Article

September 2003

Army Research Command to Better Address Soldier Needs

by Roxana Tiron

The Army is standing up a new command, hoping this organization can help change acquisition processes, field technology faster and integrate individual systems into networks.

“We can no longer build individual systems and capabilities and field them and [then] figure out how they all work together,” said Maj. Gen. John Doesburg, head of the Army Research Development and Engineering Command. The RDE Command is scheduled to begin operations in October in Edgewood, Md., and will report to the Army Materiel Command.

“Systems integration must occur before we do research and development, and to some degree before we do science and technology,” Doesburg told a National Defense Industrial Association armaments symposium.

“We have to charter and learn from experiences of capability managers and technology integrators,” he said. RDE Command also has to establish a new process for international cooperation in research, development and engineering.

It is hard to develop a metric to measure success in research and development, or in science and technology, said Doesburg. Each technology comes with a different level of risk. The command plans to begin defining the metrics by which success can be measured. “If I can’t show in 2005 where I have put technology into the hands of soldiers quicker, there has been no progress,” Doesburg said.

RDE also signed a memorandum of agreement with U.S. national laboratories. Collaboration with the labs could put technology in the hands of the soldiers much faster, Doesburg said.

A three-person team within the command has been assigned to work on fixing near-term problems. The Agile Development Center, led by Col. Tom Stautz, supports current operations and emerging requirements. Part of the center’s objectives is to bring “some of the things that we have learned in the special ops community into the regular Army,” said Stautz in a presentation at the conference. “There is a pervasive sense of urgency throughout SOF when it comes to acquisition.”

It is important to get the users involved and not just the representatives from Training and Doctrine Command, which is responsible for setting requirements. “The key users are in fact at the NCO [non-commissioned officers] level,” he said. “NCOs are so critical in the acquisition business that we are doing.”

The whole purpose of the RDE Command is to deliver technology faster, he said. “The development environment is totally different,” because the command has to cater both to future and current forces. “Our potential adversaries will also have access to the kind of technology that we have and will be able to adapt to the U.S. rapidly,” he said.

Platform-centric programs are shifting to network-based systems, said Stautz. “You have to pull technology from a whole slew of environments and deliver capability to both the current force and the future force.”

War fighters generally prefer a 70 percent solution or even a 50 percent solution, “if it is delivered tomorrow,” instead of a 100 percent solution that will take years, said Stautz.

The Agile Development Center works with the representatives from major Army commands throughout the world to ensure the RDE Command understands the needs of the users. The command also will encourage bright young officers to pursue advanced degrees. “RDE Command is going to create the uniformed scientist program that will be placed at key locations,” said Stautz.

The center will grow to five people by next year. “That means that we are not going to be duplicating ongoing individual labs and centers,” said Stautz. “Instead, we are going to link the activities of all different players out of the labs with the fighters. We will then facilitate the activities of the labs in delivering the solutions to the war fighters and providing that sense of urgency, so that we can expedite and provide that direct link to the senior leadership within RDE and AMC.”

The problem has always been how to link up the engineers and the technical experts with the war fighters, “so that they are talking, and the solution that they are developing is right on the mark for what the fighters need,” said Stautz.

Moving technology to the field faster requires partnering of the Army program executive officers and program managers, “because they are the experts of getting equipment into the field,” said Stautz. “We work with them on occasion, but we also work with the ‘rapid equipping force,’ which is an organization stood up reporting directly to the vice chief of staff.”

Developmental systems that RDE may sponsor will be sent to the field for user feedback, before any technology becomes an Army-wide procurement program, he added. The command, for example, is working on systems to help soldiers manning checkpoints in Iraq. The center is looking at “all the capabilities that come to bear at a checkpoint because we are losing soldiers on a regular basis, almost on a daily basis,” said Stautz. “We have to pull together all the different parties here to ID what technology solution we can deliver quickly, 90 days or less, to that operational area to improve capability at that theater.”

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