“NATIONAL DEFENSE MAGAZINE” By Sean Carberry, Managing Editor
“From my experience with industry, the less you give them, the better options you get back,” he said. “It all starts with great clarity in that problem statement.” – Gen. James Rainey – Commander, Army Futures Command
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“With conflicts raging in Ukraine and Gaza, the U.S. military needs to acquire new technologies more quickly, and getting there requires more flexibility in the requirements and funding processes, the head of Army Futures Command said.
“We’ve got to start framing requirements differently. We need to ask for capabilities. We need to spend great energy to get as clear and succinct on those problem statements as we can and provide that to the industry teammates,” Gen. James Rainey, commander of Army Futures Command, said at the Ash Carter Exchange conference, May 8.
“From my experience with industry, the less you give them, the better options you get back,” he said. “It all starts with great clarity in that problem statement.”
And the Army has a host of near- and long-term problems to solve, including better UAS and counter-UAS technologies, longer-range artillery and improved networking and data access, he said.
In the near term, the problem continues to be one of tech adoption rather than tech development, he told reporters during a roundtable at the conference.
“Generally speaking, our problem is rapid adoption of existing technology, things that exist today that we know are good enough,” he said.
“There are some things happening in Ukraine, Gaza, that like, ‘Holy crap, we need that right now,’” he said. “Ground-based rockets, loitering munitions, mobile counter-UAS. So, we have some directed requirements. Some already exist, you don’t need to do a bunch of thinking about it. You just need to go get it.”
“Do we need attritable UAS? Yeah. Do we need configurable payloads on our UAS? Yeah. Do we need to drive the price point down? Yes.” But it’s not a matter of a lack of companies that can do those things, he said.
“That’s part of our transformation effort. That’s why the chief of staff of the Army has prioritized all things UAS,” he said.
“I think that we’re close to turning the corner on this. … I think you’ll see some portfolio-based approaches,” he said. The chief of staff of the Army has “talked about UAS, counter-UAS and EW and getting some of that physical agility. That’s really the thing we need to do to go faster.”
Hence, AFC is developing requirements to get away from buying unmanned aerial vehicles and instead buying unmanned aerial systems, he said.
“So, 24 hours of UAS coverage for a rifle company — that unlocks the power of industry, because one company will come back with 12 two-hour UAVs, and somebody else will come back with three eight-hour [UAVs]. So, it’s a system approach, and they can’t be long-term, one-trick ponies, right? Nobody goes to the circus to watch a one ball juggler.”
There are certain UAV capabilities that matter, he said. “The physical attachment, the EW protection standard you establish, the cyber defensive standard you establish, the open architecture operating system, because if you’re going to put other things on a UAV, then the software matters. So, I think maintaining a capability-based approach versus the hyper-technical, individual system approach is absolute. It’s not a ‘We should do,’ it’s ‘We’re going to fail if we don’t do that.’”
Focusing on capabilities will unleash the power of U.S. tech industry, he said. “Because the best UAV company may not be the best [electronic warfare] company, but they’ll partner up.”
That’s also part of the rationale for the Army, and programs like the Replicator Initiative, to buy in tranches, he said.
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“So, the company that won it the first time … doesn’t mean that’s the company that’s going to do that forever,” he said. “That’s what I like about the tranche buy, it unlocks the innovation of everybody. Because the guy who wins it, and I’m not a businessperson, but I’m assuming they go back and go, ‘Okay, we got to be better next time, can’t rest on our laurels.’ The company that came in second or third, are like ‘Hey, we almost got it, we’ll get it next time.’ And the companies that were fourth and fifth will say, ‘You know, if we teamed up, we’d be number one.’”
Another area of interest for AFC is heavy-lift unmanned systems, he said. “Because heavy-lift UAS is the answer to sustainment as much as watercraft are.”
“And it’s too expensive right now. It’s probably too dangerous, but it doesn’t need to be. So that’s something we’re still working on,” he said.
Launched effects is another area where a capability portfolio would be beneficial, he said.
“We envision about three layers of that, a short range, a medium range and a long range,” he said. “And they’re unmanned systems that are capable of penetrating and surviving on the modern battlefield. But their purpose is to penetrate and then employ payloads of other swarm UAS, sensors, jammers.”
There would be different systems at different echelons, he said.
“I can kind of see a little self-organization of that as we go forward. And the way we’re going to figure that out is learning, watching the real wars that are going on and then ruthless experimentation, which is something Army is very, very good at.”
One thing that cuts across everything the Army does is the network and the ability to connect and operate with partners and allies. Central to that has been the Mission Partner Environment, the hardware and systems used to connect the U.S. services and its partners and allies. Ideally, that will be replaced with accessible data, Rainey said.
In the short term, and to be ready for a current conflict, the Army is working on improving the MPE and command and control more broadly through improving the connectivity of existing hardware.
“We’re stitching people together, better equipment, and we’re making progress on it — still very hard and it’s still a partner at a time,” he said.
What’s happening today through efforts like the Joint Fires Network and JADC2 is “about left to right, now connecting partners, connecting systems. I believe the real opportunity in the future is to move totally to data centrality where you’re not connecting things.
“You move your data to a state that is accessible and usable. And then that will unleash the power because then you don’t have to connect partners to allies, you just need to jump on a computer, write a couple lines of software that gives them access to the part of your data that you want them to have, and you no longer have a problem,” he said.
“This isn’t make believe,” he continued. “We’ve demonstrated out in Project Convergence Capstone Four. So, U.S. soldier, commander with a phone, and a partner with a phone, scanning a QR code and having access to the network — no third servers. That’s why I say we have more of a tech adoption problem that we have a technology” problem.
Having technology that can translate in real time isn’t black magic, he said. “Like, we’re five years behind tech on that,” and AFC is focused on bringing in the next generation of technology.
“I don’t think you need a Mission Partner Environment in the future,” he said. “I think you need to have software centric, where you can extend access to your network in the way you want to the partners you want.”
That requires getting Army and Defense Department data standardized, accessible and usable, he said. That involves “cloud, data centers, compute at the edge, and redundancy, because you don’t want single points of failure. But if your data is in that state of being, or anybody has access to it, depending on the authorities you give them, and it’s in a state that is usable, then it’s very simple to extend that to anybody.”
“That’s what I do with my tech industry partners,” he continued. “I’m like, ‘Okay, here’s what I want to be able to do. I want to be able to jump on and write a code and say this British armor brigade needs access to the network, and don’t let him see [top secret], but give them everything else. … And that becomes a software problem, as opposed to what it currently is — a cross-domain solutions policy, literally an entire new server stack to do that when it can be done by code. The reason we can’t do it yet is because our data is all over the place.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean Carberry Is the Editor, National Defense Magazine and has more than 20 years of experience in public policy and journalism with a focus on international affairs, national security, conflicts and failed states, extremism, identity politics, and political reform.
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