By Jen DiMascio
Inside the Army, 28 November 2005
As the Army strives to rush new technologies to Iraq to protect and better equip soldiers, some programs are getting stuck in the testing phase, according to a senior service official.
In one instance, the Army is working with the Marine Corps to provide more joint situational awareness. The services are working on a long-term strategy to achieve full interoperability as well as an interim strategy to link two different systems together, but the difficulty will lie in getting those systems tested, said Maj. Gen. Michael Mazzucchi, the program executive officer for command, control and communications technology.
"It's one thing to say we're going to wave our hands and say 'We're going to provide this,'" Mazzucchi told Inside the Army last month. But the service still will have to validate the technology and demonstrate that it works, he said.
"That will be our biggest thing. We have no available units just for test now. Our challenge is trying to use things like mission rehearsal exercises," Mazzucchi said.
But adding equipment evaluations to training exercises is difficult, he suggested.
"Commanders, they want to train. They don't want a bunch of data collectors and evaluators there. So we have to strike a balance. That's going to be our challenge," the two-star said.
The Army's Operational Test Command and the service's director of training for the chief of operations (G-3) are trying to walk that line.
Since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, OTC -- which conducts user evaluations of new equipment -- has altered the way it does business, said its commanding general, Brig. Gen. Christopher Tucker.
The testing community is confronted with a high operational tempo, which affects the units available for operational tests, as well as an acquisition community that is producing more new technologies. In fiscal year 2002, before the war began, OTC conducted tests of 84 systems. In FY-06, the command expects to test 159 systems, according to a spokeswoman at OTC.
In response, the testing community has turned to mission rehearsal exercises and training events to test-drive new technologies. It also is turning to units stationed outside the continental United States, Tucker said.
During peacetime, soldiers tapped for operational tests would be stationed in CONUS, and operational tests would be conducted in coordination with annual scheduled training. Since the wars started, deployment rotations have been conflicting with the peacetime test schedule, he said.
"There are two things that come as a result of conducting operational testing in what is now commonly referred to as a long war, in that you have rotational units that have op tempo and at the same time as you're trying to line up operational tests to meet different scheduled training exercises so you don't inadvertently add to that op tempo," Tucker said.
Additionally, the acquisition community and the Army's senior leaders are identifying even more new technologies. "We're going to look for opportunities where we conduct that operational testing and we get that technology to the field as quickly as possible," Tucker said.
The command is using prewar training to satisfy the need for testing equipment, he said.
For example, the Army folded operational tests of its Battle Command System version 6.4 into an exercise called Joint Red Flag 2005, in which the 4th Infantry Division was participating, said Col. Dave Titus, director of the Command, Control, Communications and Computer Test Directorate at Ft. Hood, TX. Issues that were identified with ABCS 6.4 during that test were fixed and retested when the division went to the National Training Center.
Brig. Gen. James Milano, the director of training in the office of the Army's chief of operations (G-3), denied that the needs of the testing community impinge on commanders' ability to train for war. In an interview with ITA, he stressed that the service is focused on balancing testing and training needs -- the official service message, as a public affairs officer made clear.
Advance planning and coordination between his office, the testing community and U.S. Forces Command help ensure that soldiers will see the equipment that gets tested when they land in Iraq, Milano said.
"We don't really have time in our training for units getting ready to deploy to test capabilities that they're not going to use in the context of their operations," Milano said. "We want to make sure stuff unit commanders are putting their hands on and testing and evaluating is stuff that they will in fact eventually see in theater as part of their operations, as part of their capabilities."
In addition to turning to mission rehearsal exercises, operational testers are turning to major commands outside of FORSCOM, Tucker said.
"In peacetime, most of our operational tests are conducted by units that are within the U.S. Because of the deployments and early coordination with the Army G-3, we are looking at other MACOMS to assist in supporting testing," Tucker said.
For example, the Army recently conducted an operational test of the Thermal Weapon Sight using a U.S. Army Pacific unit stationed in Hawaii. Also, the service is completing another test in Hawaii, this one using the unit's aviation assets to test the Common Missile Warning System, Tucker said.
A complicating factor may be that while the Army is developing more new programs, the number of testers has not kept pace.
Despite a near doubling of programs requiring testing, the number of testers in Operational Test Command and Army Test and Evaluation Command remains the same, Tucker said.
In addition, the command is sending a rotating pool of about 17 testers from all of the nine OTC components to conduct surveys that gauge the effectiveness of Army equipment in theater. For example, the Army conducted a poll on about 25 different systems in Iraq and produced a classified executive summary for the service's senior leaders, said Col. Jim Davis, the director of the fire support test directorate at Ft. Sill, who led the forward operating assessment team in Iraq that did the polling.
The testers argue that they can work around the increase in workload without a corresponding increase in staff levels. They rotate the work load and plan far in advance. For example, in mid-December, Tucker will begin choosing people for another FOA team scheduled to deploy to Iraq in May or June 2006.
"What we are doing is we are looking to align folks functionally so that we have the correct expertise in theater while maintaining the requisite expertise here in the states, in order to continue our normal series of tests while at the same time providing this team in Iraq and Afghanistan," Tucker said.
"It's just a challenge," Davis said. "We had four guys from my directorate, and we were still able to do the test in CONUS with the remainder of the directorate without any problems arising during the testing."
---------------------------------
Citation: Jen DiMascio. "Testing Community Strained by Need To Rush Equipment into Theater," Inside the Army, 28 November 2005.
Original URL: http://defense.iwpnewsstand.com/cs-protected/cs_display_doc_01.asp?f=defense_2002.ask&docnum=ARMY-17-47-2&DOCID=TESTING+COMMUNITY+STRAINED+BY+NEED+TO+RUSH+EQUIPMENT+INTO+THEATER+(ARMY-17-47-2)
----------------------------------