Facing a new fiscal environment, the Army is rethinking its modernization approach to reflect an increased focus on cost as well as a need to integrate lessons learned from ongoing operations, according to a senior service official.
The work will be reflected both in the service’s tactical wheeled vehicle strategy -- slated for completion this summer -- as well as in the Quadrennial Defense Review and overall modernization planning, according to Maj. Gen. David Halverson, director of Army force development in the office of the deputy chief of staff for programs (G-8).
Speaking April 29 at an Institute for Defense and Government Advancement conference in McLean, VA, Halverson said it’s “not business as usual” for the Army.
He referenced the April 6 fiscal year 2010 budget announcements made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, noting that “with that fiscal environment, we understand that we’re going to have to do things a little bit differently.”
Procurement dollars, in particular, will be tighter as the Army faces high personnel costs.
“I’m just letting you know from a procurement perspective I’m going to have less money because people are costing me more,” Halverson told the audience.
He laid out a number of questions he says the Army must address, including how much contractor support to use, how many trucks the service needs and the best balance between needs and affordability.
In considering the optimal number of tactical vehicles for the Army, Halverson said the service must look to how it is now using its forces.
“The reality is -- guess what? -- an infantry brigade combat team isn’t fighting as an infantry brigade combat team right now in Afghanistan or Iraq, are they?” he told the audience. “They are motorized, they have a lot more requirements for wheeled vehicles than they ever had before.”
Reset too remains a question area for the Army, particularly whether the service should recapitalize or reset vehicles or simply buy new ones.
“All these questions are good questions that we’re going to wrestle with here -- some in the QDR, some in the whole modernization approach,” Halverson said last week.
More specifically, the Army continues to prepare its long-awaited tactical wheeled vehicle strategy, he said. Though the document has been sent to the defense secretary, Halverson said the Army has now taken it back to Training and Doctrine Command.
The strategy will be finalized as the Army prepares its QDR as well as its next five-year budget plan -- for fiscal years 2011 through 2015, according to Halverson.
“I would like it quicker personally,” he said. “I think it’s going to be sometime this summer.”
Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center at TRADOC, told Inside the Army last year that the TWV strategy would consider the size of the Army’s fleet, and Halverson said last week that recap will be “a vital part” of the strategy.
The document will also consider the service’s Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle fleet. In his budget announcements early last month, Gates criticized the failure of the Future Combat Systems program to include a role for MRAP.
Halverson last week said “part of our wheeled strategy is how do we integrate them into the formation,” adding that the Army is working with TRADOC on that question.
During the same IDGA conference, Col. Mike Smith, chief of the mounted requirements division of the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, said the Army and DOD are “at a juncture on MRAP.”
“We’ve bought a bunch of platforms, expended a great deal of funds and because of the rapidity with it, nobody had thought through, ‘OK, what happens when?’” Smith said. “And we don’t have the answer.”
But he noted “there is great discussion going on.”
“Part of the MRAP thing is we’ve got to know what have we got and we’ve got to figure out -- given that our aim point has moved to the left -- do we need a new formation?” Smith continued.
Telling the audience that the service’s “aim point” has moved to the left of major combat operations, Smith stressed that the service will have a future brigade combat team, despite Gates’ decision to cut the vehicle component of the FCS program.
“It may not be the FCS-based formation that people have been kind of dreaming about for the last few years, but it won’t be one of these four,” he said of the existing BCTs, meaning infantry, Stryker, heavy and the armored cavalry regiment. “There’s got to be something new.” -- Marjorie Censer