The vice chief of staff of the Army is looking to the new modernization-focused Futures Command to overhaul the service’s approach to acquiring emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and hypersonics, but said the service will retain its program executive office structure for the time being.
Gen. James McConville told attendees at a Tuesday National Defense Industrial Association Event that Futures Command efforts to meet its six modernization priorities won’t immediately be under one command and will be “very tied together” with the PEOs under the office of Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology (ASA(ALT)).
McConville said he is working with Bruce Jette, the ASA(ALT), to best align PEO authorities with Future Command’s mission to move away from a requirement-heavy acquisition approach and find existing industry technologies for priorities such as next-generation combat vehicle and long-range precision fires.
“Army Futures Command is going to Austin, Texas. It’s an interesting place. It’s going to be an innovation hub. We’re going to do things very, very differently than we’ve done in the past. It’s going to be in a civilian environment. It’s going to encourage people to come in with their innovative ideas,” McConville said.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Gen. John
“Mike” Murray on Monday evening as the first leader of Futures Command and senior leadership is traveling to Austin on Friday to hold an activation ceremony for the new command (Defense Daily, August 21).
“Mike is absolutely the right person for his job. He brings a skill set of understanding of how this place operates, how programs work as the G-8, what types of things we need for our soldiers. So we are very happy to have him as the commander,” McConville said.
McConville expects Futures Command to reach full operational capability by summer 2019, as Army officials work to overhaul modernization efforts to keep pace with rapid technological innovation in the commercial sector and peer competitors increasing investment in technologies such as AI and hypersonics.
For the Army’s long-range precision fire efforts, McConville sees an opportunity with Futures Command to kickstart efforts to ensure the service retains overmatch as it looks to move away from a counterterrorism fight to future warfighting concepts.
“We often talked about being out-ranged and out-gunned. That will not happen in the future. We’re going to develop long range precision fires that are going to give us that overmatch and that’s going to give us the capability to hold our adversaries at bay in a way that we’ve never seen before,” McConville said.
McConville reiterated the same idea as a chance for industry to now bring technologies to Austin to meet robotic technology needs for next-gen combat vehicle or showcase commercial network capabilities for its tactical network upgrade effort.
Army leadership also wants to see Futures Command break ground ahead in future vertical lift and unmanned systems to meet anticipated changes in the future fight, according to the vice chief of staff.
“We’re basically going beyond the helicopter capabilities that we have today. We want increased range. We want increased speed. We want increased lethality. And we’re seeing right now in industry, in providing demonstrations, basically, to allow us to break the physics barriers we have in conventional helicopters,” McConville said.
Autonomy efforts with future vertical lift and next-gen combat vehicles will also look to move beyond manned-unmanned teaming and towards swarms of drones able to reduce soldier risk, according to McConville.
“As you go into the future, the capability to release swarms of unmanned aerial aircraft from an unmanned vehicle to me is not out of the possibilities as we go forward,” McConville said. “We’re going to have to come to grips with artificial intelligence. We don’t believe that artificial intelligence will replace the person in the loop. But as we have that discussion, what we can see is asking why do we need the lead aircraft to be manned or why do we need the lead vehicle that’s coming through an IED area to be manned?”