Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Apache attack and Black Hawk utility helicopters, and the Patriot missile defense system], it was really the big 64. Tere were five primary weapon systems. It was about another 59 programs that fell well underneath those capabilities—seriously.”
McCarthy is serious—and passionate—about the Army’s new big six. “If you look at the six priorities, long-range pre- cision fires—there are several programs that fall under that. Future vertical lift could be tactical, it could be lift, it could be unmanned systems, but it’s all underneath that. Same thing [is] true with networks. Soldier lethality spans all fun- damentals—shoot, move, communicate, sustain, protect. … It’s very important that we manage these like a portfolio of capabilities, so that we get an adequate hedge.” Tat hedge is an important part of a tech portfolio, especially if one line of inquiry turns out to be far more significant than reasonably anticipated at first.
GETTING CHANGE DONE How to make change happen in the Army to best effect mod- ernization, McCarthy said, was on the table from the start of his discussions with Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis, who, he said, understood that “a critical element to America’s national defense is going to be a modernization program that’s focused against near-peer competitors. I knew this back when I inter- viewed with him in the spring, very early in the spring.”
It became abundantly clear at McCarthy’s confirmation hearing that modernization was going to be the most significant mission for the Army. “If you followed my confirmation testimony, I didn’t get a lot of questions, but the ones that I did were entirely about this subject,” he said.
But that subject was not a surprise to McCarthy. A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, he was a U.S. Army Ranger who “went to war 17 years ago in a JSOC [Joint Special Opera- tions Command] unit” in Afghanistan. Following his service, he earned an MBA, worked as a staffer on Capitol Hill, and for former Secretary of Defense Dr. Robert M. Gates during both the Bush and Obama administrations. Later he worked for Lockheed Martin Corp., so his passion for the Army is tempered only by his in-depth knowledge of the realities of the different aspects of acquisition.
In many ways, McCarthy approaches change in the Army both as someone who is Army green to the core, but also as a busi- nessman. If the Army is to do its job, putting it in a position
to do so is a business proposition. And, for McCarthy, a lot of business is relationships. Most important among those are his relationships with Milley and McConville.
“I have a very strong relationship with the chief and the vice [chief]. I’ve known them from a previous life, served with them before.” Tose relationships helped him when he came into office to start to “move quickly, because there was trust already established. In one of my early conversations with the chief, I said, ‘You’ve got to nail down the priorities,’ ” and then stick with them. Indeed, McCarthy said, he and Milley have agreed that for as long as they are in office, they will continue to hammer those six priorities so that everyone, from DOD to Congress to industry to the whole of the acquisition, logistics and technology enterprise, knows and understands them.
“We can’t change, because we need to have the system primed against these six capabilities. You’ve got to let industry know, you’ve got to let Congress know, you’ve got to let OSD [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] know about it so that they see the entire Army get into formation in phalanx and attack.” Tat’s exactly what is happening now, he said, even if decisions are still to be made.
ON THE SAME PAGE
McCarthy, left, has said that as long as he and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, right, are in office, they will continue to emphasize the Army’s six modernization priorities so that all stakeholders—including DOD, the Army acquisition enterprise and Congress—know and understand them. (U.S. Army photo by John G. Martinez)
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