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By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley is the new Army Capabilities Integration Center director and the first director to guide the center's efforts under the purview of the brand-new Army Futures Command, as opposed to Training and Doctrine Command, where the center lived since its inception. ARCIC will be responsible for the development of future operational and war-fighting concepts that align and inform the service's major modernization priorities that Futures Command is tasked to develop in a new and rapid way. In an unprecedented method, concept and capability development will be formed in parallel. In a wide-ranging interview with Defense News, Wesley discussed how the Army is evolving its major operational concept — Multidomain Operations 1.5 — and how ARCIC will continue to align modernization strategy with the concept as the Army heads toward a fully modernized force by 2028 — one that can provide overmatch against peer adversaries. When are you coming out with the new version of the Army's Multidomain Operations concept (MDO 1.5)? Will it be at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference? We're teasing it out. What we're going to do is deliver all of the principles and tenets of this new concept, and then you'll see the signed version within 30 days of that. Why is getting the MDO concept right so critical? I'll say upfront this is the most fundamental rewrite of an operational concept since AirLand Battle that was published in 1982. Concepts are critical, particularly at a point in time when you see the world's dynamics fundamentally shift in a way that you've got to, in many ways, reconfigure or redesign and modernize your army. What has changed in the world that requires multidomain operations? I'd say there are a number of things. But if there's a word that you want to remember in terms of identifying the challenges we face within the pacing threats, it is the word “standoff.” And what [our adversaries] have invested in are things that mitigate against the United States and our partners and allies' strengths. We're very good at close combat, and they've watched us over the last 30 years or so. And when you give the United States and our coalition partners and allies time to build up against it, usually the outcome is preordained based on ability to get into position and conduct operations the way we like to conduct them. So recognizing that, they've invested in what we oftentimes refer to as anti-access, area denial capabilities, which serendipitously came parallel with our withdrawal from the continent of Europe and the Korean Peninsula over the last 30 years. Fll article: https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/us-army-capabilities-integration-chief-talks-multidomain-ops

By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Lynx 41 infantry fighting vehicle made its public debut in the springtime drizzle at a Parisian land warfare exposition in June this year. German defense company Rheinmetall took pains to show its vehicle on scene was not a mock-up, but a real vehicle that came with available footage of its rigorous test campaigns. Ben Hudson, the head of the company's vehicle systems division, told Defense News at the expo that Rheinmetall was “highly interested” in the U.S. Army's Next-Generation Combat Vehicle program, and said to stay tuned on how Lynx might break into the U.S. market as a serious competitor for NGCV. Fast-forward four months, and Rheinmetall has found a high-profile partner in Raytheon to bring Lynx to the U.S. They will participate in what is shaping up to be a competitive prototyping effort with the NGCV program, to replace the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle with an Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle. Developing a family of next-generation combat vehicles is a top priority of the U.S. Army as part of its modernization strategy focused on multi-domain operations. In fact, it's the second highest priority, underneath bringing Long-Range Precision Fires into the force. “We knew we wouldn't be able to compete for a program as prestigious and large in the U.S. without a strong U.S. partner,” Hudson told Defense News in an interview leading up to the Association of the United States Army's annual conference. “Since Eurosatory, we have been working through that.” The partnership gets after “essentially the best of both of our companies,” Hudson said. It “brings together the world's leading infantry fighting vehicle technology, the vehicle and turret from Rheinmetall,” with Raytheon's capabilities from a systems integration standpoint, he said. “A lot of the gaps that we had in our business to really create that next-generation solution are easily covered by the strengths and capabilities Raytheon has, and some of those things are electronic warfare, signals intelligences, missiles capabilities ... and sensor systems like the third-generation FLIR that are a key plan of the Army going forward,” Hudson said. To bring on Raytheon's technology, the vehicle won't have to be changed much because it was designed from day one to be modular and adaptable. In fact, the company switched configurations at Eurosatory to a hybrid command variant in a matter of hours. The vehicle will be “a U.S. product, U.S. made and, ultimately, we will move to a U.S. engineered platform,” Hudson said. The fact that the Army is ready to dive head first into replacing the Bradley, with plans to have companies compete for a chance to rapidly build prototypes for the OMFV program, makes the partnership with Rheinmetall attractive, said Kim Ernzen, Raytheon's vice president of land warfare systems. Because Lynx already “exists, that is one of the most compelling pieces to this relationship,” she said. But Raytheon and Rheinmetall also share the same philosophies when it comes to company culture and innovation and “how we look at technology that comes to play not only today but, more importantly, has that growth path for the future,” Ernzen said. This aligns with the Army's path to get a next-gen combat vehicle to the field quickly but continue to evolve its technical capabilities to keep pace with evolving threats. This isn't the first time Raytheon and Rheinmetall have partnered on programs. Most recently, the pair unveiled an integrated suite of air-defense capabilities they think could meet the entire portfolio of German air-defense needs, going up against Germany's current development plans to buy a missile defense system from Lockheed Martin. And the duo has also worked to integrate Raytheon's Patriot air-and-missile defense system on Rheinmetall trucks for an unnamed Scandinavian country, among several other efforts. The impact of emerging threats and new requirements drove Rheinmetall to build Lynx to fill a gap in the market. Defeating today's and tomorrow's threats means having a vehicle that weighs well above 50,000 kilos — or more than 110,200 pounds — or one that is rapidly reconfigurable to support different missions. The Lynx KF41 with a Lance 2.0 turret “rebalances the key requirements in the areas of survivability, mobility, lethality, capacity, adaptability and transportability,” Hudson said in June, and is reconfigurable using open-architecture systems and a modular and open mechanical architecture. The vehicle design is “highly scalable,” Hudson said, with more than 18,000 kilos, or more than 39,000 pounds, of reconfigurable payload and an internal volume that allows for the turret and up to nine seats in the back. The new vehicle is fitted with an 850-kilowatt power pack that uses the Liebherr engine and Renk transmission. Additionally, in order to power the digital backbone and all the other weapons systems, more than 20 kilowatts of electrical power is stored on board. The turret also has two flexible mission pods on either side, to allow customizable subsystems such as anti-tank guided missiles, non-line-of-sight loitering munitions, UAVs or an electronic warfare package. Raytheon will provide the third-generation FLIR, fielded on Abrams tanks and also meant for the Bradley A5 upgrade, which has since been canceled to make way for the OMFV. The company also plans to provide other sensor suites, particularly an active protection system that is already being developed and built to be compliant with the Army's future APS system. While Rheinmetall has its own APS — the Active Defense System — that it's been trying to break into the U.S. market as an interim solution for combat vehicles now, the company sees Raytheon's APS offering as “unparalleled” and the plan is to incorporate the capability into the offering. Raytheon and Rheinmetall plan to submit a proposal when the Army's draft request for proposals drops — potentially as soon as this month, but it could slip to November or December, according to Ernzen. Proposals are due in May. The Army plans to follow a similar procurement route as it did with the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle and downselect to two competitors who will build 14 prototypes in an engineering and manufacturing development phase in the first quarter of fiscal 2020. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/raytheon-rheinmetall-partner-to-offer-new-lynx-fighting-vehicle-to-us-army

By: Daniel Cebul WASHINGTON — Even as Army leadership points to the great progress made toward interoperability of missile systems, the future could take that vision one step further. During a Monday panel hosted by Defense News at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting, Col. John Rafferty, director of the Long-Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team, said the Army aspires to have “an integrated network, rather than interoperability, which is the work around" in the meantime. "When we get into operational strategic fires we want to extend the systems approach across the fires warfighting function, offensive and defense,” Rafferty added. Tom Karako, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Missile Defense Project, stressed that a more aggressive approach to integrating offensive and defense fires is required to defeat current and future near-peer threats. One area Karako has his eye on “is the degree of integration between Maneuver SHORAD, and frankly the whole rest of ARMY AMD, as well as offensive fires. Making sure that interoperability or integration is common as opposed to being another stovepipe of excellence.” The Integrated Air and Missile Battle Command System (IBCS) is one Army program that will be key to achieving integrated fires. The brains behind the Army's future air and missile defense command-and-control system, IBCS will improve the operational capabilities of current AMD systems like THAAD and Patriot by connecting the former disparate systems. When integrated, the Army can leverage THAAD's AN/TYP-2 radar to extend Patriot's effective range and provide a clearer picture of incoming threats. Discussing the importance of integrated air and missile defenses, Karako said, “just as there is that full spectrum of air and missile threats, we're going to need to have a full spectrum and integration of air and missile defense.” Rafferty and his team have not overlooked the significant investment being made in long-range precision fires. “I definitely feel like we are the number one modernization priority for the Army,” Rafferty said. “I also realize that with the investment comes a sense of cost consciousness because we know that hard choices were made ... across the Army to resource this number one priority.” And while Rafferty's cross functional team is receiving significant funding, the Army knows it has to work as a team to achieve its goals. As explained by Brig. Gen. Alfred Abramson, the program executive officer with PEO Ammunition, the Army has to put their heads together to figure out “where's the juice worth the squeeze in terms of investment." "Can we build a better mouse trap so to speak with some limited dollars, because you can't spread it across everything,” said Abramson, adding that his organization has seen a significant spike of about $2.5 billion for fiscal years 2017 to 2022 funding for ammunition and armament systems products. "At the same time we have a conversation with Col Rafferty's organization about what direction should we be heading. So it really is a discussion across these organizations to make sure everybody is focused on the same thing.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/army-looks-to-a-future-of-integrated-fire

par Yohan Demeure Abandonner les instruments traditionnels actuellement utilisés pour piloter, et adopter une planche virtuelle qui fera office de tableau de bord. Voici le concept qui équipera un avion de chasse nouvelle génération. Adieu boutons, cadrans, manettes, etc. Place au virtuel dans les futurs avions de chasse ! Il s'agit d'un projet développé par BAE Systems, une société britannique œuvrant dans les secteurs de la défense et de l'aérospatial. Selon un communiquépublié le 21 septembre 2018, il est question d'un tableau de bord vierge, sur lequel sera projetée l'intégralité des informations de vol depuis le casque du pilote, une sorte de cockpit portable (wearable cockpit). Le but est ici de permettre au pilote de ne plus l'cher le manche des mains en cours de vol, et d'éviter à ce dernier de se perdre dans une multitude d'informations. Le tableau de bord virtuel est équipé d'une intelligence artificielle et d'un système de détection du regard. Il est destiné à être reconfigurable à souhait, adaptable au contexte du moment, mais également évolutif (voir schéma ci-dessous). «Le point le plus important sera de déterminer l'objectif du pilote, et d'utiliser des systèmes intelligents pour assurer la performance des t'ches et réduire la charge de travail du pilote. Nous voulons faire cela de manière à ne pas toujours demander la permission, car cela deviendrait rapidement très pénible, mais il est essentiel que le pilote sache clairement quelle est la t'che exécutée par le système intelligent », a déclaré Jean Page, responsable technique du projet. Il s'agit ici clairement de vaincre ce que l'on appelle la tunnélisation de l'attention(ou tunnélisation attentionnelle). C'est le fait que le pilote se focalise à 100 % sur un éventuel problème en cours de vol, ignorant les alertes des paramètres de vol. Cela peut même aller jusqu'aux manœuvres de pilotage les plus élémentaires, qui conduisent à la perte de contrôle puis à l'accident. Selon BAE Systems, ce nouveau dispositif actuellement en développement est destiné à équiper le futur avion de chasse Eurofighter Tempest, qui vise à remplacer l'Eurofighter Typhoon dès 2025. Il s'agit d'un avion développé par le consortium Eurofighter GmbH (Royaume-Uni, Italie, Allemagne et Espagne). Sources : New Atlas – Futura Sciences https://sciencepost.fr/2018/10/voici-le-tableau-de-bord-portable-et-virtuel-qui-equipera-un-avion-de-chasse-nouvelle-generation/

Non, la Belgique ne demande pas aux Américains de prolonger leur offre, dans le cadre de la procédure de remplacement de ses avions de combat. Simplement, elle leur demande jusqu'à quand les conditions remises pour le F-35 resteront valables. Autrement dit, s'ils tiennent tant que cela à l'échéance du 14 octobre. Nuance. Difficile de savoir si la partie qui se joue actuellement est à classer au rayon "diplomatie de haut vol", ou mérite plutôt l'étiquette "négociation de marchands de tapis". L'acte I s'est joué le mois dernier: l'ambassadeur américain en Belgique a fait mine de mettre un petit coup de pression sur le gouvernement fédéral. En septembre, donc, Ronald Gidwitz rappelait que l'offre déposée par le groupe américain Lockheed Martin pour le remplacement des chasseurs-bombardiers belges F-16 expirait le 14 octobre, soit précisément le jour du scrutin communal. Pareille offre ne pourrait être indéfiniment prolongée, avertissait l'ambassadeur, empruntant les manières d'un représentant de commerce. Ou du moins pas en l'état; en cas de prolongation, il ne faudrait pas s'étonner de voir les conditions – prix, délais ou termes en matière d'entraînement – être modifiées. Pas dans le bon sens, fallait-il comprendre. Une sortie pour la galerie, en quelque sorte. Puisqu'elle ne semble avoir infléchi en rien la ligne de Michel. À qui l'on doit la composition de cet acte II: Un comité ministériel restreint avait déjà t'té le terrain, et un autre, réuni ce jeudi matin, a validé l'option. La Belgique va, en quelque sorte, demander la prorogation de l'offre déposée par le constructeur du F-35, postposant dans la foulée sa décision dans cet épineux dossier.Une fois de plus, puisque, outre ce 14 octobre, le sommet de l'Otan de juillet dernier avait déjà été présenté comme date limite pour trancher. Enfin, c'est un tantinet plus subtil que cela. Alors précisons. Non, la Belgique ne demande pas officiellement d'allongement du délai. Michel a mandaté son ministre de la Défense, le N-VA Steven Vandeput, qui est chargé de demander aux Américains la date de péremption de leur dossier. Autrement dit, à quel point tiennent-ils à l'échéance du 14 octobre, jusqu'ici brandie? Nuance, nuance. Le "chouchou" F-35 La Belgique joue donc la montre dans ce dossier complexe. Qui mérite une piqûre de rappel. Les 54 F-16 dont dispose la Belgique approchent tout doucement de l''ge de la retraite. Les premiers ont été livrés en 1982 et la limite des 8.000 heures de vol mène à un déclassement débutant en 2023. Voilà pourquoi le Fédéral a lancé en mars 2017 un appel d'offres portant sur l'acquisition de 34 nouveaux avions de combat, qui devraient être livrés à partir de 2023 et être tous opérationnels pour 2030. L'affaire est délicate. Parce que, assez rapidement, le F-35 américain a été désigné par l'amicale des bruits de couloir comme étant le "chouchou" – autrement dit, les jeux seraient déjà faits. Est venue s'ajouter en avril dernier une vraie-fausse polémique sur la possibilité d'allonger la durée de vie de nos vaillants, quoique vieillissants, F-16. Bref, pourquoi aller dépenser la modique somme de 3,6 milliards d'euros – et encore, il ne s'agit ici que de la mise initiale, les estimations de la facture totale tournant autour des 15 ou 18 milliards répartis sur une quarantaine d'années – alors que l'on pourrait "doper" la flotte existante pour un coût nettement plus doux? Ajoutez à cela la France et son Rafale, qui ont décidé de jouer les trouble-fêtes, en proposant, en septembre 2017, à la Belgique un "partenariat approfondi et structurant", et ce en dehors du cadre du marché lancé par Michel. La rumeur voudrait d'ailleurs que la Belgique n'ait jamais réellement inspecté en détail la proposition française. Résultat, le 14 février dernier, seuls deux avions étaient officiellement encore en lice: le F-35 Lightning II de l'américain Lockheed Martin – le plusonéreux des programmes d'armement de l'histoire militaire américaine – et l'Eurofighter Typhoon, porté par un consortium mêlant Royaume-Uni, Allemagne, Espagne et Italie. Et, faisant bande à part, le Rafale de Dassault. Comme si le remplacement des F-16 n'était pas suffisamment compliqué comme cela, d'autres marchés relatifs à la Défense sont ouverts – et non des moindres. De quoi créer des interférences ou pousser la Belgique à établir une sorte de balance générale, par le miracle d'une diplomatie de haut vol? Drones, navires et véhicules de combat Il est question de drones, puisque la Défense a prévu l'acquisition, pour 226 millions d'euros, de quatre drones susceptibles d'être armés. Alors que les militaires s'intéressaient à un engin "made in USA", le géant européen de l'aéronautique Airbus s'est invité et a proposé ses services. Il est question de navires, puisque la Belgique et les Pays-Bas ont entamé ensemble une procédure d'achat de seize navires militaires – deux frégates et six bateaux de lutte contre les mines chacun – pour une facture dépassant les 4 milliards. Aux Néerlandais de superviser le programme des frégates, aux Belges de présider celui des navires anti-mines. Mentionnons encore l'achat de 477 véhicules de combat pour les forces terrestres belges, pour lequel un préaccord à 1,1 milliard est établi avec la France. Benoît Mathieu, Journaliste Source: L'Echo https://www.lecho.be/economie-politique/belgique/flandre/la-belgique-joue-la-montre-avec-le-f-35/10056153.html

By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The modernization team tasked with advancing the Army's next-generation combat vehicles is focused, as its top priority, on replacing the Bradley Fighting Vehicle with an Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, according to the team's leader, Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman. The OMFV is meant to “provide options to commanders in combat, so it's a decision to, manned or unmanned, gain contact with the enemy, and that can be visual or through firepower, and it actually provides options to commanders so that they can use the best way to accomplish their mission,” Coffman said in an interview with Defense News shortly before the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting. The Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team — established as part of the Army's new Futures Command — tackles the service's second highest priority out of six major lines of effort that are intended to fully modernize the force by 2028. The CFT has had many conversations with industry to determine what's possible. The team has laid out what it thinks will be the requirements for the vehicle, Coffman said, including aspects like an optionally manned capability, loading it on a C-17 aircraft, protection elements and lethality. Even though the Army plans to rapidly prototype and procure the OMFV, Coffman said the team will continue to roll new technologies in through constant experimentation, in parallel with OMFV procurement, so that the first OMFV that comes out and gets fielded is constantly improved. The Army will roll those improvements into manufacturing “so that we can always maintain the current technology on these vehicles,” he said. The Army is requesting that designs have lots of room for upgrades and to add in new technology. "We know technology will continue to move at the pace it is today or faster, and it is going to allow us to have enough physical space and computing power as well as propulsion power that, if we want to add things to these vehicles, we have the ability to build them [to be] the best they can be,” Coffman said. Jumping right in, the service plans to release a request for proposals, not just a draft, by the end of the year, Coffman said. It is anticipated that the proposals will be due in May next year, and then the Army will downselect to two competitors who will build 14 prototypes in an engineering and manufacturing development phase in the first quarter of fiscal 2020, according to industry sources. Coffman said he hoped to cast a wide net with industry, including looking to partners around the world for solutions. “We want them to bring us their best, and we will evaluate and downselect to some number and do a procurement contract at the end of the final evaluation,” he said. To accommodate for the OMFV effort and the other lines of development within the CFT's portfolio, the Army has downgraded its prototype activity within the Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center. A year ago, the Army had kicked off a major prototyping effort to develop what the service was calling its NGCV by awarding an industry team a contract to build two demonstrators by fiscal year 2022. The Army awarded a seven-year, $700 million contract to a team consisting of SAIC — the team lead — as well as Lockheed Martin, Moog Inc., GS Engineering Inc., Hodges Transportation Inc. and Roush Industries. Jim Scanlon, senior vice president and general manager of SAIC's Defense Systems Group, told Defense News in a recent interview that while the initial plan was to build prototypes, the strategy has evolved. Now, the team is working on sub-system experimentation for TARDEC using Bradley assets, to test capabilities such as mobility systems and manned-unmanned teaming. SAIC, according to Scanlon, sees the Mobile Protected Firepower solution it is hoping to prototype for the Army as possessing technological capabilities that will serve as “hooks” — or a pathway — to fulfilling OMFV requirements. Other companies are likely to emerge with offerings for OMFV, including General Dynamics Land Systems, AM General and BAE Systems. BAE Systems brought its CV90 fighting vehicle, developed for the Swedish army, to AUSA. The Netherlands, Finland and Denmark are also customers of the vehicle. According to BAE, it brought the CV90 to the show as a starting point to discuss possible options for the NGCV program. Raytheon and Rheinmetall announced at the AUSA conference Oct. 8 that they are partnering to provide Rheinmetall's Lynx combat vehicle as its submission to the impending OMFV competition. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/replacing-the-bradley-is-the-top-priority-for-the-armys-next-gen-combat-vehicle-modernization-team

By: Todd South Army researchers are speeding up development on key conventional munitions, from field artillery to long-range missiles, and making them more deadly when they land. At a panel hosted by Defense News at the annual Association of the United States Army annual meeting, commanders with the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command, Program Executive Office-Ammunition and the Long-Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team gave a few updates on those efforts. Brig. Gen. Alfred Abramson III, head of PEO Ammo and Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, told audience members that his researchers are finding the quickest ways to go after extending ranges, saying that the XM1113 round will be “critical” for the conventional artillery in the Extended Range Cannon Artillery program, a centerpiece of artillery modernization. Abramson noted that the existing M795 High Explosive artillery round, the base of the 155mm munition portfolio, includes about 614,000 rounds in the nation's stockpile. But those rounds only reach out to about 30 kilometers. The problem developers face in pushing the ranges of conventional rounds is keeping them both accurate and having a real effect when they strike, he said. “You want to push it out to 70 kilometers and ensure it's not just a long-range paintball,” Abramson said. The XM1128 pushes those ranges to about 40 kilometers currently. But work with “lithographic fragmentation technology,” Abramson said, makes the round more lethal on target. Col. John Rafferty, director of the LRPF CFT, said that recent testing has gotten 155mm artillery rounds to the 60-kilometer range at the Yuma, Arizona, testing facility. Abramson said that his organization has seen a significant spike of about $2.5 billion for fiscal years 2017 to 2022 funding for ammunition and armament systems products. Another $1.5 billion has been allotted to update the aging ammunition manufacturing plants across the Army, he said. Recent Overseas Contingency Operations funding for 2019 was marked at about $4.1 billion simply to replenish munitions consumed during combat. What's being done to advance the science? Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, commanding general of U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, said that over the past year, $900 million was realigned for science and technology development for the LRPF initiatives, and another $500 million was also realigned for the Air Missile Defense CFT. His organization just completed a six-month study of energetics propulsion that included a detailed study of adversary capabilities and advancements over the past two decades. It also looked at how those advances were achieved and what gaps exist in the United States' armaments, he said. While the study has not yet been released to the public, he said two non-technical gaps that the United States must correct are in their ability to collaborate with global partners and science, chemistry and energy experts within government. Further down the development pipeline he said was a shortfall in transitioning the research to the PEOs for development and fielding. One tech challenge is the existing stockpiles. As the developers push the capacities of conventional rounds and their systems they must also maintain “backwards compatibility” with the substantial munition stockpiles, he said. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/10/08/army-leans-on-scientists-to-push-the-boundaries-of-munitions-range-precision-lethality

By: Meghann Myers So far, 2018 has seen an overhaul of basic combat training and a pilot programto extend infantry one-station unit training from 14 to 22 weeks. Next stop: Reducing the number of trainees assigned to each drill sergeant. Earlier this year, the Army sent drill sergeants back to advanced individual training, bringing uniformity to the whole of initial entry training for new soldiers who move onto a second training program following basic. But the ratio of trainers to trainees is still “way too high,” Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley told Army Times on Monday at the AUSA annual meeting in Washington, D.C. “And that's because we intentionally, over the last 17 years, we trimmed our institutional force ... in order to feed the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and make sure that those deploying units had enough people,” he said. So that left the base with 20 trainees for every one drill sergeant at basic combat training, and 40-to-1 at AIT. “We want to essentially cut those ratios in half,” Milley said, while adding a platoon sergeant and officer platoon leader to each of those units. The Army is counting on a steady rise in end strength to 500,000 active component soldiers in the next four years. Those new additions are slated first to fill spots in operational units, but the training base is also hurting for more of the unprecedented number of noncommissioned officers who have been re-enlisting. Decreasing the ratio of drill sergeants to trainees comes at a time when basic training programs are extending, requiring yet more instructors. The Army wants to improve basic combat training “not just in the length, but in the quality and attention paid to each trainee,” Milley said. Infantry OSUT completed a pilot program to extend from 14 to 22 weeks this summer, Army Secretary Mark Esper told Army Times, and that plan will extend in the next year to armor, combat engineers and others. “If we step back and ask ourselves, why? Why extend it?” Esper said. “I think it's lessons learned from the field, the operational Army that says, ‘Look, we're getting solders who could use more time to develop their physical fitness.' Maybe spend more time talking about the military traditions and our history, that [they] would come to the service with a greater sense of discipline.” Some more tactical and technical expertise wouldn't hurt, he added. “We thought adding two months would be what it takes,” for OSUT, Esper said, making it the “Longest and most challenging infantry basic training the world. Depending on what we learn ... we would seek to apply those lessons to other MOSs.” https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/10/08/milley-were-going-to-cut-instructor-trainee-ratios-at-army-basic-training-in-half

By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Army has been holding what has been called “night court,” full of “deep dives” to assess how essential existing programs are to the service's radical modernization goalssince the earlier part of this year. And according to the service's secretary, it has found roughly $25 billion through the process to apply to its priorities. Secretary Mark Esper, in a press briefing at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference, would not speak to the details of what programs will bite the dust to cover the cost of emerging modernization efforts because they are evident in the service's proposed fiscal 2020 budget, which has yet to clear the Office of the Secretary of Defense. But he did say “that dollar figure is a low-end number over the [Future Years Defense Program] FYDP,” adding: “Most of the savings are principally found in the [equipping] peg.” Esper, as well as Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and other top leadership, spent roughly 40 to 60 hours reviewing programs within the equipping peg since this spring as a part of a new effort to comb through every program and weigh them against modernization priorities. The thinking goes that if programs or activities didn't fit in the top six modernization priorities the Army laid out a year ago, then the programs could go, freeing up dollars for the priorities. The Army announced last year at AUSA that it planned to stand up Army Futures Command, a new four-star organization tasked to push forward efforts that will modernize the Army by 2028. There are six modernization priorities: Long-Range Precision Fires, Next-Generation Combat Vehicle, Future Vertical Lift, the network, air and missile defense, and soldier lethality. The Army went “program by program, activity by activity to look at each one and assess it and ask ourselves is this more important than a Next-Generation Combat Vehicle, is this more important than a squad automatic weapon, is this more important than Long-Range Precision Fires,” Esper said. “We had to make those trade-offs, and it resulted in, again, reductions and cancellations and consolidations, so that is our intent as we continue to go through the other pegs,” Esper said. “We're trying to be as judicious as we can with every dollar that has been disposed by Congress,” Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy told Defense News in an interview ahead of AUSA. “This is a way for us to put the highest level of rigor and prioritization that you could give for the department against our priorities.” The Army needs to be prepared for potential contraction of the Budget Control Act, McCarthy noted. “We will be ready for that no matter what.” Starting this month, the Army will take on manning and training programs in the same way. Esper said the Army is “playing a little bit of catch up” to get after reviewing the manning and training pegs, but said the service is going to institutionalize the process. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/armys-night-court-finds-25-billion-to-reinvest-in-modernization-priorities