The Army is transforming its resourcing and requirements to meet its contracting goals, a panel of experts said.

“The Army has been really transforming the way that we approach what it is that we even want in the first place,” said Joseph Welch, deputy to the commanding general of U.S. Army Futures Command. “Instead of the Army saying, ‘This is the kind of robot I need, this is how large it needs to be, how fast it needs to move, the battery consumption,’ … Why aren't we instead saying, ‘We need to be able to conduct breach operations in a way that's much more safe for our soldiers?’ ”

Moving forward, testing of new equipment will be defined by capabilities and limitations rather than criteria, Welch said at a recent Hot Topic on contracting and procurement hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army.

Requirements “really shouldn't be a pass [or] fail, especially if that capability gives soldiers … something that's better than what they have today,” he said. “Would it meet all of the elements of the traditional requirements document? Maybe or maybe not, but that's not necessarily the risk decision that I think our leaders need to be making.”

Industry can look for windows of opportunity to anticipate the Army’s needs, said Danielle Moyer, executive director of U.S. Army Contracting Command-Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. “If we issue a call for solutions under [Army Futures Command], follow that product line … because the earlier on we can tell you what we're doing and where we're going, the more you can invest as soon as possible,” she said.

More than ever, “there is such an appetite to buy more than one of a capability" and “to try different versions of a solution and see how that works,” Moyer said.

Contracting and innovation enable decision dominance, which will be the decisive factor in future wars, said Col. Michael Kaloostian, the director of the Command and Control Cross-Functional Team.

“We have to understand the data and how we integrate data across different platforms,” he said. “Whoever is able to sift through the amount of data that's going to be available on the battlefield of tomorrow … and use that information effectively to make decisions, that force is going to win the war. There's no doubt about it.”