New Army Acquisition Plan Cites Autonomy, Predictive Analytics

The Army sees autonomy and predictive logistics as some of the key modernization areas ripe for industry influence, officials said last week at NDIA’s DLA Supply Chain Alliance Symposium & Exhibition in Richmond, Virginia.

The service delivered the Army Transformation Initiative (ATI) this past May following a Defense Department memo calling on the service to build a “leaner, more lethal force … by divesting outdated, redundant and inefficient programs.”

“What got us here won’t get us there. Our Army needs to modernize,” said Army Lt. Gen. Heidi Hoyle, deputy chief of staff, G-4, at the event. “When I think about ATI, we’re leaning heavily away from 40-year-old programs that industry may be used to. Thinking a lot more about disposable, attritable systems … Some of the trends that will be important to you are things like autonomy, things like the right to repair, extended reach for allies and partners and predictive logistics. These are the four most important things I think about.”

Redefining Defense Acquisition

The Army’s framework ties into broader directives from the Defense Secretary and President Donald Trump to streamline federal acquisition and speed up government’s ability to do business with commercial entities and remain competitive in the evolving tech landscape.

DOD must reform acquisition and testing processes to improve the speed of relevance for emerging defense capabilities, like autonomous vehicles. It must also do so while staying ahead of adversaries, Vice Adm. Dion English, director for Logistics, J-4, at the Joint Staff, told reporters during a roundtable following the panel.

“When we take a look at the way that we produce and manufacture things, and when we take a look at our acquisition processes that we have in DOD, it’s effective. I’m not saying throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s been effective for years, but there’s an opportunity to change,” English said. “I think it’s time for us to take a look, from end to end, to make sure that when we talk about something that moves at the speed of relevancy, so do our acquisition processes.”

English said he is working to identify how DOD can engage with commercial partners differently in the acquisition process to boost speed of relevancy.

“If we spend two years testing and evaluating the capability, that’s two years of innovation that you’ve lost. If you field it two years later, the product that you get may not be on the cutting edge of technology. We got to shorten that piece. And there are some efforts that are being done inside the department, with the rate of process, rapid development and experimentation reserve that is allowing us to do [that],” English said.

The Path for Defense Innovation

These transformation initiatives are helping the department future proof around a shifting defense landscape, noted Defense Logistics Agency Director Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly.

“When we start taking a look at what our requirements are, that hasn’t really changed since the beginning of time. How we do it in the environments that we work in is what has changed. One of the biggest changing characteristics of war is the domains that we have to be effective in. For many years, it was the sea, land, air battle and now we have to look at space and cyber space and also be effective and mitigate against threats that are occurring in that area,” said English.

For example, the Army’s Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) program reached full materiel release in May — “a very, very quick provisioning, rapid materiel release by taking a commercial-off-the-shelf product that is going to meet the need and demand of moving a squad quickly and rapidly on the battlefield,” Hoyle said during the roundtable.

The hybrid-powered vehicle supports agile squad movement. The vehicle uses a commercial off-the-shelf design and features a regenerative battery system that powers radios and command equipment, reducing the need for generators and related maintenance. Hoyle said this innovation could have a cascading impact on military logistics and operations, streamlining how systems and sensors are deployed across the force.

“We have an opportunity to better apply data to our problem sets and to be more effective in understanding that, number one, data is the most decisive commodity that we manage. Number two, that there are mature solutions, mature software that we can apply that are proven in the commercial realm to our problem sets that we have today,” Simerly added. “We don’t have to spend years in the making to develop these discrete enterprise resource platforms and have solutions that aren’t necessarily integrated between services.”