COMMENTARY
ARCHITECTURE FOR ARMY MODERNIZATION
To reach its goal of an acquisition ‘renaissance,’ the Army must create an architecture for modernization that provides a blueprint for how all of the pieces fit and work together.
by Nickee Abbott and Richard Haberlin, Ph.D., Cmdr., USN (Ret.) P
reparing for conflict requires the Army to modernize not only how it organizes, trains and equips the force, but also how it makes decisions. Te Army budget narra- tive, in which it lays out its rationale for the funding it
requests of Congress, calls for “a bold change—a renaissance— across the Army.” To achieve that renaissance by 2028, the Army has to field the next generation of combat systems, write new doctrine for the optimized use of those systems and reorganize the service into the formations that will fight with them. Develop- ing the new systems will require continuous, iterative interaction among all of Army acquisition’s stakeholders. Engineering them will require architecture, analysis and experimentation.
Te Army’s newly established cross-functional teams each focus on assigned modernization initiatives, leading to improvements in key capabilities. Unfortunately, the mechanism to ensure that these improvements achieve the intended synergy in practi- cal operation is immature. Capabilities must work together in a seamless and intuitive Soldier experience, or they will never make it to the fight. Senior leaders have acknowledged that current processes and tools suffer from three critical flaws:
• The requirements development and refinement process does not execute at the speed necessary to meet the Army’s goals. It often takes years to generate requirements.
• The requirements development process does not clearly align to Soldier needs when integrated across the capability portfolios. Capabilities that increase Soldier burden will be abandoned.
• The analysis of performance is not clearly aligned to support acquisition decisions. Analysis often comes too late to help deci- sion-makers or represents only the best and most ideal use cases.
In a recent example, the Air and Missile Defense Cross-Func- tional Team developed the Mobile Short-Range Air Defense system to fit an immediate need for maneuver units to identify and counter air threats quickly and effectively. However, the solution design does not include requirements for integration with the existing defensive and offensive fire control systems: the Integrated Fire Control Network or the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System. Te operational benefit of an integrated solution was lost during requirements generation.
SOLUTION To achieve a modernization renaissance, the Army needs to address the three critical flaws in the acquisition process. Te best way to address them is a robust architecture development process. Architecture, like a blueprint for a building, serves as a planning guide for system development. In the same way that a blueprint indicates where walls should connect but does not define what color they are painted, the architecture should be
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