Army graphic

The two contenders for the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), just one of 35 priority modernization programs: The Bell 360 Invictus (top) and the Sikorsky Raider-X (bottom)

WASHINGTON: Officials from across the Army are thrashing out how to field a host of new weapons to combat units without disrupting readiness and training.

“We’re conducting rock drills right now,” said Lt. Gen. Thomas Todd, head of acquisition for Army Futures Command. “And it really has to do with, not just what we can afford to do, but the absorption rate and how it impacts readiness.”

The Army is developing 35 top-priority technologies, from hypersonic missiles to higher-caliber rifles, set to enter service between now and 2030. But if you give a single unit too much new technology at once, or at the wrong point in its train-up cycle, you actually disrupt its training and make it less ready for real-world operations. That’s unacceptable to the Army, which is building a master plan called REARMM (Regionally Aligned Readiness & Modernization Model) to guide how its forces train, deploy and modernize.

“What we don’t want to do is to affect [units] to a point where we’re not ready… that being the driving factor behind these rehearsals,” Todd told a Defense News webcast this morning, a prelude to the AUSA’s Global Force Next conference starting tomorrow. “[So] we’re going through right now in an attempt to take all those delivery dates, all those first units equipped, all those initial operational capability dates, and synchronize them.”

These “REARRM rock drills” will likely end up changing the schedule for fielding some systems to some units, Todd said. In some cases, vendors may build equipment – since a steady production rate is the most economical – but then put it in “storage” until a unit is ready to receive it.

Figuring this out is a major effort across the Army. Involved in the practice and planning sessions, Todd said, are:

  • Section G-3 (Operations & Plans) of the Army’s Pentagon staff, in a leading role;
  • Army Futures Command (where Todd works), which oversees modernization from lab to fielding;
  • the Army’s acquisition office, ASA(ALT) which actually buys all new equipment;
  • Army Materiel Command (AMC), which supplies and sustains all forces;
  • Forces Command (FORSCOM), which trains and organizes all units not yet assigned to a theater command; and
  • Training & Doctrine Command (TRADOC), which conducts all individual skills training.

TRADOC also turns futuristic concepts into official Army doctrine. Now it’s in the midst of evolving the Army’s Multi-Domain Operations concept, a sweeping vision of future warfare first outlined in 2016 and detailed in a formal concepts document in 2018, into a practical field manual by summer 2022.

It used to be that concepts and doctrine were both written by TRADOC, but the 2018 reorganization that united disparate modernization organizations under Futures Command split what became the Futures & Concepts Center (FCC) from TRADOC, making it part of Futures Command. So, admitted FCC director Lt. Gen. Scott McKean, “we just added to the complexity of it.”

But McKean has a strong personal relationship with the head of TRADOC’s Combined Arms Center (CAC), Lt. Gen. James Rainey, and they’ve built it into a strong institutional partnership, he said. They sit in on each others’ meetings with subordinates, McKean told the Defense News webcast, and CAC is now formally designated as being “in direct support” to Army Futures Command, an important coordinating measure in the Army.

The other tricky gap to bridge is between Army Futures Command and ASA(ALT), the office of the Assistant Secretary for the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, & Technology. Futures Command oversees all modernization, and it actively runs Army labs, a host of experiments and wargames, and the writing of formal requirements for acquisition programs. But the actual procurement process, by law, is run by ASA(ALT). There’ve been reportedly times when different views led to problems, as on the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle to replace the Bradley.

Todd sees his role as strengthening the connection between the acquisition corps and Futures Command, just as McKean’s role includes strengthening Futures Command’s ties with TRADOC.

“One of the reasons I am here, and Scott and I were brought in… was to create a team that could sew up really some of those seams and gaps,” Todd said. His own office has significantly increased in authority, gaining oversight of a wide range of partnerships with industry and academia.

 

An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to Lt. Gen. McKean as Keane. The current version is correct.