UNDERSTANDING ARMY ACQUISITION


All of the flexibilities that Congress has given us—middle-tier acquisition, other-transaction authority and others—are great tools in our kit, but we must approach reform in a process-based way.


Jette: Tere are products that we’re work- ing on that clearly benefit from this new approach. Since AFC was established more than a year ago, we can see a much more capable performance on our part. We’ve got a much more intimate relationship between the requirements and acquisi- tion communities—the interlocked hands I referred to earlier.


Army AL&T: So does this give Soldiers a better opportunity to have input into the development of equipment that they’ll eventually get?


Jette: It depends on the program. Some programs are well-suited to having a lot more Soldier touch points. Te Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) is a great example. Soldiers are involved with IVAS on a weekly basis. While the acqui- sition program manager is working on development of the materiel solution, the AFC cross-functional team lead is work- ing on providing Soldiers who can answer the next set of questions. So the two orga- nizations work tremendously well toward generating a much better product much faster, because of that close, cooperative and intimate relationship.


Army AL&T: Are there any other exam- ples, besides IVAS, of how that’s coming?


READY FOR DELIVERY


Jette: Having Soldiers involved in systems early has been easiest with those systems that are very familiar to the Soldier. Te next-generation squad weapon rifle and automatic rifle are two examples.


Personnel from Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pennsylvania, prepare 2-Channel Leader Radios for shipment to the 3rd Security Force Assistance Brigade at Fort Hood, Texas. Once the acquisition community produces an item, the Army fields it according to the fielding sequence determined by Army G-3/5/7 and the fielding strategy determined by Army senior leaders. (Photo by Thomas Robbins, U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command)


The development of those weapons involved a lot of Soldier touch points at the front end, when we looked at the prototypes. Tat brought us to a contract that gives us four systems to test. Tose systems were based on requirements that came from a very mature assessment of some of the previous prototypes, which then led to the new prototypes, all with a


cleaner set of requirements. So we expect that the Soldiers, once we “down-select” to the weapon desired, will be very happy with that weapon produced.


Army AL&T: Shifting gears just a bit, what role does talent management have in the acquisition process?


https://asc.ar my.mil


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