Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth discusses lessons learned on newly fielded equipment with 41st Artillery Brigade in Grafenwohr, Germany, Oct. 27, 2021. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Keisha Brown)
AUSA 2022 — The US Army wants to harness emerging technology to enhance its logistics capabilities across the vast distances of the Indo-Pacific as the service looks to define its role in the region.
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said that she had tasked Gen. Edward Daly, commander of Army Materiel Command, to “lead a comprehensive effort to strengthen” the service’s capabilities in the region.
“We really have to focus on contested logistics in the Indo-Pacific which is the most demanding theater, if you will, from a logistics perspective because of the distances involved,” Wormuth told reporters last week during a press conference on the side of the annual Association of the United States Army conference, adding that “we’re just getting started with that initiative.”
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Army Materiel Command is a four-star command responsible for deploying the service’s assets from installations to tactical positions, making it the backbone of the Army’s logistics efforts. Wormuth said she wants the command to explore autonomous distribution, more energy efficient combat systems as well as predictive analytics.
“Leveraging experimentation, wargames and exercises, this effort will bring together our logistics community with the commercial sector to look at our requirements and focus on the opportunities presented by autonomous distribution, energy efficient combat systems, and data analytics,” Wormuth said in her keynote speech.
Wormuth said during the press conference that she’s looking for AMC to “really explore where can we get ahead leveraging those kinds of technologies.”
As the Pentagon writ large looks to transition its focus away from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, the Army is looking to define its role in the region dominated by vast oceans. Last year, Wormuth said that the service would be the “linchpin” service for the joint force in the region, providing command and control capabilities, offensive fires and movement of materiel for the US and allies.
“There has to be a way of distributing supplies, munitions, fuel to the entire joint force — to providing command and control, you know, over that very wide area. And the Army, I think, is very well-positioned to do that.” she said then.
To do exactly that, Wormuth said during the show last week that the Army has “a lot that we can learn from the kind of innovation that’s happening in the commercial sector.”
“We’ve done a very good job of partnering with industry around the development of new combat capabilities, but I think we need to make sure we’re fully exploring what we can do in terms of logistics with the commercial sector,” she said.
