NGC2 marks a fundamental shift in US Army command and control by building a four-layer, open, data-centric digital architecture that integrates sensing, understanding, decision-making, and acting across warfighting functions.

The Common Data Baseline, established in mid-2026, standardizes data models, registries, interfaces, and governance to enable interoperability while allowing proprietary components, with Anduril leading the data mesh edge-to-cloud and collaborators like Palantir and Raft contributing tools.

MOSA (Modular Open Systems Approach) underpins the architecture, promoting modular interfaces and Army-controlled governance that allows rapid integration and substitution of components without redesigning the system, while industry provides engineering capability.

Key risks include dependence on particular industry integrators, maintaining control over data models and decision semantics, ensuring true substitutability beyond just interface openness, and sustaining operations under extended cyber and EM-contested environments.

The approach moves from assembling separate systems to a common data environment where sensors publish data and AI-enabled tools generate decisions and orchestrate combat effects, enabling widespread UAVs and diverse sensors to work in concert.

Development is iterative and soldier-centric, with prototypes and experiments like Ivy Sting, Ivy Mass, and Lightning Surge conducted with units such as the 4th and 25th Infantry Divisions to refine components before broader scaling, signaling a shift to continuous delivery and scaling.

The four layers consist of Transport (data movement across multiple networks with resilient paths), Infrastructure (edge and cloud compute), Data (shared data language and semantics), and Applications (modular, replaceable apps operating on the common data environment).

Success hinges on the Army retaining architectural authority while leveraging industry innovation, maintaining open, well-defined interfaces, and building a genuinely modular, scalable ecosystem adaptable to future warfare.

NGC2 is framed as a transformation of how the Army structures, governs, and evolves its command and control architecture to rapidly integrate sensors, AI models, and effectors across large-scale, degraded networks.