The Army’s lead resourcing official said Tuesday he does not see the full-year continuing resolution having a “dramatic impact” on the ability to rapidly field promising new technology out of the service’s ongoing and expanding Transforming in Contact (TiC) initiative.
Lt. Gen. Karl Gingrich, deputy chief of staff G-8, said the Army has received “a couple tranches” of replenishment funding that will mitigate some of the CR impact and be allocated toward procuring TiC capabilities.
“Is the full year CR going to have an impact? Yes, it is. Is it going to have a dramatic impact? In my opinion, no. And why is that? Because we have worked with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] and we really appreciate Congress and the allocation of replenishment funding,” Gingrich said in remarks at the McAleese Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “And we are starting to get that on contract now so that we can actually bring that into the force later on this year and early into ‘26 depending on the timing, each one of those commodities is a little bit different.”
President Trump signed the CR on Saturday to avoid a shutdown and keep the government open through the end of September, with the stopgap funding measure including a slight boost to defense spending and containing a provision allowing the Pentagon to initiate new start programs.
Gingrich said the Army is still analyzing the full scope of the new CR and “what, how much and where can we move monies,” adding that having to rely on reprogramming or transferring funds would have slowed down TiC acquisition activities “a little bit.”
“But I think the replenishment tranche funding that we’re getting is going to allow us to kick start that,” Gingrich said.
The Army’s TiC effort, spearheaded by Gen. Randy George, the service’s chief of staff, has focused on testing new operating concepts with select Army units and providing troops with new technology, such as drones and electronic warfare capabilities, to gather feedback and inform rapid fielding decisions.
Gingrich said TiC is allowing “on ramp of new technologies and quicker spirals of how those technologies are being applied on the modern battlefield.”
“We are seeing changes in UAS, counter-UAS and electronic warfare that are measured in weeks, not months and years,” Gingrich added.
The Army is now in the process of initiating TiC 2.0 and expanding the initiative to include more technology and participation from two more divisions, two Armored Brigade Combat Teams, two Stryker Brigade Combat Teams, additional formations in the Guard and Reserves and the service’s Multi-Domain Task Forces (Defense Daily, March 14).
“We are trying to acquire things differently. We are trying to do tranched funding. We are trying to pump innovation in this space. We are trying to make sure that we have acquisition processes in place that allow us to swap things out that change on a weekly basis as opposed to a yearly basis,” Gingrich said.
Maj. Gen. Robert Barrie, the Army procurement office’s deputy for acquisition and systems management, said last month the service plans to deliver “thousands” of S-METs and GM Defense [GM] Infantry Squad Vehicles in the coming years as a result of TiC efforts to date (Defense Daily, Feb. 25).
Gingrich added that part of the Army’s effort to buy things different as a result of TiC is the push for agile funding authorities from Congress to flexibly move funding around capability areas rather than rigid budget line items, with the service initially focusing the effort on drones, counter-UAS equipment and electronic warfare capabilities.
“What we are trying to do in those three portfolios…UAS, counter-UAS and electronic warfare, working with the committees of record over on the Hill, [is] how do we consolidate so that we have some flexibility to respond to that operational environment through our budget construct and we are not limited to kind of the bureaucracy inside the building of reprogramming action in order to respond to something,” Gingrich said. “We learned some tough lessons over the last few years as we were watching our soldiers in contact and our inability within our budget to actually move some money to address their needs.”
Gingrich said he has described the initial push for agile funding authority around those three areas to congressional authorizers and appropriators as a “pilot program” which could look to expand upon if there’s success with the effort.
“I think, let’s run these portfolios and see how they do, see if they’re actually giving us the flexibility that we need. Then, we’ll codify them as no longer pilot programs. And then we can pivot to something else in the future,” Gingrich said. “Perhaps network [capabilities] in the future could be something like that.”
