The Future of Cannon Artillery with COL Gregory M. Tomlin, PhD

All right, sir.

So last time we, we, we talked, um, you were a student at, at Eisenhower.

Understand more recent, um, position before you took over as the assistant commandant at the, at the school, sir.

Um, fires transformation and lessons learned, the TLLM.

Uh, just for the listeners to have understanding, 'cause this is just a new organization, new effort, um, that's in, in the Army.

Yeah, so I'll take you back two years ago when we were talking and I was at the Eisenhower School.

Instead of a brigade command, my command cen- uh, select or centralized selection list position was to be the Army capability manager for division artillery systems.

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, we were still the user representative communicating to the program managers.

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.

And if very rapidly your battalion experimented with something, the Army said, "This is wonderful.

We want to incorporate that in the Army," the lessons learned part of the TLLM title is intended to be the person that's going to figure out, all right, how do we get this into the schoolhouse quickly for programs of instruction? How do we get this into doctrine? Communicating with Combined Arms Command up at Fort Leavenworth for combined arms and maneuver doctrine.

Um, and so the role is very similar to what the ACCMs had before.

Um, the idea, though, is we can move a bit faster because we don't have a Futures Command.

We simply have this training and transformation command that does everything.