The Army is creating a new modernization command to keep projects on track
 

The Army is creating a new modernization command to keep projects on track
By: Jen Judson
RE: https://www.defensenews.com/digital-...ects-on-track/

WASHINGTON — The Army is establishing a new command to ensure its modernization programs get the attention, thought and forward movement needed to maintain overmatch against potential adversaries in the future.

The Army’s fiscal year 2018 budget request has grown compared to past years and along with that money that can be funneled into modernization, a big step in the right direction after modernization efforts were essentially paused for several years as the service focused its shrinking budget on maintaining readiness.

[FY18 budget request: The Army's top 10 modernization priorities]

But having the money isn’t always enough to get modernization off the ground, so the Army is standing up a new modernization command to see its major efforts through to the final product.

The Army initiated “a realignment of modernization responsibilities under a new organization,” on Oct. 3, an Army spokesman told Defense News.

The new organization will implement Cross Functional Teams (CFTs) that align with the Army’s six modernization priorities: long-range precision fires, next-generation combat vehicle, future vertical lift, the network, air-and-missile defense and soldier lethality.

“This reorganization will establish unity of command and effort by consolidating the modernization process under one roof,” the spokesman said. “This realignment of responsibilities is not additional force structure, but rather a streamlining of work which will serve to overcome the bureaucratic inertia and stove-piping found in the Army’s current construct.”

It’s also a crucial time to ensure modernization is geared toward the Army’s new focus on its multi-domain battle construct, to prove the concept isn’t just a paper tiger by bending metal into real capability that aligns with the way the Army envisions operations now and in the future.

“We will do what it takes to build an agile adaptive Army of the future. We need to listen and learn first from the Army itself and from other services, from our interagency partners and also from private sectors and even our critics,” Maj. Gen. Bo Dyess, the acting director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), told Defense News in an interview shortly before the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual show.

“Developing a lethal, professional, but technically competent force requires an openness to new ideas and new ways of doing things in an increasingly complex world,” he said.

The Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley’s modernization priorities align well with what Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), in which ARCIC is a part, has identified as capability gaps that need to be filled in order to fight effectively in a multi-domain battle environment, Dyess said.

And while the top six priorities are the focus, “it’s not the only thing that we’re doing,” he noted, “but those are the things that we thought would have the biggest bang for the buck and making up gaps that have developed based on assumptions that we’ve made.”