In pursuing its modernization goals, the Army wants bullets, tanks, radios and rifles that are up to 10 times as capable as the gear it currently fields.
The Army wants leap-ahead technologies and platforms that will allow it to “shoot, move, communicate, protect and sustain” an extended land-based campaign against a technologically sophisticated foe, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Jan. 17 at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army outside Washington, D.C.
“We want to be so dominant, so good, so capable, that our enemies would never dare attack the United States and that our enemies know, for sure, they would lose,” Milley said. “The act of readiness today and preparing for tomorrow, the actual act of modernization and the act of readiness, actually deters war. That is ultimately what you want because it is much cheaper than fighting one and if you do not modernize you might end up fighting one and losing one. So, we don’t want that.”
The Army already has outlined the six lines of investment that will tackle those modernization priorities: long-range precision fires; future vertical lift (FVL); next-generation combat vehicles (NGCV); secure command and control networks; and soldier equipment and weapons. In 2018, Secretary Mark Esper, Deputy Secretary Ryan McCarthy, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville and other top service officials will join Milley in “driving those six priorities absolutely ruthlessly.”
The Army will continue to focus on near-term readiness as its top priority, “but readiness is not good enough,” Milley said.
“You have to also prepare for some unknown future at some unknown date and that takes us to modernization – another word, really, for future readiness,” he said. “If all you do is focus on the present, and then you mortgage the future, then you’re going to be in a world of hurt 15 years from now.”
In the area of long-range precision fires, Milley said the Army wants guided conventional bullets and artillery that are not as sophisticated or expensive or immobile as missile batteries. Technology to launch conventional projectiles at orders of magnitude greater ranges is available, he said.
“I’m not talking about the ranges that exist today,” he said. “I’m talking about a 10x capability for ground forces to reach out and touch, not with missiles, but with bullets. The technology is there. The engineering is there. The capability is there. It’s not physically, right this minute, but we’re working very hard … to get long-range precision fires.”
On land and in the air, the Army is seeking a similar “10x” increase in range, payload, speed and lethality over legacy AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, M1 Abrams tanks and other platforms. NGCV and FVL both seek optionally-manned vehicles that combine emerging technologies with existing capabilities and those that are not yet scientifically feasible, Milley said.
“Those vehicles … again, we’re talking about 10x capabilities that don’t physically exist in the real world right this minute, but they will,” he said. “We’re doing a lot of engineering, S&T, to make them exist.”
After halting its current network modernization trajectory, the Army plans a “pivot” to a new pathway to a secure battlefield communication network that is resilient and hardened against enemy cyber disruption, intrusion and attack.
“The command, control, communications systems that we have are very capable and they’re good for a certain type of war in a certain type of environment. But, it was my assessment that there is a massive amount of improvement that is radically and quickly needed in order to have a command, control, communication system that is effective against a competitor that has high-end capabilities like electronic warfare, cyber and so on.”
For all off those capabilities to be effective tools on a future battlefield, the force must survive to make contact with the enemy, which is the impetus for establishing sophisticated air and missile defense for deployed tactical units.
“None of that is going to matter if you’re dead,” Milley said. “So you have to protect the force.”