realm of the possible? For example, how are you looking at capabilities differently than before Force 2025 and Beyond?
PERKINS: We’ve really got to focus a lot more on what I call “first principles.” Tat is, a lot of times we develop requirements and you build to those requirements with a focus on a level of specificity that is not useful, and, in many ways is sort of self- confining. So one of the things we should understand in the world of the future that we operate in, is that the capability of the United States Army that is most transferable is technology.
In other words, almost anything the United States Army has, our enemy can go out and buy it, if they have enough money, on the black market or the orange market or whatever. So the thing that we have to do is [look at] what is the thing that gives us the edge that is difficult to transfer. Pure technology, all you have to do is get a thumb drive in the right com- puter, and you can download a bunch of technology very quickly. Where we have the advantage is the way that our tech- nology interfaces with the Soldiers, the Soldier-technology
interface, the way
that, again, they can innovate with that, adapt and innovate. How quickly can they adapt to the conditions that they’re operating in, and how rapidly can we increase that rate of innovation?
When we take a look at a fighting vehicle, for instance, how does a Soldier interface with that? How adaptive is this vehicle to many different scenarios, many differ- ent mission sets, and have we built this thing with the understanding that what- ever strength this thing has is going to be very short-lived, [and] therefore we’re going to have to constantly innovate and make this bigger? Te things that I think will have the shortest half-life, are they very easily innovated at a reasonable cost?
Tere are certain things, like the rubber on the tires. Te technology in tire rub- ber probably doesn’t change as quickly as software, for instance. Or it may be even ballistic protection. So we’ve got to fig- ure out, when we build something, what are the pieces of that technology that are going to quickly become outdated. Tere- fore, those are the things that should be most easily innovated at a reasonable cost, and it has to be something that is doable and is built into the process. I’m not sure that we generate requirements like that right now. We generally bite a whole chunk at once.
ARMY AL&T: We did an issue about a year ago on agile acquisition, but that’s more on how to speed up the process of developing a product. You’re actually talk- ing about agile inserted in the product so that you can easily update it as you need. How do you keep this concept of agile from being just another spiral develop- ment or Future Combat Systems … and everyone just rolls their eyes in Congress?
PERKINS: I don’t mean to be poking holes in AirLand Battle, because I think it really transformed the Army. … I constantly have to describe to folks the significant differences in this [new con- cept], which is unknown world versus known world, [and] rate of innovation. Another part of this is that we do gap
analysis: Here’s the requirement that’s out there, here’s the requirement I have and here’s the delta gap. So we’re basi- cally trying to manage shortages: Here’s the bad guy capability, here’s my capa- bility, I have a gap, which means you’re basically letting the current enemy define what you focus on. Te other thing we have to get better at is exploiting oppor- tunities, whether it’s from a technology point of view or not. It really is a hybrid, both concepts and technology. Tere’s a symbiotic relationship there.
I’ll use technology [as an example]; peo- ple can best relate to it: Here’s something that just popped up, wherever it popped up out of. It wasn’t in any requirements document. It wasn’t anything we’ve been thinking about, but it’s an opportunity we can exploit. Te problem we have now— because our system is built to deliver level of differentiation, which takes a long time [and is] a very long and arduous and lockstep process—is that, when new opportunities arise, if they weren’t part of the original requirements, it’s very difficult to exploit that opportunity because we’re so focused on another gap here.
If I exploit an opportunity over here, which wasn’t apparent two years ago when we built the POM [program objec- tive memorandum] and had a program of record, what I need to do is kill this
THE BIGGEST CONCERN I HAVE IS THAT WE WILL BE UNWILLING TO HAVE THE COURAGE INTELLECTUALLY TO CHANGE WHAT WE HAVE TO CHANGE TO PRODUCE THE PHYSICAL THAT WE NEED TO HAVE.
ASC.ARMY.MIL
111
CRITICAL THINKING
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