For most of our lives, the Cold War held the world in a balance of terror. The United States has emerged from the Cold War as the world's single superpower. For the present, the threat of global war has receded. More countries are embracing democracy and free-market economics. Relationships with our key allies remain strong. For all this, the world remains a dangerous and complicated place.
In this environment, the United States will often be the single essential nation in international crises, from humanitarian assistance in natural disasters to ending international conflict. The role of the Army has broadened. Operations will vary both in scopefrom preventing war to winning wars-and size-from small-scale contingencies to major theater wars. Military success has always been about getting decisive force to the critical location before an adversary can complicate the situation. Right now, we cannot do this across the full spectrum of potential operations. Our heavy forces need to be more deployable and our light forces need greater staying power.
Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera and Chief of Staff of the Army GEN Eric K. Shinseki have directed all of us to transform our Army-already the most respected Army in the world-into a strategically responsive force that is dominant across the full spectrum of operations. Our acquisition, technology, and logistics community will play a huge role in creating a force that is deployable, dominant, and sustainable.
Strategic responsiveness means deploying, anywhere in the world, a brigade in 96 hours, a division in 120 hours, and five divisions in 30 days. If our Army is going to get there within these timeframes, everything a Brigade Combat Team needs must fit on a C-130: soldiers, fuel, ammunition, and vehicles. This means that all platforms must weigh less than 20 tons. We can design such vehicles, and we have some now. The challenge is to achieve the lethality and survivability essential to battlespace dominance.
Up to now, we have dominated by putting superbly trained soldiers together with platforms that individually overmatched the platforms of potential adversaries. For example, our Abrams tank is the finest in the world, and no other artillery system can match the emerging Crusader howitzer. While these systems will continue to be relevant to the Army's future, neither will fit on a C-130. Where we are deploying over long distances and our adversaries are not, we are likely to find that we will not have overmatch on an individual platform basis. Instead, we will achieve an overall capability overmatch by training our soldiers to exploit the synergy of agile, survivable, and lethal platforms that are digitized and networked to provide interoperable situational awareness.
Designing a system of the right size and weight for a C-130 is fairly simple, but maintaining the needed lethality and survivability will be difficult. To achieve essential lethality, we are examining guns, missiles, and precision munitions in all combinations. We are also looking at the combinations of system attributes that can help keep our soldiers safe. We will probably incorporate a suite of subsystems that will include armor, threat sensors, and active protection into manned systems with inherently small silhouettes and high agility.
Reducing the logistics footprint is the other significant challenge. Two of the biggest drivers here are fuel and munitions. By exploiting technology, we will develop more fuel-efficient systems and replace tons of dumb munitions with fewer smart munitions. This way, we will be reducing the logistics burden and increasing operational capability at the same time. Improved energy efficiency will bring us the dual benefits of a reduced logistics footprint and greater operating range. Precision munitions will reduce the footprint while increasing weapon effectiveness and reducing collateral damage.
Logistics has always been an essential enabler of military success. If we are to achieve the responsive, deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable, and sustainable force described in the Army vision, we will need to refine and accelerate the revolution in Army logistics. We must implement a highly efficient logistics command and control system that operates seamlessly from the industrial base to our deployed forces. We will significantly reduce the size of our deployed logistical footprint. In the future, if we don't need to deploy it, we won't need to move it, fuel it, protect it, or repair it. This will become possible, in part, because of our exceptional command, control, communications, and intelligence resources.
Our goal is to transform today's Army into a force that is dominant across the full spectrum of operations-the objective force. Advances in information, materiel, and weapon system technologies will make it possible for objective force units to achieve the same effect as today's forces with fewer, lighter, and more reliable systems. This complete transformation will be accomplished in three phases: initial, interim, and objective. At present, the Army will field two initial Brigade Combat Teams at Fort Lewis, WA. These brigades will be used to validate an organizational and operational model for the interim force. Simultaneously, we will acquire the Interim Armored Vehicle and field it as the centerpiece of the interim force. The lessons we learn from the interim phase, along with future technologies, will be the building blocks for the final phase of our transformation to the objective force. We are already maturing the technologies that will lead to the revolutionary warfighting capabilities of our Future Combat System. The Army is collaborating with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on this challenging endeavor. The Future Combat System will be the catalyst for the completion of the Army's transformation.
In a little more than a decade when our Nation calls on our soldiers to face new threats in faraway lands, they will be trained in the right doctrine with the right materiel and supported with the right processes. This will be possible because of our efforts right now, today. Transforming the Army requires focus, enormous energy, and our best cooperative efforts. As a team, we can make our vision of the future come true. The Army is depending on us. The Nation is depending on us. Today's second grader, who will grow up to be tomorrow's soldier on point for the Nation, is depending on us. It's time to "roll up our sleeves" and make the vision a reality.
This edition of Army AL&T features articles on our team's many contributions toward building the future force, one that is Persuasive in Peace, Invincible in War.
[Author Affiliation]
Paul J. Hoeper, Assistant Secretary Of The Army For
Acquisition, Logistics And Technology
No comments:
Post a Comment