The Army is rethinking how units stay connected under fire
The U.S. Army is signaling a deeper shift in battlefield communications as commanders confront the reality of dense electronic warfare. Speaking at the TechNet Augusta conference, I Corps commander Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane said the traditional PACE framework for communications planning is no longer adequate against modern jamming and signal detection.
PACE, shorthand for primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency communications methods, has long been a familiar concept in military operations. In a conventional plan, units move from one fallback option to the next if a communications link fails. But McFarlane argued that this orderly sequence does not survive in an environment where multiple bands can be jammed at once and where any emission can reveal a unit’s location.
His warning reflects a wider military concern: the electromagnetic spectrum is no longer a supporting technical layer but a contested battlespace in its own right. When adversaries can detect, jam, and target emitters quickly, radios and networks become liabilities as well as necessities.
Why the old model is breaking down
McFarlane’s critique was blunt. A sequential PACE plan, he said, is effectively “dead” when forces face concurrent multi-band jamming. The problem is not merely that one communications channel might fail. It is that several can be attacked or exposed at the same time, leaving troops little room to work through a checklist of backups.
In older operating assumptions, a unit might begin with secure FM radio, shift to satellite communications if that failed, then rely on high-frequency radio, and finally use visual or physical methods such as an infrared strobe or a runner. That laddered logic depends on failures happening in a manageable way. It also assumes soldiers have time to recognize a problem and execute the next manual step.
Modern electronic warfare compresses that timeline. It also changes the cost of transmitting. As McFarlane put it, emissions create a target. Once a force radiates, a capable adversary may be able to geolocate the source and act on it. In that environment, the question is no longer just whether a message gets through. It is whether the act of sending it creates a bigger danger than the information is worth.
From linear backups to an “electromagnetic camouflage” approach
The alternative being explored by the Army is far more distributed. McFarlane described a model built on mutually reinforcing layers rather than a single sequence of fallback options. He likened the concept to “electromagnetic camouflage,” suggesting that survivable communications will depend on blending, fragmenting, and routing data across many paths instead of concentrating traffic through a few visible nodes.
He also referred to what he called a “polymorphic C2 mesh,” a phrase that captures the broader design goal: command-and-control networks that are decentralized, highly diversified, and constantly changing. Instead of moving from one communications tool to another after a failure, the network would use different physical media simultaneously, reducing reliance on any single path or platform.
In that framework, data can be fragmented, encrypted, and routed dynamically across multiple channels. If one path is jammed or exposed, the system does not wait for a human to initiate the next step in a preset chain. Resilience comes from diversity and parallelism rather than from procedural escalation.
The technologies behind the shift
McFarlane pointed to several approaches that could support this model. They include decentralized tactical radios, low-power mobile ad-hoc networks, mesh networking, use of commercial infrastructure to mask network traffic, and access to low-Earth-orbit satellite constellations such as Starlink.
Each of those options addresses a different vulnerability. Lower-power and ad-hoc systems can reduce detectability or make networks more flexible in motion. Mesh architectures can remove single points of failure by allowing data to move across many nodes rather than through one exposed hub. Commercial infrastructure may help military traffic hide within denser patterns of civilian communications. Low-Earth-orbit connectivity offers another route when terrestrial options are degraded.
The emphasis, however, is not on any one product or service. It is on diversification. McFarlane said the Army wants to avoid dependence on any single physical or geographic chokepoint. That applies both to fixed infrastructure and to network design philosophy.
What this says about future command and control
The Army’s discussion is notable because it pushes beyond buying more radios or hardening individual systems. It suggests that the underlying command-and-control architecture itself may need to change. If communications resilience is treated as a network property rather than a device property, acquisition, training, and doctrine all have to adjust.
Training becomes a major part of that transition. Soldiers and staffs accustomed to memorizing a PACE ladder may need to learn how to operate within a more automated and less predictable architecture. That includes understanding what should emit, when, at what power, and across which pathways. It also means accepting that survivability may depend on limiting visible signatures as much as on maximizing bandwidth.
There are strategic implications as well. U.S. forces have grown used to communications advantages enabled by superior networks and satellite support. Peer competitors have spent years developing tools specifically meant to disrupt those advantages. McFarlane’s remarks suggest the Army is adapting to a world in which network superiority cannot be assumed and must instead be continuously rebuilt at the edge.
A doctrine signal, not just a technical one
Although McFarlane was describing concepts still being worked through, the message from TechNet Augusta was clear: electronic warfare pressure is forcing the Army to rethink the logic of communications contingency planning. The old sequence of primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency methods may still be useful as a teaching tool, but it no longer describes the kind of environment senior commanders expect to face.
What replaces it is still taking shape, but the direction is evident. Future battlefield connectivity is likely to be more decentralized, more adaptive, and more dependent on diverse transmission paths working at once. In a battlespace where emissions can attract fire and jamming can hit several channels together, resilience may come less from having a better backup plan and more from making the network harder to see, harder to disrupt, and harder to collapse in one strike.
This article is based on reporting by Breaking Defense. Read the original article.
Originally published on breakingdefense.com
