2021(PC21)
While other supporting exercises and experiments were
conducted in 2021, PC21’s main series of live-fire events
took place October 12–November 10, 2021, at a number of
installations located in the United States. PC 21 involved
approximately 7,000 personnel, including 900 data
What Is Anti-Access/ Area Denial (A2/AD)?
Anti-Access is defined as any action, activity, or
capability, usually long-range, designed to prevent an
advancing military force from entering an operational
area. Area Denial is defined as action, activity, or
capability, usually short-range, designed to limit an
adversarial force’s freedom of action within an
operational area. In terms of weapon systems, threat
A2/AD defenses are envisioned of being composed of
layered and integrated long-range precision-strike
systems, littoral anti-ship capabilities, air defenses, and
long-range artillery and rocket systems.
