U.S. Army tests battlefield data network in Hawaii jungle

Soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division spent two weeks in the field in Hawaii this month testing new command-and-control software under realistic combat conditions, wrapping up the fifth round of the division’s Lightning Surge experiments with a brigade certification exercise called Nakoa Fleek.

The exercise ran from Sept. 14 to 25 at Schofield Barracks and certified the division’s 2nd Mobile Brigade, known as the Warrior Brigade, for future operations, the U.S. Army said. Lightning Surge is the 25th Infantry Division’s series of exercises for the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control effort, known as NGC2, which aims to give commanders a single, continuously updated digital picture of the battlefield built from data shared across units.

“The controlled environment gets you to the 50-yard line,” said Maj. Nathan Sitterley, executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment. “The last 50 yards happen out here, where you’re battling latency, power, and connectivity issues right alongside the opposition force. This is where we forge a real combat capability.”

Nakoa Fleek was split into three periods. From Sept. 14 to 17, soldiers, leaders and industry representatives connected new radios, sensors and command posts in the field. From Sept. 18 to 21, the brigade fought a defensive battle and maneuvered against an opposing force. The final period, from Sept. 22 to 25, focused on lessons learned. On Sept. 23, soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, and 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, carried out an air assault meant to test how well the brigade could coordinate a complex operation.

The division’s lead data engineer, Maj. Rebecca Borrebach, said the aim was to push a shared picture of the battlefield from cloud servers down to small units even when connections drop.

“The goal is to get the right data to the right leader at the right time,” said Maj. Rebecca Borrebach.

The main lesson, the division said, was about the people using the systems.

“The feedback from the field is clear: if a Soldier can’t figure it out quickly under pressure, it’s not a combat-effective tool,” said Maj. Jay Trexler, the division’s innovation officer.

The 25th Infantry Division is one of two divisions prototyping NGC2. The other, the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado, runs a parallel series called Ivy Sting. The Hawaii-based division has worked with a team led by Lockheed Martin, which delivered the first version of its prototype at Lightning Surge 1 in January. At Lightning Surge 2 in February, the division’s artillery ran fully digital calls for fire, sending target data from a forward observer through the network to the guns without voice radio calls.

In May, the division ran Lightning Surge 3 during Exercise Balikatan 2026, linking sensors, fires and airspace management from Hawaii, the continental United States and the Philippines through a single data platform. On June 22, the U.S. Army set a common data baseline for NGC2 after the two divisions’ exercises, choosing Anduril to lead that effort with Palantir and Raft. Both divisions are now putting those common components into their units.

The next step for the 25th Infantry Division is Lightning Surge 6, which will take place during the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center 27-01 training rotation. Elements of the division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade will join to test improved decision-support tools and more autonomous networks. The Army did not give a date for that rotation.

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