SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY


PROBLEM SET


Army takes new approach to identify and prioritize S&T ‘challenges’ that it will tackle in coming years


by Margaret C. Roth


As the Army moves ahead with plans to reinvent its science and technology (S&T) effort, key priorities are emerging for S&T investment, along with a fundamentally new approach to defining and executing them.


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n an interview Aug. 10 with Army AL&T Magazine, Dr. Marilyn Miller Freeman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Tech-


nology, laid out an investment strategy to address seven pervasive problems for which S&T solutions are appropriate and worthwhile, and how the Army will address these problems against a set of specific prioritized “challenges.”


The seven “Big Army” problems, along with many of the specific challenges they pose, were defined from the perspective of providing Soldiers with a decisive edge,


“what is it that we need to be able to put our technologies toward in order to make a difference to the Soldiers who are in small


Army AL&T Magazine


units, operating in whatever conditions they have to, and wherever they have to operate around the world,” Freeman said.


The goal is to develop specific programs by FY14 to address the challenges and to deliver specific solutions by FY17 or sooner. The Army plans to engage industry early in this process, sharing the problems and S&T challenges at the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Oct. 10-12 in Washington, DC.


To make this new process viable, Army S&T has had to align its processes with the bigger Army and its fiscal processes to ensure that S&T priorities will be


properly synchronized with and influ- enced by Army leadership.


REALIGNMENT Army S&T has achieved this fundamen- tal realignment in part by organizing its efforts into five portfolios, Freeman said.


“We now have a very well defined Sol- dier S&T portfolio, a Ground Systems portfolio, an Air portfolio, a Command, Control, and Communications portfolio, and a Basic Research portfolio.”


As a result, Army S&T can clearly articu- late ongoing efforts in those portfolios and desired results for the next couple of years through a restructured approval pro- cess at the three- and four-star levels.


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