By Ann Roosevelt
A versatile, adaptable operational Army facing an uncertain security environment needs a continuously adaptive institution as well, a top general said.
“I’m talking about the processes that in the department don’t need to be as long as they are and there are ways to get to solutions faster and they need to be embraced across the board,” Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) at the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
For example, the Defense Department got the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) in record-breaking time, he said. “If that can be done, then there can be other examples of that kind of activity moving through the system as well.”
The service can’t think it can devise a solution that will be good for a decade or more without change when the pace of change is growing exponentially across the globe, Vane said.
“What we’re trying to encourage is more incremental change that’s grounded in the data and the projected data from today’s systems that you look at every two to three years,” he said. “Make changes to the network, make changes to your capability packages, make changes to your combat vehicle as a matter of planning and programming, instead of waiting five to seven to 10 years to try and develop a new one.”
Incremental change has come through Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) dollars, formerly supplemental funding, for deployed units in particular. Of the 5,000 to 7,000 operational needs statements over the past six to seven years, not all call for a new capability, but improvements to what already exists, he said.
“We’ve been doing that for the operating force,” Vane said. “We haven’t changed the rest of the system and the processes to put on that same level of change.”
However, there still must be due diligence and caution attached to incremental improvement, even when moving quickly, as was done for MRAP.
“We can move that fast. We know we can move that fast,” he said. “People know we can do that with OCO, supplementals and MRAP, so how do we get the rest of the people in the larger bureaucracy to do that moving faster.”
The power of networks is allowing some of this to happen, he said. Not only can tactics, techniques and procedures be passed from deployed unit to deployed unit, but networks allow the information to go to all units preparing to deploy and to the national training centers.
“They [units] can train on them before they go over and perhaps make adjustments, so it’s starting to create an ability to have almost continuous adaptation inside the training environment,” Vane said.
While taking a look at itself every few years and making incremental change, the service still must look ahead.
“I’ve got a 2050 study, still very active part of Unified Quest [future study war game] helping shape our science and technology,” Vane said. “But while we’re looking longer range, since the pace of change is exponential and since it appears that change is more evolutionary than revolutionary, some of our ideas we want to bring in closer, so we’re fighting an enemy right now who is changing very quickly. Our operating force is also changing very quickly. So I how do I get our generating force, those of us that are here thinking about the future, to not only think 10-15-20 years away, but also bring a grounded projection closer in that’s informed by actual data today in theater.”
Being adaptive is not solely about material change, he said. For example, adaptation can mean changes in organization or training. With an adversary moving from simple IEDs to explosively formed projectiles, the Army has made changes such as gathering forensics from IEDs and ramping up language proficiency. Adaptation is also about a change in the kind of workforce the service needs to operate in the newly contested environments, such as the cyber world.
However, similar things are happening in materiel. For example, a future vehicle design, such as that for the planned new Ground Combat Vehicle, must account for what the current force faces and provide the protection it needs.
“We need a different design of a chassis, but we ought to be able to make adjustments to that chassis even from the beginning. We ought to be able to make adjustments to it as a part of our plan more rapidly instead of leaving that chassis unchanged for five years after we buy it,” Vane said. “Planning to make changes every couple of years, adapting to the threat, so again you can make changes to your weapon system inside of five years.
Such changes may be small–for example, lighter armor, an adjustment to the night sights, or new onboard radar systems, weapons or munitions.
“All those smaller changes can give you that kind of leverage and dominance needed against the enemy, who’s also just making small changes trying to find the niche in your armor,” Vane said.
“One of the challenges we’ve had is piecing together the strategy that recognizes while you’re at war you need to improve the things that are engaged in the war and still have a strategy that gets you to the future,” he said.
That has led to an internal look at TRADOC organization, to ensure there was unnecessary tension between current and future strategies, he said. In the past, there were two sets of user representatives, one working on current force gaps and how to bridge those gaps, and another group looking 10-15 years out.
“Bringing those two strategies together was really challenging,” he said. The Army in its summer effort by TRADOC’s Task Force 120 pulled together a single strategy to balance the current to future path.”That allows us to introduce this idea of acquisition reform, incremental changes in capabilities to achieve [Army Force Generation] ARFORGEN-directed units to meet the joint force commander’s needs,” he said.
That’s one of the big picture changes the task force brought, and it has pointed to ARCIC reorganization as well.
“If I’m going to change every two to four years across the Army, then I’m going to need to change inside of ARCIC–how I’m organized and what I’m focused on and how the (Army Evaluation task Force) AETF is organized and focused,” Vane said. “We’ve already done it three times just within the last two years. Adjusting ourselves to changes we see within the operating environment.”
But none of this change is being done in a vacuum. Army leadership and Defense Department leadership are involved as well. “We’re asking for help across the board as we try to ensure our land force that’s trying to operate inside this cycle of potential adversaries,” Vane said.