A Lockheed Martin-led consortium has demonstrated the sensor-to-shooter capability of an advanced command-and-control system for the US Army during a live-fire exercise at Lightning Surge 2.
The US Army’s 25th Infantry Division (25ID), stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, assessed the Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototype’s kill chain process using HIMARS rockets and M777 howitzers in real time.
This came after the 25ID integrated data from small drones, soldier locations, environment graphics, and electromagnetic activity into a single common operating picture during Lightning Surge 1 in January.
The 25ID was selected to experiment and provide feedback on the latest NGC2 capabilities under the Lightning Surge exercise.
Its third iteration, centered on an airspace mission thread in support of the 25ID, is scheduled for April.
The exercises run in parallel with the 4ID’s Ivy Sting exercises, which test the NGC2 prototype developed by Team Anduril under a $99.6-million contract.
The NGC2
The NGC2 is part of the service’s modernization efforts to accelerate battlefield decision-making as the system fuses data from multiple sensors, uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools for analysis, and delivers actionable targeting information to weapons systems.
To support this, the US Army awarded Other Transaction Agreements to Anduril and to Lockheed Martin in 2025 to develop the NGC2 prototype.
Under a $26-million contract, Lockheed leads a team consisting of army officials and companies, including Raft, Accelint, and Rune, to develop the AI-powered data and mission application layers to be plugged into the US Army’s C2 Fix transport and compute layers.
Raft provided its Data Platform as the system’s foundational data layer and its AI mission system.
Automatically recorded ammunition levels were linked to Rune’s TyrOS software platform, while a unified, real-time operational picture was displayed on Accelint’s Neo mission‑command interface.
