When economic
times are good and
military funding is adequate, sometimes complacency sets in, he said. “When you take a look at the times we’ve had to deploy folks [to overseas contingency operations], the American people have made sure we had sufficient resources. To have those sufficient resources, some- times you aren’t as efficient or mindful of how to save resources. But when you start coming down a little bit … you have to think through your problem sets … start taking a look at the overall process. You’ll see there are plenty of opportunities” to save resources.
A TRACK RECORD OF AGILITY Grisoli said
the Army has adapted
quickly to the many circumstances and events arising from more than 10 years of overseas contingency operations.
“We know how to identify a problem, solve the problem, and implement the solution set, and we’ve done that well over time. We’ve gone from division-cen- tric to brigade-centric, we’ve redone how we do force generation, we’ve gone from tiered to cyclic, we’ve taken a look at the way we have asymmetrical warfare, bio- metrics, task force, route clearance. All the different threats that popped up, we were able to adapt and change.”
Now, Grisoli said, “The leaders in Wash- ington have some tough choices to make. They’re going to decide how many bat- talions you have in a brigade, how many brigades you’re going to have. But our job is to adapt to the environment that we’re in and to make sure the units we are leading are ready. … So, you say, are we adaptive? I would say yes.”
This adaptability applies at home as
well as at war. Responding to a ques- tion from the audience about how overseas contingency operations affect
the Global Combat Support System – Army (G-Army), Grisoli said, “The key on G-Army is that
it will continue to
give us the asset visibility and to bring together lots of our business systems in a logistics domain for general funds. At headquarters we have taken time to look at all of our domains—human, sustain- ment, logistics, acquisition, you name it.
“This particular application, enterprise resource planning, is a way to get our arms around our general fund that we utilize and the way we move equipment. That is going to be extremely important. We need to be able to be audited by FY14 and [have] a clean audit by FY17 for DoD. We’ve never done that before. It’s going to be extremely challenging.”
ACQUISITION AS A TEAM SPORT Another question to Grisoli concerned the need for professionalism.
“Obviously, we in the Army have had some challenges in the acquisition field,” he responded, adding: “We are develop- ing a professional acquisition corps above and beyond what we’ve had before, to go to the next level. Some of the questions I ask our new flag officers are, ‘So, when you ask for a service, whether overseas or when you’re in a garrison, how often do you follow up on that contract? How often do you call in the contracting offi- cer and ask, ‘What is your output? What are you getting for the dollar?’ Most of the time, I don’t get a lot of feedback, and the reason is, they aren’t as linked as they can be.
“We can be better. We need to make sure that if we let a contract out, the user is part of the team. We do a disservice to the acquisition community if we don’t work as a team, because you kind of leave them exposed. They are trying to figure
out the answer. They are professionals. They know their lane. They need some- body who wrote the scope of work to come in and talk about what they want.”
THE OUTLOOK FOR 2020 Grisoli affirmed that “the environment is challenging. There is a lot of uncer- tainty. We know one thing—the physical constraints will stay. We also know our leadership is committed to readiness, and readiness at best value is something we all need to strive for.
“We have the greatest Army in the world, and we will have the greatest Army no matter the size, as long as we retain the great minds in here, the minds that led the last 10 years and kept us at a certain level, and fielded the right equipment and enabled us to succeed.”
As a new generation of leaders rises through the ranks, “you’re starting to look at what [requirements] we will need for Army 2020,” Grisoli said. “And as GEN Sullivan [retired GEN Gordon R. Sullivan, AUSA President] says, ‘Is it postwar or prewar?’ We have to have a mindset of prewar. We’re coming back, but we are resetting for that requirement.”
For more information on the OBT, go to
http://www.armyobt.army.mil/.
ROBERT E. COULTAS is the Army AL&T Magazine Departments Editor and an Access AL&T News Service Edi- tor. He is a retired Army broadcaster with more than 40 years of combined experience in public affairs, journalism, broadcasting, and advertising. Coultas has won numerous Army Keith L. Ware Public Affairs Awards and is a DoD Thomas Jefferson Award recipient.
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