The Army’s top acquisition official said last week the upcoming fiscal year 2024 budget request keeps the service’s “modernization plan on track,” but he acknowledged potential “tension” in coming years as more new programs move into production.
Doug Bush, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, during a talk on Friday declined to offer specifics on the budget ahead of its upcoming release, but said the service’s balance between procurement and research and development in the request “is about right.”
“Broadly speaking, my part of the Army’s budget did well. So the stuff I worry about, procurement and R&D, I think we were able to, for [FY] ‘24 certainly, find the resources within the Army. And there are many competing needs. There always are good ones. But we found the resources to keep our modernization plan on track,” Bush said during a Center for New American Security discussion. “The outyears of the [Program Objective Memorandum five-year planning guidance] (POM), when you actually have some of these significant production ramp-ups, sure, there will be a tension there between R&D and pulling it over, for example, to procurement.”
Bush’s remarks echo recent comments from Army Secretary Christine Wormuth to expect “a lot of continuity” on modernization efforts in the upcoming budget request, while noting officials have focused on how to best balance new capability development with readiness priorities (Defense Daily, Feb. 23).
Wormuth told reporters at the time that the Army is no longer running its “night court” top-down reviews for identifying cuts to legacy and enduring programs, adding the process had already identified all the potential areas for savings that could be shifted to funding modernization efforts.
As the Army works to develop more than 30 new “signature systems,” of which 24 are expected to be provided to soldiers in some form this fiscal year, Bush said the Army’s modernization portfolio remains “on track” while noting certain efforts may still experience challenges moving from prototyping and testing into experience.
“[Modernization] programs, broadly speaking, are on track. Now, there will be some that are going to run into delays as we get into serious testing and going into production. But, overall, the direction of travel remains strong,” Bush said. “I think we have a good chance to get a lot of these right. We are not going to bat a thousand. There will be some programs that don’t work out. That’s okay…The big ones are, of course, the really important ones. So I’d like to bat a thousand on those. But not everything has to go perfectly. We’re still going to end up, if we keep at it, by 2030 a much more capable Army in all the areas that matter, as long as we keep our focus.”
During separate remarks earlier on Friday, Bush cited the “early versions” of the Microsoft [MSFT]-built Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) headset as an example of a modernization program that hit bumps during testing.
“Initial testing did not go as well as we hoped. So that’s an example of it’s good that we did really the hardest test anyone could come up with on that system. [That was with] light infantry in very dark conditions in heavily-wooded terrain. So we found all the problems,” Bush said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies discussion. “So as tough as that is for the Army, and as disappointing as it was in some ways, it’s really good that we found that, especially with a new technology.”
Microsoft was awarded a $125 million deal in early January to develop a “1.2” version of IVAS with design improvements, with testing slated to begin in late 2023 and the Army aiming to field the upgraded headsets in FY ‘25 (Defense Daily, Jan. 9).
“We were able to do all of that without triggering a lot of the normal, painful process of restructuring a program,” Bush said. “We’re going to get a much better 1.2 version of the system. Hopefully [it’s] in testing this fall. And we’re going to see what we get.”