‘TRAIL BOSSING’ THE NIE
WHAT DOES THE NIE MEAN FOR THE ARMY? We’re changing our way of doing busi- ness, and the NIE is a key enabler of this. The Army is developing an agile acqui- sition process, to allow rapid infusion of industry and government network technology and allow for Soldier-driven evaluations of this technology during semiannual events.
What will come out of these events will be a fundamental change in how we deliver capabilities to our Soldiers. We will deliver network capabilities in sync with the Army Force Genera- tion (ARFORGEN) process, meaning that deploying units will get the latest network capability in the form of capa- bility sets directly linked to the two-year ARFORGEN process. Deploying units will thus receive integrated, tested, and evaluated capabilities. NIEs will help to lessen the in-field integration burden on our operational units by providing rel- evant operational environments in which to evaluate new technologies and capa- bilities that make up capability packages and sets before fielding the new systems to operational units.
The NIEs will also provide a means to evaluate relevant capabilities in paral- lel and make incremental improvements based upon a disciplined feedback cycle. The effort will help facilitate rapid evalu- ation of commercial and government network solutions to establish a network baseline and then rapidly build from it.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE INTEGRATION CHALLENGES THE ACQUISITION COMMUNITY IS FACING, LEADING UP TO THE NIE? When the Army fields network capabili- ties, not all Soldiers receive them at the same time.
12 Army AL&T Magazine
Part of our challenge during the NIE is to figure out how to make sure units that have the new capabilities can talk to units that don’t have all the new capabilities. It’s all about proper capability integration and real-world, Soldier-driven, operation- ally relevant evaluations. It’s a learning process, and that’s what this entire com- munity is working to solve.
Part of the challenge of ensuring proper capability integration is looking at how we can synchronize program-of-record schedules and test and evaluation events, while at the same time infusing develop- mental and emerging capabilities into the events. This takes an enormous system-of- systems engineering effort—something that the Army is now poised to take on coming out of the Future Combat Sys- tems and Early Infantry Brigade Combat Team programs.
But it’s more than just aligning programs; it’s also forcing a culture change within the acquisition community—getting
program managers and systems engineers to no longer look only at their programs as individual efforts, but instead to develop their programs to ensure that they integrate into the brigade formation and exhibit appropriate interoperability. I would argue that this change of culture is one of the biggest challenges, but we are making great headway even in this first NIE. Bringing together 30-plus capabilities within a matter of months is no small accomplishment.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED SO FAR, EARLY IN THE NIE PROCESS? One of the largest lessons learned so far is that teamwork across various and diverse Army commands is key to this effort. To conduct the NIE and to ensure proper integration throughout the Agile Process, the Army has established a triad that includes oversight from three key organizations: Program Executive Office (PEO) Integration, the Army’s Test and Evaluation Command, and the Brigade
PART OF OUR CHA L L ENGE D U R I N G THE N I E I S TO F I G U R E O U T H OW TO MA K E S U R E U N I T S THAT HAVE THE NEW CA PA B I L ITI E S CAN TA LK TO UNITS THAT DON’T HAVE A L L THE NEW CA PA B I L ITI E S .
IT’S ALL ABOUT PROPER CAPABILITY INTEGRATION AND REAL-WORLD, SOLDIER-DRIVEN,
OPERATIONALLY RELEVANT EVALUATIONS.”
”
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