January 10, 2019 | International, Land
By: Aaron Mehta
WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Army's Multi-Domain Operations concept continues to evolve and be tested, the service is finding three key areas to focus on ahead of any major conflict.
Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley, the head of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, told reporters Dec. 9 that as his office continues to experiment with the MDO concept and war game it out, a focus on the “competition space” — the time before a conflict breaks out between two sides — will put the Army in a strong position to dictate the flow of how a conflict will play out.
“Leveraging the competition space, we found, is the most important aspect of getting the conflict portion right. That's something that we have to expand our capabilities in, and we're not completely postured to do right now,” Wesley said.
The first focus area is on countering information warfare and unconventional warfare, Wesley said, in what will not come as a surprise to those who have paid attention to what Russia has done in recent years.
The second area of focus Wesley calls “conducting the intelligence preparation of the battlefield.” At its core, this involves studying the enemy order of battle and understanding how a conflict may flow. And if that seems like a classic tenet of combat to you, Wesley wouldn't disagree.
“That's something we used to do all the time in western Europe in the 1980s, and since we've withdrawn from the continent, we don't do that to the degree we used to,” he said. “Plus, there are aspects to doing that, which are virtual, that we didn't do in the ‘80s that we have to do now.”
The third aspect is about posturing your forces to be agile enough to quickly enter a conflict if needed. Doing so, Wesley believes, “precludes protracted conflict. If you can transition rapidly and force your opponent to recalculate, that can preclude the need for protracted conflict.”
Wesley's team has had a busy year, developing and testing their ideas while publishing MDO 1.5 and switching from being under Training and Doctrine Command to the Army's new Futures Command. Despite that move on the organizational chart, ARCIC has stayed at Fort Eustis, Virginia, and remains geolocated with TRADOC, which has helped mitigate unnecessary duplication of overhead.
By having TRADOC continue to manage basic administrative issues such as personnel, travel and orders assistance, ARCIC is able to focus on using its limited staffing where it's most needed. As part of the move to Futures Command, ARCIC is in the process of standing up three new groups: an internal Red Team, an Operational Environment section, and a 3/5/7 office modeled on the service's operations and planning general staff position.
“We're not just moving deck chairs,” Wesley said. “Instead, we're also having to evolve our culture and change our organization so that its sufficiently nested” within Futures Command.
Asked if he was worried about people in ARCIC having too many bosses, Wesley waved those concerns away as unrealistic.
Sometimes “having one boss is a luxury that is impractical. And particularly when you're talking about [the need to] modernize across the entire enterprise — not just material modernization but doctrine, organization, training, leader development, policy, facilities, personnel,” he said.
“So those dotted lines are healthy because they force integration, which is indispensable to do this concept.”
https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/01/09/the-armys-three-focus-areas-to-avoid-protracted-combat/
September 30, 2024 | International, Aerospace
The Pentagon aims to maximize industry's ability to produce vital weapons like the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and Long Range Anti-Ship Missile.
March 29, 2019 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson Update: This story has been updated to reflect correct procurement numbers for the Armored Multipurpose Vehicle (AMPV). WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has telegraphed its plans to terminate 93 programs and truncate another 93to make room for next-generation technology under ambitious and rapid modernization plans, and the first major programs to feel the ax blows in the next five years are vehicles in the current fleet. According to fiscal 2020 budget request documents released March 12, the service plans to cut back on upgrade plans for its Bradley Fighting Vehicle program, an aging platform in the fleet currently unable to effectively support technology like active protection systems. But the Army is also planning to cut not-so-legacy systems as well — the Armored Multipurpose Vehicle (AMPV) built by BAE Systems and the Oshkosh-manufactured Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) — that recently replaced legacy systems, Army Comptroller Lt. Gen. Thomas Horlander said during a March 12 budget briefing with reporters at the Pentagon. The service has not reached a full-rate production decision for the JLTV. That was pushed back from December 2018 to May 2019 due to new plans to alter the vehicles — to include larger windows and the addition of a muffler — based on soldier feedback. And the first prototype for AMPV — the M113 personnel carrier replacement — rolled off the line in 2016. The budget documents lay out the Army's FY20 plans to cut Bradley A4 upgrade plans from 167 vehicles to 128. The plan is to procure five more sets of Bradley A4 vehicles with one going to pre-positioned stock in Europe and the other four replacing the oldest sets of Bradleys. Then the program will stop around 2023 to make way for the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle, or NGCV, according to Lt. Gen. James Pasquarette, the Army's G-8 chief. Although the Bradley will be curtailed, Pasquarette noted that its funding in FY20 was up 37 percent from last year at $639 million. While the Army — as of last year — planned to buy 3,035 JLTVs, it now plans to purchase just 2,530 of the vehicles in FY20. Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy told an audience at the McAleese & Associates and Credit Suisse Defense Programs conference in Washington on Wednesday that the service would stop at five brigades of Bradley A4 vehicles. That decision, he said, would sync with an investment increase for the NGCV expected in 2023 and beyond. And while the Army plans to decrease JLTV buys in 2020, cuts will likely not stop there. McCarthy said the Army is looking to lower the requirement for JLTVs and could soon be locking in a new top-line requirement number. Yet, Pasquarette also said at the McAleese conference that the top-line requirement would not change for the JLTV but would just be pushed to the right. McCarthy added that cutting the fleet of JLTVs was justified because the Army has a wealth of vehicles, from 55,000 Humvees, and 49,000 more JLTVs and another 800 Infantry Squad Vehicles planned. “We clearly have more capability than we need,” he said. The AMPV buy holds steady in FY20 at 131 vehicles. The FY19 plan shows the Army wanted to buy 130 vehicles. The five-year plan has yet to be released by the Army, but it's likely to show a decline in AMPV buys following FY20. Pasquarette said the AMPV top-line requirement remains unchanged, but the service was simply slowing the procurement rate per year. The cuts to current programs were made following painstaking deliberations among Army leadership over the course of last year in a forum dubbed “night court.” Through the process, the service measured current capability against its contribution to increasing capability in a modern, more lethal Army, and it terminated or truncated programs that didn't fit the bill. Pasquarette noted that the programs that were fully terminated were small ones that did not contribute to the lethality of the future force. Some of the bigger programs were slowed such as the vehicle programs. Overall, the Army moved an additional $3.6 billion into modernization funding accounts in FY20 over last year's levels — planning to spend $8.6 billion on programs that get after a more modern force. And across the five-year budget plan, the service moved an additional $32 billion to fund modernization efforts beyond what was planned in FY19 for a total of $57 billion. The Army isn't cutting or slowing all of its legacy vehicle systems, Pasquarette noted. The Stryker Double V-Hull (DVH-configuration combat vehicles) will get $550 million per year over the next five years to outfit a half of a Stryker brigade combat team annually. The Abrams tank will receive $1.7 billion in FY20 funding, a 64 percent increase over last year, Pasquarette added. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/federal-budget/2019/03/13/us-army-cuts-current-vehicle-fleet-to-make-way-for-next-gen-tech/
May 28, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Xi Jinping's comments came amid a face-off between the militaries of India and China at the Line of Actual Control (LAC). WorldEdited by Divyanshu Dutta Roy (with inputs from PTI)Updated: May 28, 2020 08:01 am IST Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday ordered the military to scale up its battle preparedness, visualising the worst-case scenarios and asked them to resolutely defend the country's sovereignty. Though he did not mention any specific threat, his comments came amid a face-off between soldiers of India and China at the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Xi, 66 who is also the General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and head of the two-million-strong military with prospects of lifelong tenure in power, made the remarks while attending a plenary meeting of the delegation of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and People's Armed Police Force during the current parliament session being held in Beijing. Xi ordered the military to think about worst-case scenarios, scale up training and battle preparedness, promptly and effectively deal with all sorts of complex situations and resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, state-run Xinhua news agency reported, without mentioning any specific issues that posed a threat to the country. Several areas along the LAC in Ladakh and North Sikkim have witnessed major military build-up by both the Indian and Chinese armies recently, in a clear signal of escalating tension and hardening of respective positions by the two sides even two weeks after they were engaged in two separate face-offs. The nearly 3,500-km-long LAC is the de-facto border between the two countries. China's military friction with the US has also been on the rise with the American navy stepping its patrols in the disputed South China Sea as well as the Taiwan Straits. Washington and Beijing are also engaged in a war of words over the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. On May 22, China, the second-largest military spender after the US, hiked its defence budget by 6.6 per cent to $179 billion, nearly three times that of India, the lowest increment in recent years amidst the massive disruption caused to the communist giant's economy by the COVID-19 pandemic. India has said the Chinese military was hindering normal patrolling by its troops along the LAC in Ladakh and Sikkim and strongly refuted Beijing's contention that the escalating tension between the two armies was triggered by trespassing of Indian forces across the Chinese side. The Ministry of External Affairs said all Indian activities were carried out on its side of the border, asserting that India has always taken a very responsible approach towards border management. At the same time, it said, India was deeply committed to protect its sovereignty and security. "Any suggestion that Indian troops had undertaken activity across the LAC in the Western sector or the Sikkim sector is not accurate. Indian troops are fully familiar with the alignment of the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border areas and abide by it scrupulously," MEA Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said at an online media briefing last week. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/xi-jinping-to-chinese-military-prepare-for-worst-case-scenarios-2235615