Gen. John “Mike” Murray, Army Futures Command commanding general, and Bruce Jette, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, update reporters at the Pentagon on Army modernization efforts and Army Futures Command, July 18, 2019.
Transcript
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I’m Colonel Pat Sever, communications director for Army Futures Command, and welcome to the Pentagon press briefing room where we’re glad to have the Honorable Bruce Jette, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. And General John Mike Murray, commanding general of the U.S. Army Futures Command. They’re gonna provide some brief opening remarks on Army modernization, and I’ll also offer an update on Army Futures Command. Then they’ll take some questions which I will moderate. So just as a reminder, this is an on the record, on camera press briefing. And so all badges need to be removed. Thanks again for being here, Without further ado I’ll give the floor to Dr. Jette.
So first, welcome. Thank you for coming today, and I hope that we have an opportunity to provide you some insights and understanding that maybe you didn’t have before you came in today. For nearly two decades the Army’s deferred modernization in order to support continuous combat operations. During this time the global security environment has grown more competitive, and more volatile. Army leadership recognized the need for fundamental change, with one primary objective to guide us, make soldiers in units more capable and lethal, to deter conflict, or if necessary win decisively. Last year the Army made it’s most significant organizational restructuring in over 40 years, by establishing Army Futures Command, or AFC. As a result one commander, who sits to my left, is responsible for transforming the National Defense Strategy into an operational vision for multi domain operations. Identify the technology requirements near, mid and far, and manage the technology enterprise, and work closely with the acquisition and sustainment communities. ASAALT, my organization, continues to lead it’s role of oversight management policy, and particularly with respect to acquisition functions, control of the broader material development sustainment process. G8 provides primary resource management functions, and together these three organizations form the Future Force Modernization Enterprise, or FFME. ASAALT, AFC and the G8 are working together in a new way, leveraging authorities derived from congress, and unity of effort to improve the way we do business, to better allocate resources, and to make the army more lethal, capable and efficient. Each of the organizations is focused on a particular portion of modernization, enabling them to focus resources and expertise together through synchronization. Through cross-functional teams AFC remains laser focused on the Army’s six modernization priorities. My office retains management and control over all aspects of the material development and procurement process. The establishment of AFC affords an opportunity to create a more collaborative working environment between the CFT’s and the program executive offices. Each CFT has a primary PEO. The signature systems of the CFT’s each have a program manager. Of greatest value is the collaboration. CFT’s participate in the development of the acquisition strategies. Equally, the acquisition community contributes to the operational requirements development process. Yet each retain their fundamental responsibilities. We are focused on continuously modernizing the Army through the development, and timely delivery of over matched capability to the soldier, in order to fight and win our nation’s wars. All of this is possible because of the strong working relationship between congress and our senior leadership. Thank you, and I hope to answer your questions this morning.
Thanks, Dr. Jette. And just add my welcome this morning. It’s kind of an unusual hour for the Pentagon press conference in the Pentagon press conference room, so I appreciate you being here this morning. And most importantly, apologize for the 10-minute delay, which was solely my fault, so I apologize for keeping you waiting for a few minutes. I’d like to start off, and really kind of echo everything Dr. Jette talked about, but also add some specific thanks to congress for the stable, adequate funding that the Army, and really DOD, has gotten over the last few years, which has really enabled the modernization effort that we’re undertaking right now. It was a fortuitous confluence of events, if you will, that the leadership of the Army, having the courage to really undertake this significant reorganization and modernization effort. And that stable, adequate funding that congress provided us, that enabled the entire effort. We spent yesterday, Dr. Jette and I did, on the Hill, as well as the CFT’s, the cross-functional Team leaders and program managers. 40 plus engagements on the Hill, concluding with a session last night where many of you saw the same thing we showed congress last night, and we had what I think was a great day on the Hill yesterday. So thanks for your time, and really the rehearsal that you gave us on Tuesday night for last nights event in the visitors center. And I’d also like to echo Dr. Jette’s comments about the close working relationship between ASAALT and AFC, I think that’s absolutely key and fundamental to everything that we’ve been able to accomplish, and we will accomplish in the future. I think most evident piece of that is, as Dr. Jette mentioned, the relationships, and really the focus of the combat, the CFT directors, cross-functional team directors, and their counterpart PM, and in many cases PEO. And also, beyond the G8 really, the entire HQDA staff, to include the secretariat. Not only the G8, but the G3, others, and really fellow ACOM commanders were really behind this. And Bruce mentioned the FFME, Future Force Modernization Enterprise. When I look at that, and as I thought about it, we’re really talking about the entire Army is the Future Force Modernization Enterprise. And I mentioned this a couple nights ago, but a few minutes to give you and update on where Army Futures Command is. This past Saturday, July 13th marked the one year since we first established a presence, and Austin was announced as the final location for Army Futures Command. At that time there were 12 people on the ground, establishing, as Secretary McCarthy labeled it, a beachhead. So starting from scratch, and when I say starting from scratch, a completely blank canvas. And that organization has grown from that beachhead to more than 24,000 soldiers and civilians, located in 25 states in 15 countries. And for many ways, over the past year, growing from that original 12, I like to describe it as a merger, excuse me, a start up trying to manage a merger, as we’ve assumed command of subordinate organizations from other organizations across the Army. As many of you probably are tracking, the first to transfer was ARCIC from TRADOC, now known as the Futures and Concepts Center. And I think the key thing that the Futures and Concepts Center, the contribution to the Future Force Modernization Enterprise is this concept that we call multi-domain operations. And it’s key because the concept has to provide the underpinning, or the foundation for everything else we’re doing, the organizational structural changes, the material solutions that the CFT’s are driving, all have to be underpinned by an operational concept. So that continues to mature. We will turn that into doctrine at some point in the future, probably not in the next year or two, but as we flesh out this concept, look at it across what we call DOTMLPF, so doctrine, organization, the leader development that has to go into it, that will become a future doctrine to replace AirLand Battle. And special thanks to General Townsend, who’s now moved on, and now General Funk for the cooperation from TRADOC, and really the seamless transition of what was ARCIC into the Futures and Concepts Center. We next transitioned RDECOM from Army Material Command, to become the Combat Capabilities Development Command, located at APG, Aberdeen Proving Grounds. They are tasked with not only finding, but building the technologies to ensure future victories in our material development solutions. And really linking that technology development to that operational concept that I mentioned. That has been an incredibly seamless transition, and thanks in many ways to General Gus Perna. And we recently also received from AMC the Army’s Medical Research, also located at Fort Detrick. And once again, that has been a seamless transition, in many ways thanks to General Perna, and the great people at AMC. We have focused relationships with industry and academia, established the Army Applications Lab, which is located at a place called the Capital Factory in Austin, Texas, to provide a venue for entrepreneurs and innovators with novel solutions to discover how they can also support Army modernization efforts. We’ve also established the University Technology Development Division, the UTDD, which now serves as the primary link between Army Futures Command into the academic partnership efforts. In many ways that’s taking root in several key places right now, at Vanderbilt University with a partnership built between Vanderbilt and the 101st Airborne Division. Carnegie Mellon University, where the Army’s Artificial Intelligence Task Force is located. Of course the University of Texas and Texas A&M, where we’re beginning to work several key programs, and establish those relationships. And of course, I would say at this point the crown jewel in our effort is our cross-functional teams. And I know, as I said earlier, many of you took the opportunity to talk to the CFT leaders on Tuesday afternoon and evening during the session at Fort Myer. And I do believe that these cross-functional teams has been instrumental so far in meeting many of the milestones we set forth. And that’s natural that the CFT’s really preceded AFC, and got their feet on the ground much quicker than AFC did. Those CFT’s were designed specifically to meet the Army’s modernization priorities. And those priorities, we believe, were based on the fundamentals of combat, that as we saw into the future, that were necessary to win wars using multi-domain operations concept, and reestablish overmatch against near-peer adversaries. All this has been managed by the headquarters in Austin, which I would say sometimes faced the daunting task of both establishing itself as that blank canvas thing, with no history, no SOP’s, really no operating procedures, as well as providing oversight of that merger. And key to our success in that, I will call it a success, is the fact that out of the people that I currently have in Austin, we have some tremendous soldiers and tremendous civilians that work hard, incredibly hard each and every day, to make sure that this enterprise is successful. And based upon the aggregation of all of that, I fully intend to announce fully operational capable on 31 July. And I do believe that that’s within a year, going from 12 people to fully operational capable is an incredible feet, and it is due to the hard work of those people, plus the help of a lot of people I mentioned earlier. From the Secretariat, the R staff, in particular the G3, the G8, and a lot of personal oversight, a lot of personal leadership by the Army’s senior leadership. And in many ways, help from Dr. Jette, and the entire ASAALT community. But this work would not have been possible without, as I started with, the support of congress. So continued, consistent, on time funding will be critical to our efforts going forward. And about this time of year we always talk about continuing resolutions, because they’re always the topic in this town. So people ask, what is the impact of a CR? CR will absolutely degrade our competitive advantage. It will delay the momentum that I believe we’ve established, and it will prohibit the start of six new procurement programs, to include robot combat systems, the multi purpose equipment transport, and new navigation equipment, to assure precision navigation and timing in a contested environment going forward. And of course we’ve got people looking at the impacts of both the short term CR’s and long term CR’s. I think General Ostrowski, I saw it in an article, most of you have probably read this article. He had the numbers for you, so I’m not gonna try to contradict him in terms of the impacts of the CR, other than what I just described. So in conclusion, it has been an incredibly exciting year, sometimes challenging, sometimes frustrating. But always exciting, and I tell people all the time that the ability to look into the future, to make sure that our Army, as part of the Joint Force, is capable of not only winning, but more importantly deterring future conflict, and that our future soldiers have the material, the doctrine, and the organizational structures they need to fight and win on a future battlefield, makes my job the best job in the Army. So with that, thanks again to Dr. Jette, and thanks again to all of you for being here, and we vert much look forward to taking your questions.
Gentlemen, thank you very much. Okay, rules will be one question and one follow up. Please wait for me to call on you. We’re gonna start off, Jen Judson, I saw your hand up, go ahead.
Hi, Jen Judson with Defense News. There was a GAO report that came out yesterday that said that the AFC could improve a little bit in terms of working with small businesses, so I wanted to ask you both, you know, what it is that you’ve been able to accomplish in the last year, interfacing with small businesses? And what it is that you still need to improve upon, to sort of get after maybe what the GAO thinks is sufficient?
Yeah, I think this is either the third, or maybe the fourth GAO report that’s kind of been focused on this reorganization. And I read the draft, I haven’t read the final report yet. And I think the Army’s comments back is, we agree. And I’ve mentioned Army Applications Lab, I mean, Army Applications Lab is focused on nontraditional small business. And really the funny thing is, if I talk to the defense primes, they’re convinced all we’re working with is small business, and if I talk to small business, all they’re convinced we’re working with is the defense primes. It’s gonna take a combination of both for us to accomplish our mission. In many ways a combination of both working together. So I agree with the GAO report, small businesses are key to our success. There’s been a lot going on in the last, you know, the GAO report, they finished, I think, their interviews, and put it together a couple months ago. So we got a ways to go, I agree with them. I’m in the process right now of hiring a leave from my small business office, to make sure we’re focused on exactly what the GAO report suggests we do. So bottom line, Jen, I guess up short is we agree, and we’re focused on making sure that we take advantage of the opportunities that small businesses offer. Not just to work with small businesses, but to modernize and improve the Army.
And just a follow up on the Army Applications Lab, do you have any specific examples of some success stories? A year ago, I know that there was a briefing with David Zakariaie who developed Senseye, I think I’m getting that right, hopefully. But are there any other things that you’re noticing, or that you see promise in specifically, that could be incorporated into something?
Senseye is still moving along. At that time, it was an Air Force effort. We’ve kind of taken that effort on, trying to validate the technology. But working with David has led to an experiment that’s going on at Fort Rucker, either right now or very soon, in terms of integration of virtual reality into pilot training. Which the Air Force has begun, and we’re kind of following their lead, with the potential of significant cost savings, in terms of aircraft maintenance if no other reason, and possibly shortening the amount of time it takes to generate a rotary wing aircraft pilot, which would reduce the backlog. So there’s just all kinds of added benefits. But it’s a pilot right now, we’ll see where that goes. AL right now is either at Fort Hood, or they were there yesterday, working with soldiers on the ground up there to source problems, which is what AL is really doing very well, I think, is sourcing problems from soldiers. So it’s not me dreaming up the things we need to solve, or the problems we’re having, it’s coming directly from the war fighter. And then they are currently in an effort to look at autonomous resupply for artillery. So that is ongoing with the Fires Center, in terms of, how do we automate the resupply of munitions for artillery? And they have completed a trip overseas. I’m not gonna say specifically where, where there was some specific recoding of some mission command systems, which significantly helped.
Yes, ma’am.
Hi, Ashley Roque with Jane’s. I guess of a top level question, as you’re moving out on these six priorities, and all the technologies that are associated, with an eye towards major conflict with possibly Russia or China, what are you doing, or any challenges you see not turning away on counter insurgency operations, and still keeping maybe some of these cheaper technologies around?
So the, and I’m sure this is true for of the services, the Army’s first priority, in terms of resources, will always be to soldiers in contact. That’s always been true, that will never change. And so we continue to focus on, in many ways, experimenting with new technologies in theater, so much of the Network CFT work began with the first SFAB that went into Afghanistan, in terms of comms equipment. And so it wasn’t like we were experimenting with unproven, we’d never do that, but you know, proven technologies, proven equipment. And so in many ways, well the answer to that was, the first unit equipped with the basics of what we’re working on, in terms of the network. So we’re looking at next-gen squad weapon, that will probably go overseas first, if we’re still in contingency operations, which I’m guessing we probably will be. And so the focus, obviously, is in making sure the soldiers in contact have exactly what they need, when they need it, above all else. But I would just add that we’ve got to do both. And that’s really what we’re kind of focused on, not losing that focus, but we’ve got to begin to move to what comes next. And then from a MDO standpoint, it’s not part of the concept of MDO. But there’s a huge difference between a concept and a doctrine, and I think the Army fully acknowledges that we can’t make the mistakes of the past, that, you know, what we’ve learned over the last 20 years has to be incorporated into the next version of doctrine the Army publishes.
And you’d mentioned the network. Could you give us an update on where you stand? All these technologies are supposed to be able to inter operate. Has there been successes, challenges that you’re facing right now as you move out on these?
[General Murray] Wanna take that?
So there’s always difficulties with inter operating with different systems, particularly because we have legacy systems. So we have legacy systems ’cause we just can’t, it’s not changing from your iPhone 8 to 10. We just can’t swap them out, we’ve gotta get them to all work together. And generally what we do is we look for backward compatibility in many of the approaches that we take. And that usually comes with an interface of some form. And then what we do is we’re trying to migrate away from the older systems, into the newer systems. We’ve, in fact much to General Murray’s point, a lot of the development of our concepts for the network as we’re moving forward, to go from a stationary network, which was really what the core foundation of WIN-T was about, to our current approach, is to, the capabilities we’ve developed, and understood in an operational environment, that was laid with the foundation of WIN-T, and a connection using mix of terrestrial and satellite communications, different sized pipes, different sized server stacks at different locations, so that we could manage loss of connectivity and still retaining control over data, because these things are linked together when you really talk about the network. All of that was developed, and in much of what we experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now we’ve moved it over to being able to do all of that on the move. And that’s where our focus has been at this point. Then, to provide a tactical underlying layer, so that we could improve the assured communications at the tactical level. And so we’ve moved to some new, software based radio systems, which also allowed us to put some new communications architectures in place that we’re experimenting with right now. It looks like they’re a really good fit, and we’re moving forward with those, but it’s not over yet.
And besides backward compatibility, which is absolutely critical, it’s also the ability to connect with allies and partners as well. So, and that’s very much why we’ve kind of taken an incremental approach to the network. Every two years the cycle of improvement’s based upon developing technologies.
[Colonel Pat Sever] Yes, sir.
Pat Tucker, Defense One. Very good demonstration the other day, the base really enjoyed that. Many of the modernization efforts, such as the unmanned ground vehicles, and future vertical lift platforms, are gonna utilize autonomy in some new way. So I wonder if you can just highlight some of the experimentation going forward that you feel is particularly important and critical, that demonstrates new approaches to either ground vehicle autonomy, or aerial autonomy with drones, which experiments going forward are the most important for you?
So, and I’ll let Dr. Jette talk to the technical experimentation. We just actually had this conversation before we came over. So when most people, and you may not be, when most people talk about experimentation, they tend to focus on technical experimentation. And, I mean, can I actually control a vehicle autonomously? In my mind that is critically important, but also critically important is, what does this do to formations, in terms of how formations operate differently? What does this do, the human, machine interface, the experimentation with that. What is the cognitive load that a soldier is capable of? Can he control six autonomous vehicles? Two autonomous vehicles? Four autonomous, et cetera. And I’ll just, I mean we just completed an experimentation about a month or so ago at Yakima, which one of you went with me, and I won’t mention which one because I’ll get in trouble. No, it wasn’t you. And I watched the breach of a complex, tank ditch obstacle. And for those of you that not familiar with Army, so it’s a simulated mine field, couple hundred meters deep, triple strand wire, concertina wire, and fill in a tank ditch without a single soldier on any of the vehicles. To include the assault through the breach lane. And it was done poorly. If I was grading them, if I was an OC at one of our training centers, grading them, they would have been doing it for the next 12 hours. But the fact that there was not a single soldier in any of the vehicles was pretty key. And I guess the most amazing thing to me about this entire experimentation, because it was an experiment, when I got the kids off the vehicles, and talked to em about how long it took em to figure out how to do this from ridge line behind, it was like two hours, most of em said. And then, I was absolutely amazed it was that short of a period of time. And the fact of the matter, because we did this in a rush, we just wired up Xbox controllers to enable them to do it. So they were actually working with, so we fit the machine to the human as opposed to what we have done in the past, to try to bend the human to the machine, which I think is critical going forward, in terms of experimentation, and how we design systems. And at the same time, and you saw it the other day, the air launched effects, so, launched a UAS, which is the foundational experimentation for our swarming technology from a Black Hawk helicopter going at about 100 knots, which participated in that exercise as well. Plus we did a chemical recon completely autonomously. And so we are in may ways I think dipping our toes into autonomy. And autonomy on the ground, especially cross country, is gonna be more difficult than driving down a highway, or moving across an ocean, or through the air. But I think we’re beginning to dip our toes into the experimentation, not only from a technology standpoint, but I think as importantly, organizational structure, and really how does that fundamentally change how we’ll fight in the future?
So, Russia right now it’s actually testing unmanned ground vehicles in theater in Syria. So is there an effort, or are you interested in testing these concepts in combat. As you just mentioned that experimentation being really important. When do some of these concepts wind up on the actual battlefield to be tested?
I think, Bruce if you wanna follow up that’s fine, I think, and one thing I’m very focused on is, I’m not going to force anything on a unit or soldiers that they don’t want. And I think, not that that’s every really happened in the past. But we tend to push stuff out, in terms of experimentation that either doesn’t fit the mission profile that they’re after, or really doesn’t. And so specifically the autonomous vehicles, I think when we start getting into the, well there’s a great example. Brigadier General, Scott Jackson which is a good friend, Commander of SFAB one, saw a demonstration of what we’re calling SMAT, which is basically a semi-autonomous supply vehicle. We’ve had some with the soldiers, 101st and Tenth Mountain experimenting with them over the last couple months, is interested potentially taking that with them on their next mission. I think it’s gonna have to be more of a pull than a push. We start to develop knowledge across the Army in the things we’re working on. Either Lans comes in for it, or a commander expresses a need for the capability, we’ll be happy to provide it.
So let me make the point. I have a little experience with actually using robots in combat. And teleoperation of robots is kind of the baseline of current technology to include what you can see in the Russians having done. That’s sufficient for some operations but it’s not efficient for where we wanna go. So the insertion of artificial intelligence, and reduction of man power necessary to accomplish the mission tasks, without having to have a soldier for essentially, they’re there, they just some place else. We need to move farther forward on that. If there’s, in our development of the experimentation plan, some of the robots are teleoperated, some of the robots have some artificial intelligence inserted. We’ll advance that through the technical aspect of the experimentation plan. If one of ’em finds a operational value along the road that is of use to being deployed, the user, not the acquisition community, will present that and decide whether or not it’s applicable to a current field use, and then we’ll be able to push it in the field. But I would tell you, you know, just for the sake of saying it, putting robots in the field, that’s not what we’re trying to do.
[Colonel Pat Sever] Yes sir.
Thank you, John Harper with National Defense Magazine. General Murray, you mentioned that you’re partnering with University of Texas and Texas A&M on some key programs, can you give us some more details about what those programs entail?
Sure. So both University of Texas and Texas A&M, from a systems in the university standpoint, and in the case of Texas A&M, from a state standpoint, have contributed some pretty significant money. So in the case of University of Texas, they are building us a robotics institute. Converting an old building into a robotics lab. At a fairly significant cost. And the problem I have given University of Texas, in that same trip I mentioned before, I took one of the leading professors from UT with me, was show me how to conduct two standard, breach of a complex obstacle without a single soldier within a kilometer or two of the actual breach site. So they will work with that focus in the robotics lab, and they are also working, battery technologies. They have one of the leading, the gentleman that invented the lithium battery works at the University of Texas, so we’re working battery and energy storage, is probably a better way of describing that. Assured position navigation and timing, is a focus area for them. And then the Texas A&M focus them on hypersonics and directed energy research. And they will eventually here in the coming years, build out a facility for us, at what they call a RELLIS campus which is not on main campus, it’s actually out with a lot of room to build, a soldier development center. Where we will be able to marry up soldiers with engineering, probably graduate students, with faculty to go into some agile development capability, and solving problems for soldiers.
This is the last question.
We’ve got time Pat, unless Dr. Jette’s gotta go, we got time. I delayed ’em so.
Yes sir.
Hi, Wes Morgan with Politico. I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about, you mentioned efforts to support troops that are currently in the field, but what about, I know the Army’s launching in the next couple years, these big division level defender exercises overseas. I’m wondering if you can talk about, are there ways in which your command is planning on supporting that. I mean especially from the multi domain operations perspective.
Sure. The experimentation in terms of the concept, has been going on in Indopacom for a few years. ‘Cause we do have two experimental units if you will, called multi domain task forces, really formed around the Fires Brigade. One’s currently been in existence for a year or so, at Fort Lewis, or JBLM sorry. And one we’re in the process of standing up in Europe. So two Fires units with significant capability, other than Fires. Through Pacific Pathways, that concept and really, the concept of multi domain units. Not necessarily just that unit, but how do you integrate and really utilize multi domain capabilities inside of a unit formation, has been going on through Pacific Pathways. So those will be two key elements of the defender series, as it rotates back and forth, as it rotates back and forth between Indopacom and Ucom. And then the other key piece that General Cavoli at the U.S. Army Europe, is focused on, is really taking the concept of multi domain operations, and starting to experiment with it across all the formations that they have going on. There will be probably none of the things you say yesterday as part of that experimentation, but it’s really how you start modifying structures and organizations, and really, I’ll call it, the TTP, the tactics, techniques, procedures of how you fight based upon multi domain capable formations.
If I could do a quick follow up on that one, up a level from that, as the services and DARPA more broadly experiment with multi domain operations, with things like the assault breaker two concept, how are you tied in with that if at all?
So we just executed a last in the series of multi domain operations exercises, tabletop of you will. It wasn’t on the ground it was out at Fort Levenworth, where we had the lead for the Airforce in terms of concept development, as part of that experimentation. We had a three start Navy Admiral that participated in that experimentation. The other services, we had the Marine Core from Quantico, the two star from Quantico that participated in the exercise as well. So in terms of the services, we’re pretty well linked. There will be a war game this fall, that will be hosted by the joint staff. That will begin to explore this from a joint perspective. And I’m getting significant interest from key ally partners. The Brits, the Australians, and others which have always participated in the joint war fighter assessment. They were at Yakima when I was out there. In terms of allied experimentation as well.
[Colonel Pat Sever] Yes sir.
Travis Trenton, Bloomberg. I just wanted to be clear on the concrete steps that you’re taking to address the GAO findings about there still being a lack of coordination when dealing with small businesses. You said that you were hiring a position, General?
Yes. Well I’m standing up a small business office inside the headquarters. There is a small business office, inside the Pentagon, but I’m standing up my own small business office, small cell within the headquarters, to make sure that we are at least knowledgeable if not, focusing on, capitalizing everything small business can offer us.
[Travis Trenton] And if I could.
I’ll give you a quick, so we’re working to try and make sure that we support, from the small business office here in the Pentagon, and the contracting methodologies that we use to assist at ASC and continuing to develop small businesses, it’s a critically important. A lot of innovation comes from small business. Just as a metric, the Army, there’s a DOD objective, and I have the numbers I think, but I don’t wanna give you the bad ones so we can make sure you get exactly the right number, but there’s a DOD goal, the Army goal is actually above the DOD goal. And we exceed the Army’s goals, and have for several years now. So we’re very aggressive, we try and pursue small business involvement in acquisition processes. And even done a number of things to compliment what General Murray is doing at ASC, and get him access to all of that.
If I could just follow up quickly. Can you talk at all about upcoming opportunities for smaller companies, areas that you’ll be looking at, certain capabilities?
I think a lot of it will come out of the soldier source solutions, that I kind of mentioned earlier. The Army applications lab is working, and in particular, this concept of autonomous resupply, I think is an area that we can work with. And then, it’s in the preliminary stages right now, it’s probably not even been announced, but we’re looking at some point in the future, hosting and event in Austin to try to establish some relationships between small business and defense primes, because the one thing I do worry about with small business, is the ability to scale. And so there’s lots of ways they can scale. One of the ways is working with a defense prime. I mean defense primes have relationships with small businesses, but maybe not the ones we’re working with. So how can we start to make some connections for these small businesses where they can produce the scale for us.
I know Tony sent some questions in the back there.
I wanted to, Tony Capaccio with Bloomberg, I wanted to just ask you how you would be applying a future budget deliberations, specifically the CH-47 Block II truncation that the Army’s trying to push to get through congress this year. Every committee has kind of said so far that this is a future debate for FY21 and beyond. Will Futures Command be helping provide the intellectual backdrop, or rationale for why that’s a good decision?
Yes and yes. So it really depends Tony on which role I’m sitting in. So Dr. Jette and I, I think you’re tracking also chair, the equipping pay, where that decision came from. So that was a near term decision based upon the age of the fleet, and where the Army thought they could accept from, so that’s all been pretty well explained. As we look at, ’cause one of the key things that I’ve been tasked to do in the other role, is look into the future. And examine the operational environment, what we think that will look like. What we think the tech trends of our near peer adversaries, where they will be at that point in the future. And then we’ll kind of figure out what equipment we’ll need. So as we look at that, that will absolutely inform future debates about CH-47, staying with what we got. CH-47 Block II, if that decision’s ever made. Or do we move to a future heavy lift aircraft at some point in the future. But that’s absolutely not been determined, but will help inform that.
Last question, yes sir.
Scott Maucione with Federal News Network. So you spent this last year setting up and getting things together, now your full operational capability. What does that mean? What are we going to see change then what you’ve been doing in the past year? Besides set up, is it going to be new programs coming out faster, that kind of stuff.
I think you’ll see, from outside, so you’ll probably, hopefully I’ll see a lot of difference inside the headquarters, from outside the headquarters. I think you’ll see pretty much the same focus we’ve had for the last year. So I really based FOC on three things. One was that the facilities. And so what’s changed here is, most recently is Monday morning I moved up to the 19th floor of the building we’re in at University of Texas systems building. Which, the key thing about the 19th floor is I have a skiff, and I’ve got ready access to classified networks, which will make a huge difference in what we’re trying to do. So the facilities, and the rest of the staff is going to the 19th floor, is in the process of moving up there as we speak. So the facilities I’m very very comfortable with where we are, as of Monday morning. The people, the manning was a key thing that I was looking at in terms of metrics of judging FOC. The cross functional teams, AI Taskforce are above 90% manned. So that they are good. The headquarters, of course Futures and Concepts Center and Combat Development Center or, Combat Capability Development Center are all right where they were. So their manning is fine. The headquarters itself, 100+% on military. And I’m starting to get the summer rotation going, so a lot of the temporary people are leaving, and the permanent people are coming in. So I’m very comfortable with the military manning. Civilian manning, we’re above 50% hired. And hiring is not an easy thing to do. And I’m very focused and have been very focused, and have kept everybody very focused on hiring the right people as opposed to just hiring numbers. Key positions, we’re 90+ I think percent manned. And so I’m very comfortable with where we are in the manning piece of it. And the last criteria was the ability to execute the missions that the Army had given, Army Futures Command. And as most of you would suspect, the Army didn’t give me a year off to kind of sort it out, before they started asking things from me. So I think we have actually been executing the mission that we’ve been given for at least the last six to eight months if not longer so that’s why I’m very very comfortable saying, 31, July we’ll be fully operational.
Gentlemen thank you very much, thank you for your time. Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for attending today, if you have follow ups, please come see me. Or some of, I’ve got some of my staff here as well. And work with you on any follow ups that you may have. Thank you again for your time, and (mumbles)
Thanks to all of you.