United States Army Futures Command

Uh, because the requirements people don't trust the acquisition people.

And so they say, "Hey, I want a plane that does this." And like, they think that the acquisition people are gonna go and trade away capability for money and time, right? Uh, so you, you've gotta put that together, and that's what's wrong with Futures Command, right? Futures Command never solved that problem, right? It took Futures Command and set it in Austin, Texas, and said, "It's in charge." Well, it doesn't have any money and it doesn't have any authority.

They ma- they papered over the authority initially with the Trump first administration, but as soon as they left, the next administration came in and said, "Dude," like, uh, right, "you, you have no authority." And so it just sat there and withered away.

And, and then kind of the requirements community said, "You see? That's what'll happen." Like they'll sep- right, like we were making trade-offs and, right, they'll, they'll stand you up.

So y- your, your thoughts on the, on the recent, um, you know, FAAS-COM, um, under the, uh, new autonomous warf- warfare command.

Yeah.

So I don't know what it is yet, right? So is it taking Futures Command-

Yeah

Oh, boy, Omega, here you go.

Disruption to existing commands, absorbing or restructuring elements of legacy organizations, such as the US Army Futures Command, creates turf battles, institutional resistance, and temporary operational friction.

I mean, this is written as somebody that's been in the Hill for 30 years.

Absolutely.

And in that role, I was the user representative talking to the program managers, and program managers are colonels, so I was their peer, about you wanna buy a new howitzer or a fire control system, this is what we really need in the artillery, and we would have that dialogue.

And as part of the Army transformation initiative, last October on the 2nd, Army Futures Command went away, and all the ACCMs were owned by Futures Command.

And under that reorganization, each of the centers of efflu- of, of excellence created these transformation and lessons learned managers.

Um, and so the remaining ACCMs, while we were still at the COEs, we just changed patches, and we did a lot of the same work.

We had a lot of interest in the DOTMLPF integration for systems because an acquisition officer, he's gonna talk to industry, industry's gonna tell him this is the best widget for the Army.

But the user representative has to figure out, all right, how do you train with this new widget? Where do you put your new widget? Where do you maintain it? And how do you employ it in the field? And so the TLLM is supposed to be responsible for that.

In addition to the restructuring with Army Futures Command, what we heard a lot of last year was about transformation and contact.

A lot of encouragement for units to innovate on their way up, and then the Army was driving experimentation down into them.

But where did they live? They lived out in academia, they lived in industry, they lived out in national research and development centers, and they had access to all of this technology.

So I worked very hard during my tenure in the 75th Innovation Command, just starting the whole thing up, standing it up, and, and being the first commander there, full-time commander for the whole time, and w- working our relationship with Army Futures Command, which John Murray was the first commander of that.

He was the first four-star commander of that.

And we formed, John Murray and I formed a very close personal relationship.

We're trying to codify the processes, codify the lessons learned.

So this was a-- And again, we've gone through different, as an Army, ideas, Army Futures Command, some other dev comm type activities, and this is just another iteration.

But maybe I'm jaded, but I think the Army finally got it right.

It's not just lining up the operational need with a bunch of individuals who can execute good ideas.

In 2016, there was a set of executive orders around what the critical priorities should be.

Ryan McCarthy, when he was secretary of the army, a colleague of Guy's and I, saw the vision to open up Army Futures Command in August of 2018 and change the way the Army thought about innovation for the first time in 70 years through the industrial complex.

And that has now become Army Training and Transformation Command here in Austin, Texas, which is one of the largest commands.

So we have also seen the powers at Congress and in the military actually make steps you know, eight years ago to start giving us and the companies that Guy and I are investing in, they are now benefiting from Army Applications Lab and them having all of this infrastructure that they never had eight years ago.