Business leaders joined government officials for the panel discussion "Industrial Partnerships for Force 2025 and Beyond," at the Association of the United States Army Winter Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Ala."In order to fight and win the nation’s wars, we have to have the capability to move forward," said Army Materiel Command’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics and Operations Maj. Gen. Gus Perna.Adding, "We need to do things today to be ready for tomorrow."Perna pointed to the Army’s industrial base as a key to that goal.The industrial base includes Army arsenals, depots and...
Anti-Access/Area Denial, or A2AD, sounds like it could be a new football zone defense.But, in fact, A2AD was fleshed out by a five-member panel, including Maj. Gen. Lynn Collyar, U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command commander, at the AUSA Winter Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville’s Von Braun Center.From the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, or AMCOM, perspective, logisticians are heavily dependent on networks and mission-command information systems to perform the "science of control" for providing sustainment to deployed forces.That is, logisticians rely on space-based...
Driverless vehicles, 3-D printers used to resupply troops, more robots and unmanned aerial vehicles were some of the topics discussed by experts during the "Out of the Box Thinking – 2025 Requirements" panel discussion at the 2014 Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Ala.To stimulate discussion, panel chairman Lt. Gen. William N. Phillips, military deputy for the Army Acquisition Corps, challenged panel members to brainstorm how to equip "today’s great Army into the Army of 2025 and beyond."Before posing the first...
The future of the Army and commercial industrial base as the Army nears the end of more than a dozen years of conflict was a topic of discussion during the 2014 Association of the U.S. Army Winter Symposium and Exposition."The industrial base builds and sustains combat power, making it possible for our combat forces to succeed on the battlefield," said John Nerger, Army Materiel Command’s executive deputy to the commanding general, and a member of a panel of defense and industry experts at the symposium."The industrial base should be seen as a shared role, as a shared responsibility," he said...
The life of a military spouse has about as many moving parts as a traveling carnival: juggling deployment cycles, the bumper cars of employment and continuing education, the fun house of keeping kids happy and, of course, the magician’s hat that contains the location of your next duty station.The balancing act of managing constant uncertainty and upheaval would send many screaming for the exit, but military spouses are nothing if not professional adapters.But what happens when the military Ferris wheel you’ve come to know so well comes to a screeching halt?There are many resources available...
It’s a fact of life that the depth of budget reductions and the draconian way they are applied will affect military readiness and increase risk, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said March 7 on the PBS "Newshour" program.Gen. Martin E. Dempsey told Judy Woodruff that "risks are beginning to accrue" and that it is imperative that the military get some sort of fiscal consistency for planning purposes.The fiscal 2015 budget request would be a good place to start, he said.That budget supports the military strategy, and allows the department to plan for the future. Still, there are...
Two recent hearings on Capitol Hill focused on pay and compensation proposals outlined in the fiscal 2015 defense budget request. Statements made by lawmakers would lead one to believe that Congress is not 100 percent on-board with some of the provisions contained in the DoD’s plan.The budget includes provisions that would:Reduce the Army’s end strength from 520,000 active duty soldiers down to a range of 440,000-450,000; the Army National Guard from 355,000 to 335,000; and the Army Reserve 205,000 to 185,000.Provide one percent pay raise for military personnel and cap raises in the out years...
You have to commit to training up front. You can never buy it back," said Lt. Gen. Joseph E. Martz, a top architect for the Army budget.Martz, military deputy for the budget, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management & Comptroller), cited retired Army Maj. Gen. William Stofft's book, "America’s First Battles: 1776-1965," which illustrates the correlation of good training to success on the battlefield."No one has been able to add a chapter to that book," he said, as he addressed training and other budget challenges at the Association of the United States Army’s...
The commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC) spoke Feb. 19 at the 2014 Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium and Exposition and emphasized the suitability of this year’s symposium theme to the current status of the Army."The theme for this year’s symposium is ‘America’s Army: Sustaining, Training, and Equipping for the Future,’ and I think it is very appropriate," Gen. Dennis L. Via, AMC commander, said."As our Army continues its transition in Afghanistan, we must simultaneously prepare our Army for the next contingency – for this we can be...
Everything is on the table in the Army’s efforts to help soldiers eat better, perform better and feel better now while potentially trimming billions of dollars in future health-care costs.The budget reduction potential goes like this: The healthier soldiers are, the less they will cost the military health-care system while they are in service, and fewer health-care costs will be incurred in retirement because they have led good dietary lifestyles. In light of the current budget restrictions, however, the funding investment that the Army can make to incorporate better nutrition gets a middling...
For a moment, let’s forget that American women were not allowed to serve in combat units until very recently. In all truth, the nature of the conflicts in both Afghanistan and Iraq has meant that a soldier’s military occupational specialty is less a predictor of combat experience than it was in previous wars. Combine that with the increasing number of women serving in the military and one fact emerges: Female military members have engaged in, and continue to engage in, combat operations.According to The Washington Post, which maintains a photo database of recent U.S. casualties, 157 female...
An Army research project about fluffing cotton is leading to renewed independence from foreign countries for a key component of artillery and mortar munitions.The discovery is a major victory in the move to prevent potential disruption of vital military supplies—in this case, ammunition. This is similar to efforts to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign supplies of rare earth metals, sophisticated magnets and other materials of which America has small or nonexistent domestic sources.
The cotton project came about because of changes in domestic cotton production. Raw loose cotton...
First, the historic news: Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) pizza. Some said it could never be done, but Army food researchers have succeeded in developing a shelf-stable (and still tasty) prototype MRE slice.
The 1 percent basic pay raise proposed for soldiers in the 2015 federal budget serves as an example of the bottom line for calculating military salaries. For all the studies of making military pay competitive with private-sector wages and comparable with what soldiers could earn if they weren’t in uniform, the decision about the raise often comes down to a gut call in response to a simple question: How low can you go?Effective January 1, 2015, the proposed raise is the same percentage amount as the 2014 pay increase, which DoD and the Obama administration sold to a reluctant Congress as a...
In 1970, the Moody Blues, a rather innovative British rock band, released their sixth collection. The group was known for “concept albums,” tying all of the songs to a central theme. This one didn’t disappoint. Released in the middle of the grim Russian-American Cold War, coincident with the grinding later years of the fighting in Vietnam, the album raised—and tried to answer—questions of “hate and death and war,” to quote from one of the songs on the album. The Moody Blues called it A Question of Balance. It was typical of the era. Today, it’s a quaint period piece from another century, yet...