White Sands Missile Range, N.M.–The Army’s oft-stated number one priority, the network, is undergoing its first major integrated evaluation in the West Texas desert, in what is expected to become a biannual event and catalyst for change, officials said.
The Army is looking at its business practices and how the Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) could be used as a catalyst for change in the acquisition process–buying less, but buying more often, a mantra used by service leadership to emphasize a way to build an Army that is adaptive and flexible by changing practices in developing and fielding capabilities.
“This NIE offers a new approach bringing three key areas together, Brigade Modernization Command–the voice of the user, the Army test community and the acquisition community,” said Paul Mehney, chief of Public Communications, Army Program Executive Office-Integration, who traveled with reporters during a media day to try to clarify complexity and stave off confusion.
The NIE, held here at the Defense Department’s largest test range in the United States, was military-only. Industry was able to send some experts who could be consulted on equipment or fix it if necessary, but were not out with the brigade during its events. Some early-look test reports will be available at the end of July, but most results are expected in early August.
The NIE is expected to help ground force leaders align the tactical network, from tactical operations center to the forward soldier, to the force generation process through capability sets expected to improve and integrate the network baseline. The evaluation will also help understand what soldiers really need, conduct Limited User Tests (LUT) on programs of record, and formally evaluate developing systems and emerging network capabilities.
The six-week evaluation runs through July 15 and involves some 3,800 soldiers from 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, based at Ft. Bliss, Texas. The combined unit includes armor, infantry and Stryker units.
The 2/1 is one of the Army’s 73 brigades and pulled from the normal force generation cycle for the next couple of years to conduct these tests and evaluations. For the full spectrum NIE scenarios, the unit brings its own equipment, equipment such as would be provided in theater, and the individual equipment and network nodes for the NIE they have trained on.
The soldiers–from private to brigade commander–assess the capabilities separately and together in a system, and are providing user feedback. The idea is for a network to improve unit effectiveness, efficiency, and safety by increasing situational awareness and the ability to move information around the battle space horizontally and vertically.
The NIE is examining six programs of record and 29 systems are under evaluation, said Col. David Wellons, director of Integrated Test and Evaluation Directorate for Army Test and Evaluation Command.
Thus, the NIE is possibly “the largest integrated test the Army Test and Evaluation command has done,” he said.
As part of the Army’s new way of doing business, Wellons said May 17 the Integrated Test Directorate was officially created at Ft. Bliss, which will help integrate the Army test community with the Program Executive Office Integration and Brigade Modernization Command.
Lt. Col. Bill Evrage, from the Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Brigade Modernization Command, represents soldiers. The command’s interest is if the equipment satisfies doctrine, training, leader development and other soldier issues. He’s watching for some resolution of questions such as if the equipment is beneficial, then who needs it, in what formations, how is it maintained and what kind of training is needed.
For the NIE to be a learning event, it needs to “stretch to boundary” as much as possible Evrage said. “It’s not a pass-fail” event. Some systems in NIE now will be back, perhaps at the next NIE slated for the fall. Decisions on that event will be made after July 15.
To date, 71 systems have been proposed, all industry sponsored, said Maj. Bill Venable, director of operations for ASALT PEO I. The proposed systems will be examined by the G-3/5/7 to see how they match requirements and if the technology is mature and ready to integrate.
The learning is very important, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said earlier this year–the NIE’s will be as much about learning as testing. “After all, the only way to fix these problems is to accurately identify them.”
Another important aspect of the NIE is to integrate equipment ahead of sending it to deployed troops. Doing the integration up front allows troops in the deployment cycle time to use and train on it rather than coming face to face with it for the first time in theater. Some equipment has been put on the shelf in theater, as troops didn’t want to use something new they would have to learn so they defaulted to what they had been using.