MODERNIZING ARMY MODERNIZATION
and equipment are far past due for replacement.
“Our modernization strategy is now on a curve of diminishing returns,” McCarthy said Oct. 11 at AUSA. In the past 16 years that the U.S. military has been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, he noted, a tech- nologically inferior enemy has created techniques to adapt quickly and cheaply. Potential adversaries Russia, China, North Korea and Iran have invested in technologies that had long been strengths of the U.S. military, “while we have made incremental improvements to our legacy close-combat capabilities.”
Russia, in particular, has invested signifi- cantly in standoff technology, especially anti-access and area-denial capabilities, including cyber, anti-ship, long-range fires, robotics, unmanned aerial systems and air and missile defenses.
“Our current ways of thinking, executing and organizing are limiting our capa- bility to keep pace with change with respect to modernization and acquisition,” McCarthy added, saying, “To use a sports analogy, Russia and China are training as a boxer. We continue to train as a wrestler. Tey focus on throwing punches from a distance to prevent us from getting close enough to use our strengths, and they are improving faster than we are.”
HEIGHTENED FOCUS ON TRAINING To beat the threats of the future battle- field, the Army will need modern systems that meet the challenges of this new era of multidomain battle. Supporting new capabilities will require significantly more sophisticated training, starting at the Soldier level, McCarthy and Milley said. “We want our leaders at all levels, at all echelons, to make thousands of simu- lated combat tactical decisions against a
16
thinking and adaptive enemy in order to gain confidence and skill and learn from their mistakes.”
Te Army has upgraded its combat train- ing centers to reflect the stresses of actual combat across multiple domains, Milley noted. Next, it plans to build a large-scale urban combat center. But even expensive, state-of-the-art, live-fire or live force- on-force training doesn’t provide nearly enough repetitions to develop the high- level leader and Soldiering skills that future battle will require, Milley said.
“We will do this by radically improv- ing our synthetic training environment,” currently geared to helicopter pilots and some tank crews, with limited simula- tion systems available for individual and squad training.
“Te technology exists now,” he said, “to conduct realistic training in any ter- rain in all the urban areas of the world with any scenario against any enemy— anything that the commander deems necessary. … We just need at our level to focus our resources and provide them the opportunity.”
‘A LEADER ISSUE’ Te Army’s dramatically new approach to modernization is much more than a capability road map, however. It rep- resents a new way of thinking about acquisition leadership, said McCarthy, whose perspective on leadership reflects
broad-based experience—as a Ranger who was involved in early combat opera- tions in Afghanistan, a special assistant to Secretary of Defense Dr. Robert M. Gates and the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, a congressional staffer and, most recently, as a vice president of Lockheed Martin Corp. with an MBA.
Taken together, the Army’s plan for
acquisition reform follows four principles to improve Army processes, he said:
• Early engagement and collaboration among stakeholders.
• Centralized planning with decentral- ized execution.
• Cost- and resource-informed decisions. • Consistent metrics to evaluate success.
To that end, McCarthy, as acting Army secretary, directed the personnel
sup-
porting the capabilities and acquisition processes to obtain enhanced training, education and experience certification.
“We will develop a broadening assign- ment program for DA civilians,” he said at AUSA, with opportunities to work in S&T, engineering, materiel development and sustainment as well as fellowships with industry to develop leaders with a broader understanding of the generation and acquisition of Army requirements.
“Initially, we will develop a talent manage- ment plan for future program managers to gain experience in science and technology
“Our failure to modernize as quickly as possible will most likely exacerbate the significant risks the total Army now faces.”—Dr. Mark T. Esper
Army AL&T Magazine April-June 2018
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