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April 2005

Technologies Rushed to War: And Then What?

by Sandra I. Erwin

Hasty deployment of specialized military equipment to forces under fire in Iraq and Afghanistan have saved the day more than once for Army troops. Materiel has ranged from bomb-detection robots to handheld language translators to vehicle-inspection devices.

But much work remains to be done in the equally important second phase—offering spare parts, manuals and other important follow-on services, according to senior officials.

The Army was able to purchase and deploy these items in relatively short time by skirting the traditional procurement bureaucracy and, instead, relying on so-called “rapid fielding” organizations.

Many of these new technologies, however, were sent to war in such a hurry that the Army was unable to arrange the support services usually associated with military systems, such as technical manuals and instructions on how to obtain spare parts.

The Army launched three major efforts to expedite the delivery to technology to the front lines: the Agile Development Center, the Rapid Fielding Initiative and the Rapid Equipping Force.

Although these projects have achieved much success in moving equipment purchases at a fast pace, at some point, they need to address soldiers’ needs for logistics support and repair parts, noted Brig. Gen. Roger A. Nadeau, commander of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command.

“Products get fielded by the REF,” Nadeau said. “After a while, soldiers start asking ‘where are the parts?’ Where is the log [logistics] plan? … Collectively, we don’t have a good answer.”

First of all, soldiers need to be told whether the Army will support the new system or whether they should throw it away when it breaks or wears out, he added.

The Army has fielded nearly 220 new technologies both in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Brig. Gen. Philip D. Coker, director of capabilities development at the U.S. Army Futures Center.

The issue of whether these accelerated systems will become part of the standard Army inventory is complex, given the intricacies of military procurement, he explained. “We’ve begun to look at which of those 220 technologies may be needed across the Army as a result of their performance under fire.”

The procurement of Army equipment is “a wonderful process, if you are not in the middle of a fight,” Coker said. “Now we are in the middle of a fight, and we need to deliver rapidly. Frankly, there are no firmly established processes.

“We are given a requirement from commanders. We send the request through developers and acquirers,” Coker told military contractors at a conference. “It’s phenomenally complex.”

Every system comes with its own problems, he said. “You can’t imagine what happens when you go out to buy a South African vehicle off the shelf and issue it in groups of 12 to a deployed force.” Naturally, he said, commanders ask about spare parts.

“Our logistics folks have been wonderful responding to this need,” said Coker. But he acknowledged that the Army has not come to grips with how to support, over the long term, a new system that was rushed to war. “In our budget environment [planned over seven years], it is difficult to discover something on Monday morning, buy it Friday morning and sustain it over seven years.”

A military contractor who spent a year in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Rapid Equipping Force told National Defense that the logistics support of some of the new technologies is a “huge issue.” In recent months, he said, REF has asked suppliers to attach adhesive labels on equipment sent to units. Although they are no substitute to a full manual, these labels provide basic instructions on operating the system, safety warnings and information on how to obtain spare parts.

At RDECOM, meanwhile, officials express concern about the perception that the command is not meeting its intended goals. RDECOM was created less than two years ago by merging a host of Army agencies. It was designed to provide one-stop shopping for the Army technologies of the future. The service’s research and development establishment traditionally has been spread out across the Army’s various laboratories and Army Material Command organizations.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have tested RDECOM’s ability to produce results, and while the command generally has responded to the challenge, said Nadeau, it remains to be seen whether the Army’s investment in RDECOM will pay off in the long term.

“We have three to five years to prove the value of RDECOM,” Nadeau told an industry conference. “People want to see whether it’s worth keeping or shutting down.”

Complicating matters is “internal competition” between RDECOM’s Agile Development Center, the Rapid Fielding Initiative and the Rapid Equipping Force, all of which have some overlapping functions, Nadeau noted. “We are tripping all over each other.”

Some sort of coordination among all agencies is needed to help fix soldiers’ demands for logistics support, he added.