Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll told Congress today that the Army will provide detailed information within 10 days on how decisions will be made to consolidate commands, restructure units and cancel or restructure a number of weapons programs. The decisions are part of a sweeping shift announced in early May as the Army Transformation Initiative (ATI).
Clarity Expectations and Criticisms
In a memo sent to the Army in early May, Driscoll, the service secretary, announced that major change was coming. But many of the decisions in the document lacked clear analysis. For example, Combining Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command into a single entity ve Plan to cancel or restructure programs such as the M10 Booker light tank and Robotic Fighting Vehicle Radical steps such as these created question marks in Congress.
Driscoll said the service is projected to spend approximately the same amount over the next five years on programs it will cancel or redirect. To 48 billion dollars Service leaders say that funding will be reallocated to innovative efforts to transform the Army into a highly mobile and lethal force.
Senator Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee, acknowledged at a June 18 hearing that the Army needs to modernize but criticized the fact that “months after you announced the Army Transformation Initiative, this committee has not been provided with any detailed or substantive analysis of why the Army plans to cancel or reduce 12 enlisted programs and consolidate or reduce personnel across 21 commands.” Coons pressed Driscoll to provide information within 10 days so he can provide more responses to congressional committees.
Political Will and Privacy Discussions
While Senate budget officials largely agree that transformation is necessary to effectively deter major adversaries, many are skeptical of several decisions the Army has made under the initiative. “We are not serving the taxpayer or the common defense with blank checks for vaguely defined priorities. We want to see the analysis behind the specific bets the Army wants to place on ATI. We want to understand the second-order impacts on industry, the other services and allies,” Senator Mitch McConnell said.
Many decisions made as part of ATI were kept very close to the vest prior to the memorandum being issued. In some cases, the Army left out some program leaders who could have provided deeper analysis, including second- and third-order impacts and effects, as well as industrial bases and formations. Driscoll said at the SAC-D hearing that the Army Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) He admitted that other branch services were not consulted before announcing the intention to cancel joint programs such as the . Driscoll explained that the decision was made “to prevent the antibodies in the system from acting to stop the change.” Coons said the U.S. Marine Corps was “very surprised by the cancellation of JLTV” and that “significant adjustments” needed to be made.
