TheIncLab details software role in Army NGC2 rollout

TheIncLab has identified four applications supporting its role in the US Army’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) programme as the service prepares to introduce software capabilities to I Corps. Operating commercially as Mente Systems, the company is providing tools for aviation mission planning, launched effects, airspace coordination and information exchange. The 27 October development specifies the software portfolio and intended integration work; the underlying contract was awarded in September, and the Army disclosed its wider supplier selection earlier this month.

The Army is building NGC2 around shared information and interoperable applications rather than separate command systems for individual functions. Commercial, government and soldier-developed applications are intended to exchange operational data across command and control, fires, intelligence, movement and manoeuvre, sustainment, and protection. I Corps is the next formation identified to receive this capability after division-level prototyping, although neither the Army nor TheIncLab has announced completion of a corps-wide installation of the four applications.

TheIncLab’s Maneuvering Portfolio brings together four distinct functions. Eris supplies aviation planners with aircraft performance, route and mission information, connecting completed plans to a shared operational picture and aircraft mission-data workflows. LEAP supports the planning and rehearsal of launched-effects missions, including integration with third-party platforms and autonomy models. Kronos manages the timing and separation of activities in airspace, while Iris provides the data-sharing functions intended to connect systems and users. The company describes these products as interoperable; it has not published independently measured performance results for their proposed I Corps configuration.

Different functions must exchange consistent versions of routes, aircraft availability, scheduled activities and other mission data if commanders are to make changes without manually rebuilding plans in separate applications. An adjustment to a flight path can alter the timing available for a launched effect or require changes to airspace separation. Kronos is designed to coordinate temporal and geographic restrictions across aircraft and other effects, while Eris and LEAP serve different stages of the aviation and uncrewed-systems planning process. Their interfaces, access controls and data-quality rules must be proven in the particular Army environment into which they are integrated.

The company’s aviation planning and launched-effects capabilities have already supported Army experimentation during Ivy Mass and Project Convergence Capstone 6. That work examined the transfer of aviation plans into a common data environment, airspace coordination and movement of mission information into aircraft workflows. In July, the Army reported division-scale use of NGC2 applications during Project Convergence. Previous exercise results establish that the applications or related workflows have been tested, but they do not confirm that every proposed capability has passed operational acceptance for I Corps.

Mente Systems received a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract on 29 September with a maximum value of $99 million and a five-year ordering period extending into September 2031. The ceiling creates a route for the Army to order software and supporting services; it is not evidence that the full $99 million has been funded or spent. Neither the value of orders placed under this vehicle for I Corps nor a product-by-product allocation has been disclosed. That contract must therefore be separated from the new detail about what TheIncLab intends to deliver.

On 7 October, the Army named Mente Systems among nine companies selected to supply initial NGC2 warfighting applications. The group includes General Dynamics Mission Systems, Air Space Intelligence Federal, Immersive Wisdom, LMI, Stilman Advanced Strategies, Onebrief, Rune Technologies and AIR. The Army reported an approximate collective one-year value of $93.6 million for those application awards, without allocating a confirmed amount to each supplier in its announcement. This collective figure and TheIncLab’s longer-term contract ceiling describe different aspects of procurement and should not be combined as new October spending.

The applications will work within a broader software environment being built with suppliers responsible for its shared data baseline and core functions. Anduril, Palantir, Raft and Striveworks were identified by the Army as contributors to the data layer and associated capabilities. Separating that foundation from specialist applications allows different software suppliers to address specific operational requirements, but it leaves interface compatibility, configuration management and security requirements to be resolved through integration. A new application cannot usefully share information merely because it is connected to the same network; the data definitions, authorisations and exchange behaviour must also be compatible.

Scaling from a division experiment to a corps environment introduces additional coordination demands. I Corps oversees formations across the Indo-Pacific, where communications may be intermittent and units can be separated by substantial distances. A current mission plan may reach one user before another, creating a need to manage delayed updates and conflicting versions. Those conditions are relevant to any integrated command system, although the available technical disclosures do not specify the offline synchronisation method, network performance or resilience figures for TheIncLab’s proposed deployment. No such performance result should be inferred from the supplier selection.

The Army expects NGC2 applications to support training and the development of operational procedures as capabilities are introduced. Users will have to learn how planning information moves between tools, which records are authoritative and how to resolve discrepancies between displayed data and platform-level instructions. The company’s product portfolio addresses several points in that process, but successful fielding also depends on communications infrastructure, information assurance, user training and the maintenance of software across successive versions. These requirements are not evidence of problems with TheIncLab’s tools; they are the practical integration conditions for the larger architecture.

I Corps remains the next identified recipient as the Army moves from prototyping to wider delivery. TheIncLab’s 27 October detail identifies the applications expected to contribute to that effort and the functions they are intended to link, while the underlying contract and initial application selections pre-date the announcement. Specific order values, completed corps-level deployment, formal acceptance results and final operational dates have not been disclosed. Subsequent delivery and testing milestones will establish how much of the proposed aviation and launched-effects workflow is fielded within the common NGC2 environment.