Australia and Canada early next year are likely to have service personnel at Ft. Bliss, Texas, to learn about the U.S. Army’s Future Combat System (FCS) and see how it might apply to work being done at home, according to a U.S. official.
However, it’s not easy, Larry Rogers, director of the International Army Programs Directorate at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) headquarters, told sister publication Defense Daily in an interview.
“There’s a unique situation with FCS technology exchanges,” Rogers said. Gaining access to FCS information is not as easy or as simple as other information normally exchanged through the foreign exchange officer program.
“Australians just recently completed their agreements to place a [lieutenant colonel] at FFID,” he said. “Australia is busy on defense transformation and has written a white paper on it, but forgot FCS until I reminded them about it.” It has a high interest level in FCS, since Australia is re-working its own military.
A position for that Australian lieutenant colonel is being established, which generally means writing the job description, he said. The officer will likely be in place in January.
Canada has just concluded its agreement and likely will have a major in place in the first part of 2009, he said. Canada’s army Chief of Staff-equivalent has visited headquarters TRADOC and is interested in how the United States is designing its future force with an eye to synchronizing its efforts, and enhancing interoperability.
While there’s always been a general effort toward interoperability, it has not been a focal point, Rogers said, particularly looking to the future. FCS is all about interoperability among its 14 systems, network and soldiers, and in its ability to connect with other units and services. Thus, working at FFID is the perfect opportunity to learn and gain understanding about it.
Moving officers to the United States for liaison work or position can be difficult for other nations.
“Australia, the U.K., percentage-wise a lot of their officers are in the U.S., not in their own force, thus they must re-look where their people are stationed and shift or eliminate some posts,” Rogers said. For example, “Australia is reducing personnel in other areas to send someone to FFID [Future Force Integration Directorate]. Any army that looks to go there, it takes a major investment on their part to put someone at that location. That’s a real cost.”
At TRADOC, Rogers oversees 18 officers from countries accredited to the command’s headquarters. These Foreign Liaison Officers (FLO) are part of the international engagement strategy formed by combatant commanders and the Army secretary with goals and objectives to build partner capacity, part of the overall United States national security strategy. Liaison officers learn about U.S. programs and provide information on concepts and programs of interest to their own armies. The Defense Department has a program that facilitates that effort where information up to controlled unclassified information can be accessed.
But FCS is in a different realm–that of technical unclassified information and contractor proprietary information. For other countries to access such information specific agreements must be worked out, and part of that goes through Rogers’ office.
Liaison officers all operate under MoUs negotiated between their army and the U.S. Army at the G-2-3 level, Rogers said. Once the MoUs are complete, if the country wants to establish a FLO with U.S. Army organizations, the officers must go to TRADOC, where they are accredited, receive briefings and memorandums to read and sign that detail the conditions of their position.
For a nation to place an officer at TRADOC’s FFID at Ft. Bliss takes another level of agreement. First, the MoU must be in place that allows the FLO to exist and the right to put one at FFID. Then another agreement must be attached to the initial MoU so that officer may access certain information. The State Department is also involved since it sets certain conditions for particular countries, which affects the ability to work out such agreements.
Each series of agreements is unique to that country. For example, in 2004, the United Kingdom and United States signed a Land Battlespace MoA, with annexes, “a broad agreement, above and beyond a MoU that allows foreign liaison officers, to enable a British officer to access some technical information,” Rogers said (Defense Daily, Jan. 14, 2005).
Under that MoU, the U.K. and the FCS program manager could modify and then create a cooperative project person–a U.K. colonel–at FFID at Ft. Bliss. That colonel is not a FLO, Rogers said, but an officer who works for FFID, filling a colonel’s slot who works on FCS Spin Outs. That officer gains experience and knowledge and can carry it home to the U.K. Army to mull over.
For the United States, Rogers said, the Army gets “tremendous benefits from someone with a different perspective and experience that has also been in theater.”
The Land Battlespace agreement facilitates information exchange, working groups, project agreements or arrangements, equipment and material transfer, advanced concept technology demonstrations and familiarization visits, the service said. The MoU is also the venue to develop processes or procedures for marking export-controlled data and ensuring the proper application of export control laws and regulations.
Rogers notes, “One thing that’s evident and I am pleased with in this community of practices is that I’ve not run into any bureaucratic kick back, if you will…everyone is willing to work it, understanding that each country brings its own particular challenges.”