BACK TALK
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From the Editor-in-Chief
“Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation. … Te only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic.”
Arthur C. Clarke “BBC Horizon,” 1964 F
or Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the future will be the stuff of today’s fantasy. Tere is no single path to it, but, from an Army acquisition perspective, we must make
certain that the “fantastic” capabilities realized in the future are ours, not those of our adversar- ies. Tere are two ways to do this. Te first is by letting current capabilities drive what the future looks like; the second is to envision the future we want and drive the technology toward it. Te Army can’t avoid the first, but it must embrace the second. Tat is the focus of this issue: the future.
To drive technology toward the future capabili- ties we want and need, we as a community have to accept more risk. Not everything will work out perfectly; there will be failures along the way. Timelines will be missed and money will be an issue, as always. Some of the conditions initially envisioned will change along the way, making a system in development obsolete or irrelevant. Tat should be no surprise. Predicting the future is “discouraging and hazardous,” and we are expe- riencing some of that hazard today, realizing the future as it was predicted 10 or 20 years ago.
Much has been made in recent months of DOD spending more than $46 billion between 2001 and 2011 on weapon systems that never became operational: Future Combat Systems, the Coman- che helicopter, the Crusader artillery system and new presidential helicopters. While those sys- tems didn’t make it, technologies from them have proved useful, and the lessons we learned continue to inform today’s approach to acquisition. In any case, “failure” should not come as a shock. After
all, most of commercial industry’s research and development projects have a return on investment of only 20 percent. Tat means 80 percent of the billions invested annually will not result in one product—and these are the private-sector indus- tries that government agencies are told to emulate.
Yes, we must be good stewards of the taxpayer’s dollar, but to get to the future we desire, we need to accept a level of risk. Tis concept is a central theme of this issue’s candid interview with the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s commanding general, GEN David G. Perkins, on the new “U.S. Army Operating Concept: Win in a Complex World, 2020-2040.” (See Page 106.)
We cannot maintain our technical superiority in the future without investment, but where do we invest and how much? Find out how Army G-8 prioritizes in “Te Long View: LIRA decision sup- port tool enables better long-range planning and budgeting,” on Page 126.
Sensors will be critical to U.S. technical superi- ority in the future, and they’re ubiquitous—just look at your smartphone. See how the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Com- mand’s Communications-Electronics Center is working to create an integrated sensor architecture that can make the most of all that data in “Hybrid Treats, Hybrid Tinking,” on Page 68.
As always, it’s you, the reader, who makes this magazine possible. So we routinely reach out to our readership and ask for your opinions about how the magazine is doing. Now you can read the latest survey results, on Page 170.
For more coverage, please check out our online magazine at
http://usaasc.armyalt.com/. And, if you missed the survey and have comments or questions, write me at
ArmyALT@gmail.com.
Nelson McCouch III Editor-in-Chief
ii Army AL&T Magazine January–March 2015
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