Basically, they mirror our thought process in research, to say, well, “If the U.S. Army thinks that unmanned aerial systems are important, then we’ll get unmanned aerial systems. If they think night vision goggles are important, then we’ll get night vision goggles.” Tey’re really just taking advantage of all the hard work that we’ve done and our thought pro- cess—actually, from a macro level, not even, “We’re going to steal their plans for night vision goggles,” but “We’re going to get some, because the United States Army thinks that’s a useful thing.”
Whatever capability we have, they will try to emulate it. I don’t care who the enemy is. So when you start to describe the environment you’re going to oper- ate in, it’s actually much more powerful than trying to predict it. Because then you have to say, “I am going to have to fight somebody who’s probably not going to take me head to head with my strengths, but, again, whatever I’m strong at, it forces them into another area.” Tat’s not to say not to be strong at something; it’s just to say that if you don’t want them to do something, you probably ought to be very good at it to prevent them from doing it.
Te second thing is, if you describe what the future is, now you can start thinking about, well, what does the Army have to do about it? Chapter 2 of the AOC describes the future. Chapter 3 says, OK, now that you’ve described the future, what is it that the Army has to be good at? So we talk about how the Army has to operate, our tenets and core compe- tencies and things like that. And then the last thing that we say is three things: Describe the future, describe what the Army has to do and then how do you get there—how do you take concepts and turn them into capabilities?
EYE ON AUTONOMY
A British Soldier holds a Prox Dynamics PD-100 Black Hornet Personal Reconnaissance System, a palm-sized miniature helicopter weighing only 16 grams. Researchers with the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center are testing the Black Hornet to provide squad-sized units with organic aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability in challenging ground environments. The application of emerging technology creates the potential for affordable, interoperable, autonomous and semiautonomous systems that can provide force multipliers at all echelons, from the squad to the brigade combat team. (Photo courtesy of United Kingdom Ministry of Defence)
In Chapter 4, we go from concept to capabilities. So we really do three things, and Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are laid out that way.
ARMY AL&T: You have said, looking ahead to Force 2025 and Beyond, that
“Everybody’s got to change.” What does this mean for the Army AL&T com- munity in the near, mid- and long term? What does it mean for the TRADOC requirements community?
PERKINS: If you look at the previous concept that I grew up in the Army with, AirLand Battle, [it was a] great con- cept, very intellectually rigorous, and drove a lot of change. AirLand Battle was written specifically to deal with the known: the Soviet Union in the central plains of Europe with NATO. We knew
the enemy. We knew the location. We knew the coalition. Tis AOC, “Win in a Complex World,” is specifically to deal with the unknown. We don’t know who the enemy is. We don’t know where we will fight, and we have no idea who we’ll fight with. [It is] the same intellec- tual process: Who is the enemy, where do we fight and what’s the coalition? But a very different answer. When you look back at AirLand Battle, … it gets back to innovation. Everybody wants to innovate. Who wants to say, “Hey, I’m a legacy guy. I just wanna keep what we have. Getting new stuff is very expensive and a waste of time. In fact, I just want to go back 10 years.”
Everybody wants to innovate. But there are two ways to innovate. If you’re deal- ing with the known, like I grew up [with]
ASC.ARMY.MIL 109
CRITICAL THINKING
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