> One scheme to tackle both challenges is what the army calls “transforming in contact”. It has picked three brigades—the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division in Kentucky, the Pacific-focused 2nd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division in Alaska and the 3rd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division in Germany—to serve as laboratories for innovation. The trio receive the newest kit and tech. They test it on exercises and give feedback on what works.
> In the past, says Alex Miller, the army’s chief technology officer, the army would set “gold-plated” requirements—insisting that a drone be able to survive in freezing and boiling conditions, say—and push this “over-engineered” kit down to every unit over a glacial three to seven years. The experimental brigades can instead quickly buy things that suit their environment. Robots that work well in Louisiana, notes Mr Miller, might struggle in the Pacific. “It’s a big difference to actually do this on the ground, inside formations,” says General George. “We have users, developers and testers that are all there together.”
> The days of picking one company—usually one of a handful of arms behemoths—and asking it to produce something for a decade or two are gone, he says. The future is “modular” systems, such as platforms whose sensors (cameras, radars or antennae) can be swapped out frequently, with a greater reliance on consumer tech. A new infantry squad vehicle, a jeep-like contraption, embodies this thinking. Built by General Motors, it is based on the Chevrolet Colorado and 90% of its components are commercially available.
> Documents setting out what a new weapon or system has to do have typically been long tomes, page after page of specifications that quickly go out of date. A new one for the army’s next command-and-control system amounts to a bureaucratic revolution: just five pages. General George recalls an instance where the army was told it would take six to eight months to get 20 new coolant-pump covers for Bradley armoured vehicles. It was able to 3D print them all in less than an hour—at 16 cents each. That capability is being pushed down to formations as small as brigades.
> Despite all this, army insiders acknowledge that the present system is broken, constrained by suffocating Pentagon rules and rigid legislation. Take the example of first-person-view (FPV) drones, small, short-range attack drones used in massive quantities by both Russia and Ukraine to good effect. **Why has the US Army been slow to produce these? Mr Miller notes that American law prohibits the Pentagon from buying components made in China. That has limited the supply of motors, speed controllers, antennae and video transceivers. The army has turned to American and European suppliers—the 82nd Airborne Division is cobbling together FPVs with legally compliant parts—but production is puny. “We’re talking handfuls,” he says.**
that’s right folks, the US Army’s CTO says that American protectionism is hurting them
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> One scheme to tackle both challenges is what the army calls “transforming in contact”. It has picked three brigades—the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division in Kentucky, the Pacific-focused 2nd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division in Alaska and the 3rd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division in Germany—to serve as laboratories for innovation. The trio receive the newest kit and tech. They test it on exercises and give feedback on what works.
> In the past, says Alex Miller, the army’s chief technology officer, the army would set “gold-plated” requirements—insisting that a drone be able to survive in freezing and boiling conditions, say—and push this “over-engineered” kit down to every unit over a glacial three to seven years. The experimental brigades can instead quickly buy things that suit their environment. Robots that work well in Louisiana, notes Mr Miller, might struggle in the Pacific. “It’s a big difference to actually do this on the ground, inside formations,” says General George. “We have users, developers and testers that are all there together.”
> The days of picking one company—usually one of a handful of arms behemoths—and asking it to produce something for a decade or two are gone, he says. The future is “modular” systems, such as platforms whose sensors (cameras, radars or antennae) can be swapped out frequently, with a greater reliance on consumer tech. A new infantry squad vehicle, a jeep-like contraption, embodies this thinking. Built by General Motors, it is based on the Chevrolet Colorado and 90% of its components are commercially available.
> Documents setting out what a new weapon or system has to do have typically been long tomes, page after page of specifications that quickly go out of date. A new one for the army’s next command-and-control system amounts to a bureaucratic revolution: just five pages. General George recalls an instance where the army was told it would take six to eight months to get 20 new coolant-pump covers for Bradley armoured vehicles. It was able to 3D print them all in less than an hour—at 16 cents each. That capability is being pushed down to formations as small as brigades.
> Despite all this, army insiders acknowledge that the present system is broken, constrained by suffocating Pentagon rules and rigid legislation. Take the example of first-person-view (FPV) drones, small, short-range attack drones used in massive quantities by both Russia and Ukraine to good effect. **Why has the US Army been slow to produce these? Mr Miller notes that American law prohibits the Pentagon from buying components made in China. That has limited the supply of motors, speed controllers, antennae and video transceivers. The army has turned to American and European suppliers—the 82nd Airborne Division is cobbling together FPVs with legally compliant parts—but production is puny. “We’re talking handfuls,” he says.**
that’s right folks, the US Army’s CTO says that American protectionism is hurting them
!ping MILITARY&CONTAINERS