Gen. Christopher Donahue, the commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa (USAREUR-AF), holds an Estonian soldier’s drone during Exercise Hedgehog 25 near Camp Reedo, Estonia on May 15, 2025. Exercise Hedgehog 25 is a large-scale international military exercise led by the Estonian Defence Forces, focused on the rapid deployment of allied forces and the enhancement of multinational interoperability. (U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Jaidyn Moore)
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WASHINGTON — The Army’s top leader in Europe stressed the importance of interoperability and secure data sharing as he spoke to industry partners during the 2025 Association of the U.S. Army LANDEURO conference in Wiesbaden, Germany yesterday .
As the Army and U.S. forces prepare for possible conflicts with strategic competitors in the Baltic region, Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said that the Army would like conformity within its ranks and those of allied partners.
For example, U.S. forces would like to have one fire control system with defensive and offensive capabilities that can be used across the Army and the joint force, Donahue said.
“Right now, there are many nations that if they buy a platform and another nation buys that platform, they’re not interoperable because of that lack of common operating system,” Donahue said. “It’s trust. That’s all that is. We can solve it.”
He added that consolidating one, long-range weapon systems across the joint force will provide more flexible options including being optionally manned. Soldiers can operate those systems with a crew or remotely.
“We want it to be one system, optionally manned , and we will be able to take munitions from any country and shoot through that,” he said, speaking before NATO partners, allies and industry leaders Wednesday.
Donahue stressed that lower costs will be key to acquiring interoperable systems the Army needs in potential conflicts. He said that previous Army chiefs of staff cited interoperability and unity of effort as a critical component.
The USAREUR-AF commander also said that the Army’s top priority, its network, will be critical to safeguarding the free flow of data and information among U.S. forces and partners. Service leaders have called for more simple intuitive systems that are cost effective.
“The first thing that we always talk about is data,” Donahue said. “We need industry to mitigate the risk that every nation sees in data. So if we talk about [the]cloud, you as industry have to come in and talk about how we can share data without that nation being concerned about where that data is going to be.”
Donahue said ground forces have continually grown in importance, as the Army’s transformation efforts have shifted towards large-scale ground combat. The service’s larger modernization efforts, transformation in contact, or TiC, will allow the service to rapidly acquire cost-effective equipment to adapt to evolving threats and integrate new capabilities.
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