Article

September 2003

Ammo Procurement Chief Wants Faster Response

by Roxana Tiron

The Army’s office in charge of ammunition procurement—which manages 191 programs—wants to make its projects more visible to industry, in an effort to improve responsiveness to emerging combat needs.

An overarching industrial base strategy that will look at lessons learned from Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom is “the hardest thing I am working on right now,” said Brig. Gen. Paul Izzo, the Army’s program executive officer for ammunition. “We are trying to get this straight, because of future contingencies that we do not know where exactly they are going to be.”

The analysis will attempt to identify future needs and how to go about producing the critical items, he said. “It’s very tedious to get through every item. Some items have 30-40 contractors or suppliers.”

“We want to get it right,” he told the 2003 National Defense Industrial Association armaments conference. “We want the confidence in the contractors and all the folks working in ammunition to get a coherent plan. That way we can lay it out and fight for more dollars.”

An industrial base command center was established almost two years ago, said Izzo. The center is looking to answer critical questions such as dependency on foreign suppliers and availability of critical raw material.

Izzo said his office wants to be able to give contractors incentive to invest. Since the end of the Cold War, ammunition production has slipped dramatically, he added.

“Three years ago, there were 370 different types of contractors. Now there are less than 70 for some of our most critical parts,” he said.

“It is essential to communicate with the commanders in the field, to send out PEO representatives that serve as a link between the commanders and contractors,” Izzo noted. In the future, it is important that the acquisition community receives real-time information about the soldiers’ needs, “so we can do our job better,” he said.

Before the creation of PEO ammunition nearly two years ago, program managers were in disparate organizations. The idea of PEO Ammunition is “to bundle them [the PMs] and get efficiency,” Izzo told National Defense. “Take the medium caliber 25mm for the Bradley, for example: we buy them for the other services; we buy them for Bradley; we buy them in bulk. [We have to] try to get a plan on how many total you will need over a period of time.”

Such approach would ensure long-term contracts and relationships instead of “bouncing all over,” said Izzo.

His office has a budget of $1.2 billion for 2003. The budget for 2004 is going to be slightly lower, he added. As the single manager for conventional ammunition, Izzo also spends $1.3 billion buying ammo for the other services.

PEO Ammunition procures about 156 items for the rest of the services. “They depend on us for procurement. They depend on us to get it right, so they don’t have to come back and ask why there are problems,” he said.

Izzo works with a staff of 725 people at the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal, in New Jersey. His office is heavily dependent on the Armaments Research Development and Engineering Center, he said, and works closely with the Joint Munitions Command (JMC).

JMC is responsible for packaging, shipping and inspecting. “They do all the pieces on the logistics side, so we have to work hand in hand,” said Izzo. “We talk daily to get expertise from JMC and ARDEC and supply it to Picatinny.”

Currently, there is a growing need for small arms munitions, Izzo said. “We have to … ensure that we have the people that make the brass, gunpowder and lead,” he said. “We have large contractors making thousands a week.”

For both large and small caliber ammunition, 64 to 90 million rounds are required in the stockpile. “We have to work with the JMC to ensure they can get to where they need to get.”

In Iraq alone, 46 million 5.56 mm rounds, 30 million 6.62 mm and 60 million .50 caliber rounds were used, according to Army records.

Crew-served machine guns ended up being the weapons of choice in numerous engagements in OIF, according to Peter O’Neill, the acting associate for development and production in close combat at Picatinny. Oftentimes, the Iraqi soldiers hid in fighting positions until tanks were very near before attacking, thus negating the use of the main gun, he said.

Based on some conclusions drawn from OIF, a top priority for the Army is to produce guided munitions. “Precision artillery is a natural partner to precision air power” in all types of weather, said O’Neill.

Problems with ammunition in Iraq mostly arose from the fact that the wrong ammunition was delivered to units, said O’Neill. Many ISO containers were opened unnecessarily to identify the contents. The radio frequency tag system only worked well until the ISO containers arrived in the field, he said.

The .50 caliber round was considered a combat multiplier, said O’Neill, due to its psychological impact on other combatants that witnessed the destruction of the targets.

The gas plugs on the 7.62mm gun have been the biggest maintenance problem, according to O’Neill. Lubricants also were problematic because the current 15W/40 gums up the weapons. The solution to that would be civilian graphite, said O’Neill.

While the Army fulfills immediate battlefield needs, PEO ammunition is also aligning its efforts to develop the necessary ammunition for the Future Combat Systems family of vehicles.

For the 120mm beyond line-of-sight and line-of-sight gun, there is work under way on an advanced smart round, a kinetic-energy projectile and multi-purpose anti-tank munition. For the 120mm mortar vehicle, precision-guided mortar munitions are under development, as well as mortar fire control and an advanced mortar system. The 155mm non line-of-sight variant will employ the XM 982 GPS-guided Excalibur and next generation scatterable mines.

The infantry carrier vehicle will have bursting munitions and a ground standoff mine detection system.

For the Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, an intelligent munitions system is being developed, as well as an air standoff mine detection system, said Izzo.

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