The President’s budget proposals forwarded to Congress in February call for significant boosts in spending for two key Army Transformation efforts: the Modular Force and the Future Combat Systems (FCS).

The Army’s budget request for fiscal year 2006 seeks to increase spending on the FCS program by $200 million, to a total of $3.405 billion. The higher spending reflects the Army’s decision last July to restructure the program to introduce, or “spiral,” individual FCS capabilities to the field in 2-year increments as they mature, while continuing to develop the overall “system of systems.”

The supplemental budget for fiscal year 2005 asks for $5 billion for the Army’s transition to the Modular Force. Under this program, the Army is creating new, more flexible, more self-sufficient brigades. These brigades will be the Army’s basic combat units, shifting the Army from a division- to a brigade-centric organization. The requested funds will support the standup of three new brigades this year as part of the Army’s plan to add 10 brigades to the existing 33 in the Active Army.

The fiscal year 2006 budget seeks to acquire 240 Stryker vehicles for $878 million to equip the sixth Stryker brigade combat team; 360 uparmored high-mobility, multipurpose, wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs) and 1,705 heavy-chassis HMMWVs for $224 million; 3,529 trucks in the family of medium tactical vehicles for $450 million; 2,002 trucks in the family of heavy tactical vehicles for $207 million; and 41 UH–60 Black Hawk utility helicopters for $585 million.

Total Army spending under the proposed fiscal year 2006 budget would be $98.6 billion, a slight decline (1.4 percent) from the $99.994 billion appropriated by Congress for fiscal year 2005. (These figures do not include supplemental appropriations, which brought total spending for fiscal year 2005 to $115.011 billion.) The Army budget request amounts to 23.5 percent of the President’s overall Department of Defense budget request of $419.3 billion.

Fiscal year 2006 spending requests in the major appropriation categories compare to fiscal year 2005 appropriations, excluding supplemental appropriations, as follows—

• Military personnel: $41.413 billion, up $2.466 billion, or 6.3 percent.
• Operation and maintenance: $31.813 billion, down $45 million, or less than 1 percent.
• Procurement: $11.755 billion, down $1.330 billion, or 10.2 percent.
• Research, development, test, and evaluation: $9.734 billion, down $807 million, or 7.7 percent.
• Military construction: $1.913 billion, down $211 million, or 9.9 percent.
• Family housing: $1.363 billion, down $202 million, or 12.9 percent.

The funding proposed for fiscal year 2006 will support Active Army ground operating tempo training annually for each vehicle of 765 live miles and 85 virtual miles and 13.1 live flying hours monthly for each aircrew in the Active Army. It also will support 11 brigade rotations each through the National Training Center and the Joint Readiness Training Center, 4 brigade rotations through the Combat Maneuver Training Center in Germany, and 3 corps-level Warfighter exercises and 7 division-level command and staff groups through the Battle Command Training Program.

The fiscal year 2005 supplemental appropriations request includes $3.3 billion for force protection measures such as adding armor to convoy trucks and $5.4 billion for refurbishing and replacing worn-out or damaged equipment used in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. (These figures are mostly, but not exclusively, for the Army.) Overall Army spending in the supplemental request amounts to $41.216 billion.
The President also is seeking an Army budget of $110.081 billion in fiscal year 2007.

ARMY SETS NEW STRATEGIC PLANNING GUIDANCE

Improving joint logistics capabilities is one of the strategic imperatives announced in the new Army Strategic Planning Guidance (ASPG). The ASPG is a long-range planning guide that defines the Army’s strategy for the next 10 to 20 years. Usually published every 2 years, this out-of-cycle revision of the 2004 guidance was necessary to meet requirements set forth in the Department of Defense Strategic Planning Guidance. Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey approved the new ASPG in January.

The new guidance has 10 strategic imperatives. The other nine are—

• Implement transformation initiatives.
• Improve capabilities for homeland defense.
• Improve proficiencies against irregular challenges.
• Improve capabilities for stability operations.
• Achieve Army force capabilities to dominate in complex terrain.
• Improve Army capabilities for strategic responsiveness.
• Improve global force posture.
• Improve capabilities for battle command.
• Improve joint fires capability.

Three of the imperatives—improve capabilities for homeland defense, improve capabilities for stability operations, and improve proficiencies against irregular challenges—are new Army focus areas.

The ASPG addresses the requirement for logisticians to provide a supply chain that reaches across a joint, interagency, and multinational theater. The means of accomplishing this include developing combat service support concepts, policy, and doctrine that support both theater-opening and distribution-based logistics and establishing end-to-end asset visibility.

The format of the new ASPG makes it easier for the reader to understand the Army’s strategic objectives and how the Army plans to achieve them. The 2005 ASPG can be found on line at www.army.mil/references.

NEW LAB TO TEST FUTURE COMBAT SYSTEMS

Army and Boeing Company officials cut the ribbon on 28 January for the 140,000-square-foot System of Systems Integration Laboratory (SoSIL) in Huntington Beach, California. The SoSIL is a testing and simulation lab in which soldiers and civilian experts together will develop, test, and evaluate the Future Combat Systems (FCS) network that will connect vehicles and warfighters on the battlefield. The $35-million laboratory is a part of the Army’s $21.4-billion FCS program that is scheduled to be fielded by 2014.

Colonel Charles Jorgenson, chief of staff in the Office of the Program Manager, FCS Unit of Action, said the facility “will allow us to test all 18 platforms in the network-centric warfare we’re trying to move to. We’ll move some of those capabilities to a test unit beginning in 2008. And we’re already using some of the technology.”

Boeing’s Frank DeMattia said the new high-tech laboratory also will link suppliers and subcontractors nationwide in real time. DeMattia said that FCS will network the new manned and unmanned ground vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles and integrate all the communications nodes in a brigade-sized unit of action. SoSIL will enable those vehicles, the soldiers’ individual equipment, and stationary sensors throughout the battlefield to work together, he added.

Soldiers will be involved with the system’s development early in the process in an effort to reduce the number of difficulties encountered in the field. “We want to get the warfighter involved in the developmental process, so if he’s looking at a display, for example, and it doesn’t look right to him, we can make changes before we’re fully committed to a design,” DeMattia said.

The first integration test is set to begin in October and end in the spring of 2006 with a mission test in which soldiers will use the equipment in a simulated battle.

According to DeMattia, the SoSIL will allow the Army to bring both hardware and software into the field gradually, with various components of FCS being fielded in 2008, 2010, and 2012 before the full system is in use in 2014.

EUROPE-BASED AMC BRIGADE DEPLOYS TO IRAQ

The Army Materiel Command Field Support Brigade-Europe (AMC FSB–E) deployed to Iraq from Germany just 2 months after it was established to provide expeditionary logistics support to forces in the field.

“This deployment is exactly why the unit was formed [on 18 November],” said Colonel Max Lobeto, the brigade commander. “Ours is the first such brigade in [the] Army Materiel Command, and [it] is designed to match up with the expeditionary Army.”

The deploying contingent includes the commander and the brigade operations command post, which is made up of both soldiers and civilian employees. “Although many members of our command have deployed individually, this is the first time we are going as a unit,” said Tommy Lane, the brigade’s civilian deputy. “It makes good sense: we are experienced professionals and have all the tools to organize the effort on the ground and reach back into AMC’s arsenal of expertise and equipment.”

Plans call for the brigade to exercise command and control over all AMC activities and personnel until later this year, when it will hand over authority to another brigade. “We’re setting the standard for providing a modular solution to the logistics challenges raised by an enduring and global battle against terrorism,” said Steve Lockridge, brigade chief of plans and operations. “What we do and what we learn will contribute to Army Materiel Command’s continuing transformation. We’ve always operated in support of fighting forces, but now we are doing so in a formation that looks and acts just like the combatant commands. They’re deploying as brigade units, organized and equipped for the mission [and] so are we.”

While the brigade command is in Iraq, more than 1,000 members of the brigade will continue to provide logistics assistance and combat-ready equipment from operating locations across Europe and beyond. “This new mission is an additional task. The essential logistics support provided to U.S. Army Europe and U.S. European Command will continue at full speed,” said Lobeto.

A loadmaster conducts a preflight inspection of his C–130 Hercules aircraft before takeoff from an air base in Iraq. The C–130s are used to transport supplies over areas where truck drivers face the greatest threat.

 

CDDOC INITIATIVES REDUCE CONVOY RISKS

An initiative of the U.S. Central Command’s Distribution and Deployment Operations Center (CDDOC) reduces the number of U.S. truck drivers who have to transit some of Iraq’s most dangerous roads each week. CDDOC is charged with synchronizing strategic and intratheater airlift for the U.S. military.

In the past, large cargo aircraft flew into airfields that were located in some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq, and truck convoys then delivered supplies to forward-deployed military forces.

CDDOC’s improved distribution plan calls for strategic transports to deliver cargo directly from the United States to several airfields that can accommodate large aircraft. Then the cargo is flown from those airfields on smaller C–130 Hercules transport aircraft to airstrips that are located near large numbers of military forces.

This initiative has not totally eliminated the need for convoys to travel in high-risk areas, but, so far, it has removed approximately 1,280 convoy drivers per week from Iraqi roads.

CHEMICAL DEMILITARIZATION PROGRESSES

The Army is scheduled to begin disposing of chemical agents at a sixth site this spring. The facility, at Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas, will destroy approximately 3,850 tons of the nerve agents GB and VX and the blister agents HT and HD. That amounts to 12 percent of the U.S. stockpile of chemical agents.

As of 2 February, the Army had destroyed 11,076 tons of chemical agents, or about 35.1 percent of the total U.S. stockpile of chemical agents, and about 42 percent of all U.S. chemical munitions (mainly rockets and landmines).

The Army’s first chemical agent disposal facility opened at Johnston Atoll in the Pacific in 1990 and completed its work in 2000, destroying approximately 6 percent of the Army’s chemical agents. Other disposal facilities (with the percentages of the Army’s chemical agent stockpile they store) began operating at Deseret Chemical Depot, Utah, in 1996 (44 percent); Anniston Army Depot, Alabama, in 2003 (7 percent); Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, in 2003 (5 percent); and Umatilla Chemical Depot, Oregon, in 2004 (12 percent). The disposal facility at Newport Chemical Depot, Indiana (4 percent), is scheduled to begin operations later this year. Other facilities are planned for Blue Grass Army Depot, Kentucky (2 percent), and Pueblo Chemical Depot, Colorado (8 percent).

The Deseret, Anniston, Umatilla, and Pine Bluff facilities use incineration to destroy chemical agents, as did Johnston Atoll. Aberdeen uses a neutralization technology, as will Newport, Blue Grass, and Pueblo.

A forklift operator loads a pallet of VX rockets into an on-site container for movement from storage to the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility at Deseret Chemical Depot, Utah.

ARMY SAFETY CENTER SHIFTS FOCUS TO RISK MANAGEMENT

The Army is changing its safety program to incorporate safety into the fabric of daily operations. As a part of this change, the Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Alabama, became the Army Combat Readiness Center (USACRC) in February. The organizational change is designed to advance the concept of composite risk management, which seeks to develop a fuller evaluation of potential dangers and thus create more effective risk mitigation. Composite risk management will focus on sustaining readiness and managing all risks—those posed by the enemy, the environment, materiel and systems, and human error—by shifting from an
accident-centric approach to a soldier-centric approach.

According to Brigadier General Joseph A. Smith, USACRC Commander, “The change is intended to move beyond the old concept of ‘safety,’ which had become viewed by many soldiers as an occasional action rather than a constant foundation for all other activities. In some cases, soldiers do not grasp the outcome of being unsafe until ‘one of their own’ is involved—recognizing, too late, the consequences of the accidental loss in making the unit less prepared, lowering its readiness, and potentially putting the unit mission at risk.”

The Army Safety Office in Washington, D.C., will focus on the compliance aspects of safety and reinforce the use of composite risk management as a tool to help prevent all loss. USACRC will function as a field operating agency under the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army. Safety remains a foundational component of the new organization. The USARC mission includes—

• Investigating Army accidents.
• Initiating the necessary cultural changes and developing the processes, structure, and training needed to implement composite risk management Army wide.
• Developing predictive trend analysis using digital technology and data mining in order to identify loss trends and preventive measures.

TRADOC IMPLEMENTS LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is implementing the new, Web-based Army Learning Management System (ALMS), which will help students, trainers, and training managers to conduct and manage training throughout students’ Army careers. The system is an integral component of the Army Distributed Learning Program that provides professional military and self-development training and education.

The ALMS provides automated individual training management and distributed learning capabilities. It will be used to register and enroll students; monitor testing and student progress; distribute, store, and present education and training products;maintain training and education records; collect and store feedback and evaluations; and provide a database of education and training products and resources. It will enable soldiers to take distributed learning courses and manage their training records and allow civilians to take Department of the Army-directed training.

The ALMS is accessible from the Army Knowledge Online Web site, providing one central location for soldier and civilian employee training needs. Implementation of the ALMS began with Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and is scheduled to be complete throughout TRADOC early in 2006. Fielding to the remaining major Army commands will begin shortly thereafter, with full fielding completed by 2008.

PHOTOVOLTAIC TECHNOLOGY PROMISES
MULTIPLE BENEFITS TO MILITARY

Researchers at the Army Soldier Systems Center at Natick, Massachusetts, believe the potential benefits to the military of a new generation of photovoltaic (PV) technologies are unlimited.

PV solar cells convert light energy into electricity without noise, moving parts, fuel consumption, or pollutant emissions. In the last 5 years, PV technology has evolved from the use of large, heavy, rigid, reflective, and expensive glass panels to the use of lightweight and inexpensive devices that can be integrated directly into textiles and warfighter systems.

When used in combination with rechargeable batteries to power such items as night-vision goggles, PV cells could cut warfighters’ battery-load weight in half. “On 72-hour and longer missions, it makes a lot more sense to carry rechargeable batteries,” said Steven Tucker, an electrical engineer in the center’s Collective Protection Directorate. “You get rid of that logistics tail by minimizing resupply with disposable batteries. The weight payback for a photovoltaic charger and rechargeable battery combination is incredibly quick, and out past 72 hours it just keeps getting better.”

Less weight means better mobility, and the ability to recharge batteries on the move can increase sustainability, extend mission time and distance from tactical operations centers, and reduce logistics support requirements. Replacing or decreasing the number of liquid-fuel-powered generators reduces logistics requirements further and lowers the heat and sound signature in the field for improved stealth operations.

A “power shade” that fits over two kinds of Army tents has PV material laminated into a mesh fabric that reduces the cumulative solar irradiance by 80 to 90 percent while generating up to 1 kilowatt of power for shelter electronics or battery recharging. On a larger scale, PV cells on shelters for aircraft or field hospitals that cover thousands of square feet could generate 40 to 60 kilowatts of energy in peak sunlight.

Eventually, direct integration of PV technology into soldier-borne systems may create electronically active textiles that minimize the need for cables and connections and provide a more streamlined and multifunctional warfighter system. A new Science and Technology Objective that will continue through 2008 is looking at achieving PV power generation from virtually any surface.

Beginning in 2007, the assault kitchen will provide a better way to feed company-sized military units in the field.Armored personnel carriers are staged for loading at Port Beaumont, Texas, in preparation for deployment to Southwest Asia. Nearly 2,900 tanks, trucks, and support vehicles, or approximately 85 percent of the assets of the 116th Brigade Combat Team, were loaded onto MVs Cape Knox, Race, and Rise and USNS Yano in October by the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command’s 842d Transportation Battalion and deployed to Southwest Asia to support the 116th in Operation Iraqi Freedom III. The 116th includes Army National Guard soldiers from Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Utah.