JWA 25 took place as part of the bilateral Australian and United States’ Talisman Sabre 25, which included more than 30,000 military personnel from 19 nations conducting training and experimentation on multiple locations around Australia. Adding experimentation and assessment to a large exercise like Talisman Sabre allows learning and modernization to move forward, said Brig. Gen. Daniel Hibner, commander of the U.S. Army Joint Modernization Command (JMC).
“An exercise like this allows us to see and experiment with the latest in the Army Warfighting Concept, as well as the Joint Warfighting Concept,” Hibner said. “As we experiment with our command and control networks, each event pushes the envelope a little further to find insights for continuous transformation.”
One of the main focuses of JWA 25 experimentation was the Combined Land Effects Coordination Center (CLECC), which the Army got a primary look at during PCC5, said Lt. Col. Zachary Quintana, JMC assessments team lead.
“The primary experimentation audiences that we’re integrating with include the 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF), as well as 1st Corps and the Theater Fires Element out of USARPAC,” Quintana said. “Within their objectives and their training efforts, the big thing that we’re looking to further develop is the CLECC. That is a bilateral command and control node that was established going into PCC5 Scenario B. We’re progressing that now through Talisman Sabre and looking to roll that out into a full capability in the next few years.”
Though it can sound tedious from the outside, those assessing new concepts, capabilities and formations know that working through policy issues and speeding the time from sensor to shooter are some of the key goals of experimentation like JWA 25.
“We’re trying to reduce barriers and improve time of taking something from sensing, to being able to develop a target, and then prosecuting that target, and then sharing that with our allies,” Quintana said. “So, we’ll be looking at policy issues, carrying some of the lessons learned out of PCC5, a lot of policy issues that we became aware of that we need to continue to identify and work through to improve this in the future. These experiments help enhance our ability to share and pass information to one another.”
In addition to personnel from JMC, experimentation experts from AFC’s Cross Functional Teams and Capability Development Integration Directorates participated in JWA 25, with teams located in three different areas of Australia and a team in Hawaii. JWA 25 should provide lessons learned to inform AFC’s Concept Focused Warfighting Experiments (CFWEs) as they begin next year, said Maj. Caleb Bloom, assessment planner for JMC.
“We’ve linked the questions that we’re asking to multiple iterations,” Bloom said. “So, there are links back to what we learned in PCC5, and our learning objectives are linked to the CFWEs that are coming this fiscal year, as well as Project Convergence Capstone 6. So, you’ll see progression in developing the questions, not so much changing and developing new questions. We’re taking what we have learned; We’re looking at it again to get more reps and sets as we develop further into the future.”
AFC experimentation is always done in conjunction with the U.S. Army’s Joint and Multinational partners. For JWA 25, the focus is on collaborating with Australia during Talisman Sabre. The exercise is important to partners and allies around the region, said Vice Admiral Justin Jones, Australian Chief of Joint Operations.
“Talisman Sabre demonstrates our enduring Alliance with the United States, through deepening cooperation in training and force integration,” Jones said. “It is a key opportunity to work with our partners from across the region and around the globe, demonstrating our combined capability to achieve large-scale operational outcomes together.”
Talisman Sabre is the largest bilateral military exercise between Australia and the United States advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific by strengthening relationships and interoperability among key allies and partners, while enhancing our collective capabilities to respond to a wide array of potential security concerns.
With the successful completion of Talisman Sabre 25, the Army Modernization Enterprise will now execute a number of small-scale assessments and experiments, including a series of CFWEs, gathering insights to feed into Project Convergence Capstone 6, planned for the summer of 2026.
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