RIDING OUT THE STORM
“WE HAVE BUILT A VERY, VERY EFFECTIVE ARMY, BUT IT ISN’T TERRIBLY EFFICIENT TODAY. AND SO WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO CHANGE THAT PARADIGM.”
Tis drive toward a more strategic assess- ment of Army modernization needs in the near-, mid- and long term has chal- lenged standard DOD planning and budgeting processes, noted Mary Miller, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology. “We are used to, even comfortable with, developing a plan that lasts five years,” she said. “Tis is culture change.” Among other benefits, the long-term assessment
has identi-
fied conflicts and redundancies in Army acquisition programs, such as planned technology upgrades to systems that have already transitioned to sustainment, Miller said.
“It forces a new look at what else might need to happen,” bringing together the PEOs, the S&T community, the require- ments community and the Army G-8, she said. “Te world of 2030 to 2035 is clearly not going to look like the world of today. Treats and capabilities to address those threats, may, in fact, look very different than what we have fielded. Tis exercise forces us to look at those eventualities.”
In the area of for example,
information technology, strategic modernization
planning identifies what technology is needed and where it can be inserted as part of an upgrade. It also shows when the Army needs to start investing for replacement platforms.
GETTING MORE FROM BBP Of the many separate BBP initiatives, applying “should-cost”
analysis 16 Army AL&T Magazine across April–June 2013
programs has had particularly notable results, said MG Harold J. Greene, deputy for acquisition and systems management in the Office of the ASA(ALT), during the BBP discussion at the AUSA Winter Symposium.
“Our savings in FY12 was approximately $370 million that we could point to, where we had concrete savings and we expect more in future years. Our pro- jection right now is $2.5 billion in [FY]13 to 17.”
Te Army is also seeking efficiencies by leveraging the quick reaction capa- bilities (QRCs) fielded to the theaters of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Greene said. “Right
now the department’s
going through a very deliberate process, looking at all of those quick reaction capabilities, and we’re categorizing them. We’re going portfolio by portfolio.”
In the process, the Army is identifying
items that add value in the current fight but are not necessarily useful over the long term; those will be maintained until the end of the fight with OCO funds and then retired. Items in capability areas where the Army plans to invest will be maintained using OCO funds and then replaced with something the Army develops through its research, development, test and evaluation and procurement programs. Some items the Army will simply divest.
At
the AUSA Winter Symposium, ASA(ALT) leaders discussed a number of
lessons learned in their experiences with the BBP initiatives introduced in 2010.
Affordability alone is insufficient— “You can have the most affordable programs coming forward, but if they’re not executed and they’re not set up for success in delivering fully to Soldiers and to our Army on the timeline that you required, then affordability isn’t going to cut it,” said LTG William N. Phillips, principal military deputy to the ASA(ALT). “Tey’ve got to be executable as well.” Tis entails asking certain fundamental questions, he said:
“What’s the maturity of the system today, and what do [PMs] anticipate maturity might be? What are the risks associated with developing the technol- ogy? What is the right balance of risk that both industry and the government should accept? What are the best incen- tives to provide to industry that will help both of us going forward? And how long will it take to get into produc- tion?” (See related article on Page 124.) “And if we look at a development cycle, how long will that development cycle be? If you look at each pro- gram, each one is going to be unique in some kind of way. … And once we’ve done that deep-dive analysis, then we can begin to gather the acqui- sition strategy
and the timelines.”
Increased collaboration among PMs, the S&T community and the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine
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