Army Futures Command to Ask What Will Future Battlefield Look Like?
The US Army’s newly stood up Futures Command will look at what the battlefields of the near future will look like and what operational factors troops might encounter. Senior officers have been discussing how this will impact on the reorganisation of the procurement process and the identifying of requirements.
At the recent Association of the US Army breakfast, held in Arlington, Virginia, Lt. General Paul A. Ostrowski, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology and director of the Army Acquisition Corps, discussed what the Futures Command will focus on, centred around what he described as ‘the three pillars’.
Ostrowski said “We’ll potentially be in a near-peer fight in the near future … and it will be a difficult fight,” before outlining his three pillars. The first of these is ‘Futures and Concepts’ these concepts will be drawn up in response to the questions of what a battlefield in 2036 will look like, what tactics and procedures will be needed are current unit organisations such as brigade combat teams going to remain relevant and how will emerging and near term technologies like quantum computing, lasers, hypersonics, directed energy weapons and A.I going to change the nature of warfare in the next 25-30 years?
Ostrowski’s second pillar is ‘Combat Development’ which examines the aspects identified by Futures and Concepts and synthesises them into specifications and requirements which can be put out to tender. He explained:
“the way we wrote requirements [was] in a vacuum. They were not informed requirements, technology was not informing them, testing was not informing them and sustainment and logistics were not informing them. Now they are informing them.”
The final pillar, ‘Combat Systems’, centres on taking what is learned by Futures and Concepts and fulfilled by Combat Development to engage in experimentation, prototyping and capabilities development that can then be tested by soldiers to gin their feedback. Ostrowski is seeking much more solider interaction during the development process.
Ostrowski explained what the new Command’s aims are:
“Futures Command is all about bringing together all the parts and pieces of the enterprise called modernization under one roof in order to get after the things that were missing all these years: agility, speed and the ability to ensure we can fight and win not only today, but well into the future.”
The new Command will be based in Austin, Texas will stand up to full operational capability in the Summer of 2019, a commanding officer has not yet been appointed.