A lead Army aviation official said the service is still working through the details on carrying out planned divestments as part of its new transformation initiative, some of which could be adjusted, while adding that further changes are “absolutely” expected.
Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, the Army aviation branch chief, told reporters the cuts announced over the last couple weeks as the service rolled out the new Army Transformation Initiative “were “maybe deeper than we thought they were going to be.”
“We only got [the ATI] two weeks ago, so we don’t know all the details of it. And I think our job collectively, and as is the case for the rest of the Army, is to do mission analysis on what we were told to do and then provide options to senior leaders,” Gill said during a briefing here at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference on Thursday.
“I think there’s probably more fidelity that we’re going to get out of the decisions that were made and we might even walk something back, if appropriate,” Gill added. “Like I said, we’ll provide options. [We could] say, ‘Hey, maybe we don’t want to divest this deep or we don’t want to do it this quickly.’ Then they’ll say we’re either doing it or haven’t considered that. I know there’s more clarity to come.”
The new ATI plan includes cutting “obsolete” programs such as the AH-64D Apache and Gray Eagle drones as well as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Humvee and the M10 Booker combat vehicle and potentially ending development of the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), the Future Tactical UAS (FTUAS) and the Robotic Combat Vehicle (Defense Daily, May 1).
“I think the Army Transformation Initiative is kind of the reality of where we are as a service. The Defense Department and the Army acknowledge that we need to make some wholesale change. We need to divest old [equipment] faster and we need to iterate and procure and probably continue to iterate and procure on newer technologies that we think are emerging given the context of the operating environment that we see,” Gill said.
Gill noted that ATI cuts were “not targeted” at Army aviation specifically, while adding “it certainly did hit us pretty significantly.”
“[ATI] was a little bit abrupt. Some of the decisions that were made were not exactly what we had proposed but they were decisions, in the context of the folks at the Pentagon who are looking at the entirety of the Army budget,…[that with] a fixed budget there’s only so many things that they can do with that money. So we’ve been looking at ways that we think we can be helpful,” Gill told reporters.
“Do I think there’s more to come? Absolutely,” Gill said.
On the potential for more planned cuts, Brig. Gen. Matt Braman, director of Army aviation, said there’s “no definitive ATI 2.0” but Army senior leaders have communicated they’re “looking to find ways to innovate” within a constrained budget environment.
“At the end of day, it’s about resources. And we’re looking for ways to free up resources for higher priority items within the force, and some of that could be in the aviation portfolio and some of that could be in other places,” Braman said.
Brig. Gen. David Phillips, program executive officer for aviation, said officials are now working through “courses of action” that will be presented to Army senior leaders on how to carry out each of the planned divestments.
Braman added he expects there will be “small, iterative moves back and forth” on “what makes sense” with carrying out the decisions from the first wave of ATI-related announcements.
“We always joke that two things change the outcomes of programs, elections and wars, right? And we just had an election and we’ll have another one in four years. And we’ll have a change of Congress in two years. All those things [have an] impact on our ability to do what the Army wants to do and we have to work within those constraints,” Braman said.
Gill noted that assessing the future of ITEP and FTUAS specifically was “always on the table,” saying a final decision on both programs is “pending,” adding he didn’t think FTUAS was “as much at risk” since the Army has placed an increased emphasis on moving ahead in the UAS space.
“Army aviation is really expensive. I hate this term, but the value proposition that we have to offer the Army is that [a program has] got to be worth it. If you’re going to spend that much money, then we’re going to have to deliver an outsized impact,” Gill said.
The FTUAS program has attempted to find a replacement for the legacy Shadow drone, with the Army having selected Textron Systems’ [TXT] Aerosonde Mk. 4.8 Hybrid Quad UAS and Griffon Aerospace’s Valiant for a competitive prototyping effort to inform a production award that had been planned for late fiscal year 2025.
With ITEP, the Army had selected the GE Aerospace [GE] T901 engine for development to potentially serve as the future capability to power its AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter fleets.
On moving from AH-64D Apaches as well as continuing to divest from legacy UH-60L Black Hawks, Gill said those decisions were already in the works and ATI accelerated that process.
Gill told reporters he understands why industry could be “skeptical” when it comes to the Army pursuing such major changes, noting some companies are “hugely affected” by these decisions.
“And we don’t take that lightly, those are people’s lives and livelihoods and businesses. But they’re tough decisions that the Army had to make,” Gill said. “Industry is rightly nervous when we talk about cutting a program or starting a new big program when we tell them, ‘Hey, we want you to share the risk with us,’ right?”
Gill also cited “political change” as the reasoning for driving many of the Army’s major pivots in direction.
“That’s the reality of our governmental system. And so, we might be moving down a path for a couple years and [then] things change. The world changes. Wars happen. I mean, the Russia-Ukraine war has really changed how we think about the third dimension of warfare,” Gill said.