President's Corner

Technology Base Focused on ‘Rapid Fielding’ Efforts

by Lt. Gen. Lawrence P. Farrell, Jr., USAF (Ret)

August 2003 — Much has been reported in recent months on Army efforts to rush new technology to troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, in response to urgent requests from commanders.

These “rapid fielding” initiatives have tested the Army’s ability to expedite programs and to make the procurement system work better for the soldier. Among the developmental items that the Army and its industry partners have managed to speed to the field for Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom are robotic mine detectors, advanced sniper rifles, and laser rangefinders. However, the Army recognizes that much more needs to be done to make the technology base more responsive to the operators.

The lessons from OEF and OIF only have intensified the sense of urgency that is driving the Army—as well as the other services—to revamp business practices within the science, technology, and engineering communities.

The need and desire to better support the users were predominant themes last month at NDIA’s Armaments Symposium in Parsippany, N.J., where a number of senior military officials and civilian Army leaders stressed this point repeatedly: The feedback from OEF and OIF provides further evidence that the industrial base is getting more agile, but that more work lies ahead.

A case in point is the standing up of a new Army organization that specifically will focus on reducing the time that it takes for technology to transition from the lab to the soldier—the U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command. The RDE Command is scheduled to start operations in October, but a lot of work already has been under way to improve the integration and coordination of multiple program offices and laboratories. The commander of RDE, Maj. Gen. John C. Doesburg, told the conference that increased agility is needed, “to take advantage of technology opportunities and to solve immediate operational problems.”

Some of these immediate needs that experts cited at the conference include:

More flexible munitions, along with robotic reconnaissance and illuminator systems, to allow ground troops to conduct targeting without being exposed.
Logistics tracking systems to ensure the right ammunition is delivered to units. Radio frequency (RF) tags work well, but only until the ISO shipping containers arrive in the field.
Fuel-efficient vehicles, such as hybrid-electric ones, need to fully mature and enter production as soon as possible, to help the Army save billions of dollars in fuel costs and transportation.
Miniaturized, highly efficient, power sources are needed for just about every type of battlefield device. A proliferation of heavy batteries just adds to the logistics problem.
Highly responsive fire support is very much a priority. Commanders of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, for example, said the Army would benefit from a capability such as an AC-130 gunship that could be operated during the day, in any type of weather.

Achieving increased “agility” in military development and procurement programs also requires industry to adapt and react rapidly to urgent needs.

We have seen industry successfully respond during OEF and OIF, particularly in the area of munitions. The munitions sector, as a matter of fact, offers an interesting case study of how much more efficient the defense industry has become over the past half-century. During World War II, for example, the United States spent $8.5 billion just to buy fuzes (about 22 million fuzes altogether). In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the value of all conventional munitions was just a fraction of that, at $1.4 billion.

“It takes us minutes, as a nation, to make enough bullets to take out an adversary like Iraq,” said Peter O’Neill, acting associate for development and production in close combat at the Picatinny Arsenal. He estimated the entire cost of U.S. munitions spent in OIF probably added up to less than 30 minutes worth of the nation’s domestic product.

The cost of the war—estimated at between $100 billion and $200 billion—is equivalent to 73 hours worth of total U.S. economic output in 2001. This kind of efficiency is impressive. But we must not forget that the massive downsizing and consolidation of the defense industry since the early 1990s has left the United States in a situation where defense suppliers have, in many cases, a limited capability to surge and limited assembly lines available. O’Neill offered a sobering statistic: It takes six months of defense industry production to replenish the bullets used in 30 days of fighting. “We have fewer people, fewer U.S. companies working all ammunition programs today than we had for one fuze in World War II,” he noted during a presentation to the Armaments Conference.

As we continue to digest the lessons from recent wars, it is becoming increasingly clear that both government and industry have achieved extraordinary success, although the journey is not over. As I stated in last month’s President’s Perspective, our nation’s scientists and engineers in both the public and private sectors are doing some extraordinary work to solve complex problems. What we see happening in the Army’s RDE Command and its rapid fielding initiatives offers further proof that the services and industry are making every possible effort to better satisfy the needs of the war fighters.

Please e-mail your comments to lfarrell@ndia.org.

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President's Corner

Technology Base Focused on ‘Rapid Fielding’ Efforts

by Lt. Gen. Lawrence P. Farrell, Jr., USAF (Ret)

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