ARMY AL&T


confidence in the identification of requirements and costs.


It is our intention to achieve 70 percent or more requirements identification and definition for each capability, ensuring that they are resource-informed earlier and in-house before we issue requests to industry for proposals.


Examining Requirements As part of this effort and in addition to establishing threshold requirements, we also see the need to identify sub- threshold requirements, to set the stage for trades during the development and design process and to support high- fidelity modeling or virtual prototyping.


Design engineers have to deal with many competing requirements and performance parameters or criteria. We have to define the acceptable trade space within which they will operate. These must be well-defined with metrics, and we must be able to use the metrics and the cost/benefit to make affordable trades across warfighting functions and the DOTMLPF. Analyzing these criteria using modeling and virtual prototyping will reduce time, energy, and money.


All this will provide more cost and performance data than what is currently required at the defense acquisition Milestone A and as prescribed by the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act of 2009; DoD Directive 5000.01, The Defense Acquisition System; and DoD Instruction 5000.02, Operation of the Defense Acquisition System.


True success in this process will require the Army to develop in-house expertise to better understand what we need and to identify the associated technical risks to better guide and support industry efforts. Obtaining greater knowledge of requirements upfront will drive down costs, risks, and time to production, particularly when this knowledge is coupled with affordability targets in dollars and force structure.


16 APRIL –JUNE 2011


Learning and Adapting Faster One of the challenges in a knowledge- based approach is trying to determine when you know enough to go forward, while not letting the learning rigor develop into rigor mortis. Understanding that learning is a continuous effort, the Army must adapt to a shorter, faster “learn, adapt, learn, adapt” cycle. The Army must move away from an over-reliance on necessary long-term, sequential planning and become flexible enough to include emergent learning and innovation, to evolve capabilities as opposed to pursuing long-lead, high- risk, leap-ahead technologies.


Lessons from the current fight continue to show that a faster cycle of change is needed, along with the ability to field in increments to support the operational Army’s battle rhythm, the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) cycle.


The pace of change, the deployment cycles, and the need to learn and adapt mean that the Army may not buy the same item for every unit. This leads to a strategy requiring the Army to equip to mission and to buy fewer, more often. The Army is already seeing pressures to buy for those units that must be ready in the ARFORGEN cycle, set up deci- sion points for the next cycle, adjust contracting to reflect incentivizing com- petition through that next decision, and insert technology as it becomes available.


Force modernization needs to be related to readiness. This includes forcing ourselves to look at the cost of main- taining operational availability versus a new start: What is the crossover point of upgrading or modernizing a current system with component parts, com- pared with a new program? We need a long-term, informed strategy that has frequently established decision points.


All of these factors give the Army a tremendous incentive to get more knowledge earlier, to more effec- tively execute the development and


acquisition of capabilities by the most rapid, efficient, and affordable means.


With the current resource constraints and the demand to drive continuing relevance of sometimes lengthy institutional processes, TRADOC has shifted from a five-year to a two-year cycle to examine and update operational and functional concepts. As stated earlier, these documents are key to developing the force modernization strategy, as they identify the gaps from the baseline.


These shifts allow for more frequent submissions to keep up with the pace of change, incorporate lessons learned, and support critical budget and program decisions.


From a process standpoint, this cycle leverages warfighting-focused concepts as the basis for Capabilities Based Assessments to inform Program Objective Memorandum development. With a faster concept cycle and more knowledge earlier, we can provide budget input that gives us higher confidence in executing an affordable force modernization strategy.


Evaluating Capabilities Experimentation, testing, and exer- cises are valuable venues for gaining knowledge earlier in the process. But today these venues are too sequential, with very little sharing nor a collabora- tive building of the knowledge base earlier and throughout their execution. Separate, sequential events mean longer time and increased costs.


The Army must move to converge its experiments, evaluations, and testing. This convergence has the greatest potential to accelerate the delivery of capabilities without sacrificing necessary learning. To speed up testing, all known and emerging test issues, test criteria, and all earlier test results must be made available and used to inform all follow-on experimentation, testing,


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