Contested Logistics: AUSA Hot Topic Lecture Notes

well good morning again now we're going to get into the fun part of the morning get the panel started uh those of you that got a chance to go out and get a breath of fresh cool air I know you're energized and ready to go on behalf of lios I'd like to welcome you to the contested Logistics a USA Hot Topic series and thank all of you for joining today my name is Clark Lee Masters I'm representing the great lios team and and specifically our army and Joint Logistics Division our long-standing partnership as a company uh with a USA is incredibly important to us and Li's proudly supports the Army team those soldiers their families and those amazing army civilians that we've talked about already this morning as an innovation company it is lios Mission to support the Army through more resilient Supply chains and Mission ready Communications products and training our 47,000 employees work every day to solve critical problems for our customers especially when Logistics plays a central role in their mission by Levering technology in the cloud our repeatable intelligent Logistics platform capabilities helps transform contested Logistics and enables rapid data integration for endtoend visibility of sustainment solutions as we will be discussing today we know the military is in another evolution of warfare as we've heard already in our key speaker introductory comments and lios solutions allow for continuous operations when it's imperative to sustain the fight across contested domains and terrain it's through a USA events such as this one that we can come together and share ideas that help the Army continue to execute so that our industry team along with government can continue to deliver what soldiers need when they need it so now let's get the ball Ro and and it's my great pleasure to introduce our first panel Army and transition sustaining Army 2030 and transforming to Army 2040 I get to introduce our moderator for the first panel Mr Steve Rodriguez Steve is a managing partner for one defense a Next Generation strategic advisory firm that leverages machine learning to identify Advanced software and Hardware commercial capabilities and accelerate their transition into the defense industrial base Steve has a wide defense commercial and intelligence background he began his career with Booze Allen Hamilton in the National Security sector and his practice as as expert in game theoretic applications he supported the United States intelligence Community Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security he's also subsequently been a vice president of an artificial intelligence company and served as a chief marketing officer for an international defense Corporation Steve serves on the board of director or Board of advisor for 10 Venture capable back companies he also serves as a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council and a life member at the council foreign relation Steve is an Aggie I didn't hear any who is or anything in here that may be good or bad okay there's one I see the horn symbol there and also holds an MA degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Affairs he's published in foreign policy war on the Rocks National Review and rear clear defense Steve and his great family live here in DC Steve thanks for being here and monitoring our first panel I'll turn it over to you thank you in the five minutes we have left um uh so right before uh coming here I was actually decisively engaged in a uh major contestant Logistics campaign I have a four six and eighty old and live right across the river here and uh I've realized that lisco actually stands for lots of uh lots of sadness crying often as it relates to uh getting your children to school especially somewhat earlier than than they planned and uh certainly my wife did as well uh I'd also like to acknowledge uh the passing of General Sullivan in January I I actually met him in high school in Berlin Germany with General Jen you remember those two gentlemen and you think about the Army and indeed a USA I believe he was uh he was President for 18 years I think of a USA and if we're about people and families I think you know having someone who's kind of oversaw the the um the transformation of the army and indeed a USA you think about the a USA that he inherited in 98 I believe uh that's pretty significant so uh wanted to acknowledge just briefly a remarkable uh American and a u um United States Army soldier as well uh turning to the the topic at hand um we have uh five panelists here right five panelists uh and and so there's going to be a lot of questions and hopefully we'll have time for you to actually engage in a conversation as well so this is not just a passive uh engagement uh I I will just say when we think about contested Logistics I'll offer a brief anecdote as a former uh ASM Warfare group uh OA uh I was engaged in a debate actually it's it was on Twitter so I'm I'm sure it's searchable uh like all of my other brilliant observations um I was engaged in a debate in January 20122 January 2022 uh with two very very well-known Russi of experts uh served in uniform some came out of the intelligence community and the the debate went as follows they said Steve you know you you served in Afghanistan and and Central Asia but you never you never served in Russia you don't speak Russian I said that's true and and and they said you know we are highly confident the ukrainians or sorry the Russians can resupply their M the btg's remember when those are a thing Balian tactical groups down uh the the main ball route e95 from bellus to Keith and I said well I don't know there's these things and I'm sure you'll appreciate this uh there's this thing called rail heads and they said so I said well the rail heads and here right I didn't even use PowerPoint the rail heads in here and then they have to resupply using trucks from here to here their objective and they said so and so I just did you know I went to A&M so I'm not good at division or multiplication but I can I can add uh and I started adding up trucks like I think I even used the little Tech marks the number of trucks it were to require and the the conversation ends uh with me being pillared because I didn't speak cilc so I think it's emblematic of our need to understand uh the complexity of a dynamic issue certainly understanding the region of course when I know we have many Allied Partners here but also uh understanding the math and math I think the term now we use is Affordable Mass uh affordable mass in waging contested Logistics operations uh in a lisco environment so uh teing this up uh we have major general Michelle Donahue from cascom Mr Rob Watts from uh the consensus Logistics CFT uh retired lieutenant general uh Richard Dick for Mah uh and then of course we have Jerry DWI and um geez there so many of y'all uh Michael snow as well so believe it or not we have folks who can talk at every single aspect uh of this issue and so we're going to Dive Right In uh General Donahue cascom plays a major role in the Army a significant role in the Army in transitioning from a brigade to division level constructs however most of us certainly myself have you know grown up in an army optimized for coin operations especially at the Brigade level so how is cascom refining our Logistics formations and tactics to ensure that what work the coin environment is going to work in uh a future environment that we're talking about thanks Stephen for that first question so the good news about this is that we weren't tasked to prepare opening remarks and we're going to jump right into the question piece of this uh but first I just wanted to one say thank you to everyone who is attending today I see a lot of G4 teammates out there in the audience I see a lot of allies and partners I see a lot of Industry partners that I've known over the years um and to and to General Brown um who I've spent a lot of time with over the last seven or eight months as part of uh the Chiefs transition team thanks thanks for your leadership here sir and then to General Haley uh who who who didn't mention that both General Smith then Captain Smith Lieutenant Kenna and major Haley were all in the same unit in Germany back in uh the late really the late 90s and so again um I was a product of both of your leadership and uh lots of lots of mentorship to the young Lieutenant so uh so uh thank you for that I would not probably be here without both of you so thank you so um I'm I'm really excited to have just taken uh uh the Reigns down at ccom um back in November time frame the chief said Michelle I'm done with you from a transition team perspective so you need to move on and uh and and I'm really appreciative one of the leadership of of now Lieutenant General Mark simmerly who is at da who just took over this past Friday and so he really set me up for success but I will tell you that the ccom team has been really really rowing hard um at this building the army of 2030 and helping to design the army of 2040 one from an experimentation perspective uh from a Concepts development perspective very much nested with our sustainment seated partners with the Futures and concept Center underneath Army Futures command um and then on the material development side of the house um I I will say that uh we are absolutely integrated with and have integrated the you know the 30 plus signature modernization efforts across the Army right now that will absolutely transform how we sustain the Army um and essentially as well how we uh transform sustainment as we um essentially as as maneuver modernizes and also transforms in contct uh so it's it's exciting times for ccom I look forward to telling a little bit more you know what we're doing from the doal PF perspective uh but it is an integrated effort across many different teammates out there we are nested across the sustainment community both down at AMC um as well as asalt the Army G4 and our and my partner that's sitting next to me here from the contested Logistics CFT so um look forward to Future uh to future questions about the doo PF piece great so Mr Watts what what exactly is the contested Logistics CFT uh its Mission and how is it contributing towards the future fight especially with regard to Army sustainment so I think it'd be crazy if I try to improve upon the uh definition that's really been laid out by General Brown General Haley General Smith I think they laid out really why we exist and what our mission is uh you know everybody agrees that we've got to get after Logistics especially in this contested environment and how we do that so our job is to go out and look for material uh capab abilities and develop the requirements uh that that kind of lay out what it should do and what it needs to do so we can turn it over to asalt obviously you know hyper focused on F six uh efforts U I really appreciate General Smith's comment about the jccl because when we first stood this up we decided you know how do how do you do this so we you know we pulled out the jccl and in that it it describes some desired capabilities that are required to get after this uh and instead of standing up to CFT based off of things you know and that to me that's one of the mistakes we made early on you know and we didn't know you know we're building the cfts originally some of them you know it was you know High Mars you know okay we finish High Mars then what you do so what we did was took a portfolio approach uh sometimes we refer to as lines of effort but it really is a portfolio because we see this CFT is truly an enduring required CFT because this problem is not going to go away after we deliver our first four or five capabilities uh it's the thing the the environment's going to continue to change the other signature modernization efforts are going to have to change so we're going to have to uh continue to lift and shift as and as far as our portfolio what I would say is we are involved with the building of the 2030 and also design 2040 I'll give you an example for precision sustainment our first portfolio you know our first priority effort is predictive Logistics now most of the folks in this room know that we've been working predictive maintenance for a very long time um and so that one I believe we've got some opportunities to really move but what we see with predictive Logistics is over time you know we'll get from predictive Logistics to what we describe in general Hamilton really described as precision sustainment and you know and I'd like to kind of give you a few examples of what I mean by that because you know in the future and everything that the generals have mentioned before about the tyan of distance and and the separation of everything we can never we can no longer afford to deliver two times or even three times What that particular location or a requires we just don't we want to have the assets and we want to move it or the asset to deliver in a lot of this so we have to be a lot more Precision so we're going to need some Ai and some other tools to really help us eventually now we see ourselves kind of building this as it you know kind of an incremental approach approach I know that was a bad word for a little while but it's the only way that you can get you know get a capability out now like predictive Logistics we believe we can get that one out for the army of 2030 but over time we have to incrementally improve it through software or whatever so it grows to that truly Precision sustainment capability in the next area the uh the multi-domain distribution I have to write that one down because I I'll get Tongue Tied with that one what I would say is uh given General General rainey's uh recent uh directives and and focus Joe Smith I apologize for not telling you this before yet but we're going to shift that uh really that naming uh no no you know the naming of it to human machine integrated uh Supply and distribution system the reason is is we want to really describe that human machine integration that this is going to require and and then you'll hear some of the those capabilities in my next uh but we really did want to highlight that because you know genine is hyperfocused on we have to leverage machines we got to figure out how the human the machines are integrated on the battlefield and you know just the command and control you know of some of those things so the first uh the second effort that we're working right now is autonomous resupply vessel yes a boat for the Army but a more affordable version to where we can buy lots of them hopefully to where you can if you can kind of Envision a swarm of these autonomous vessels going out to various Island chains delivering you know and not having you know not having to uh Beach because we can have the uavs come in meet somewhere on the over the water grab portions and take that area of A's portion or whatever it is ammo food blood whatever it is and take it to the point of need no beach unload load Drive unload it's so that's what a a concept that we've kind of we've started a build that brings in the autonomous trucks autonomous MH autonomous water watercraft uavs obviously and over this whole ecosystem you know leveraging that this that capability to move stuff around the battlefield and I say stuff you know repair parts all the Commodities uh so that's the next one the um Advanced power still doing a lot of U market research uh in that area you know there's there's no lack of opportunities it's just we really have to figure out what's the thing that we need to tackle as a CFT you know we're really charged to go after the hard stuff you know it's going to be you know really game changing so still doing a lot of market research on what it is in advanced power you know how do we get off of fossil fuels and so forth uh and there's a lot of things out there that you know you know hydrogen power some other things but you know is that something that can be ready for 2035 you know because we have to have it around 2035 so we can get it filled about 2040 obviously and what does that leave me with demand reduction so we'll go after you know some capabilities and demand reduction a lot of market research we're doing in that adding manufacturing I don't know that it's stalled but what's that next level of added manufacturing you know we've talked about uh manufacturing ammo at the point of need so forth you know just what is it so we're still in that research phase on demand reduction but on that and my team has coached me very well and I hope they're watching uh if we get the other three right you know that will equal demand reduction as well so you know Precision sustainment obviously demand reduction fewer trucks delivering fuel fewer bolts moving stuff around and uh and so forth same with the m you know the advanced power and energy you get that right we're not moving fuel around and we Water Production you know I don't know how we get there but I believe that's something we have to figure out once again you get that right demand reduction and it's just that whole domino effect of fewer trucks equals fewer soldiers which equals less food to move less water less so it's just you know I believe all our first three portfolios when you add those up it equals demand reduction but we're also going to go after something in that area so I hope that makes sense can I just make one comment so we have increased from 1970 to now 374 from a fuel perspective and if we want to continue to ensure that sustainment is not the crippling piece from a war Fighter's perspective we've got to reduce demand and so every vehicle that rolls off of a production line ought to be hybrid electric and ought to be a net power producer so just something to throw out there 374 per we also from a maintainability perspective 37% from a maintenance growth perspective the sustainment community cannot continue to be the growth industry for the United States Army those are huge huge statistics uh and uh Mr wats Rob uh you know is a& MLM I think you and your organization might be the most useful or interesting thing that's come out of Alabama in quite some time um is that too is that too soon I have to keep this rate of PG so I'm just gonna oh no that that that fascinating and that that's exactly exactly the kind of commentary I was looking for uh general for mik you've got as former director of the Army Force management as well as having deep operational experience in theater you know where do you see the Army sustainment mission in 2024 and where do you see it going what do you see is needed uh from your perspective yeah thanks let me uh add my thanks to USA for hosting this um lot of excitement about the thought of contested Logistics um around the department and clearly something that we ought to be having these kinds of professional discussions on so I really appreciate this um I thought I'd play to my strength and step back a little bit because we can delve right into what is contest Logistics and get into some of those specific capabilities and I think we'll hear those throughout the day but for me it really begs the question why contested Logistics what drives that and how do we bring capabilities into the force right so the Army has a force management framework that brings capability in right starts with the strategy what do you want the Army to do a lot of people don't pay much attention to that but that's really fundamental because we don't write the strategy the strategy is given to us right we have a national security strategy National defense strategy the Army comes up with its plan but it all begins with the strategy what do you want the Army to do and then that we ask the question so what capabilities do we need to have to execute that uh strategy and that's what we're going to be talking about today contested Logistics and the capabilities we need in that environment are kind of the capabilities that will Army will be required to have as part of the Joint Force then and as much as we disain processes and money funding right it then comes down to how do we bring those capabilities into the force how do we do that can we do it faster can we do it with more agility but ultimately how do we bring those capabilities into the force then we have to ask ourselves can we afford to organize man equip train sustained station and fund this force that we put together these capabilities that we say we want and then does it meet combatant Commander requirements and with what risk that's the framework in within which we're having this conversation so been referenced here already by General Brown General Haley General Smith starts with the strategy National Security strategy focus on China right the national def the national defense strategy tells us China's the pacing threat but don't forget Russia is an acute threat and oh by the way we have to address those other threats North Korea Iran still have terrorism and transnational so it broadens it a little bit right and uh and that how the strategy goes then there's a defense planning guidance that issues specific guidance to the services on where to focus that's pretty important but if we were to just and this is the first challenge for the Army if we were to just Define ourselves by the pacing threat we'd have a completely different Army than we think we might need and a lot of the capabilities you'll talk about today will never require right maybe we'd be all watercraft in fact interesting little anecdote when I was a the director of force management I was told to devest watercraft from the Army because we weren't going to need it right and now here we are so it really does start with the strategy and all of those then we start figuring out what kind of capabilities we want and army Futures command which has changed the way we do capability development in a real way but they've defined an army of 2030 and and the army that we want in 2040 and one of them talks about the ability to campaign and the other talks about sustaining endurance to Prevail in prot protracted conflict both of those have really real implications for Logistics and and contested Logistics so when I think about the strategy and what does it mean for contested Logistics I am concerned that we have to we as an army have to decide how do we respond to the strategy what kind of capabilities do we really need and do we apologize for not being a Pacific kind of focused Army the OSD thinks about Navy and Air Force right there's a huge role for the Army in the Pacific and we should not apologize for that there's also a huge role for us in in Yukon and oh by the way every time we write our strategy and those at the higher echelons of our government want to think about just paccom or just Russia the Middle East reminds us that they're there and sooner or later we've got to build capabilities like contested Logistics across all of those combatant commands and so I was encouraged uh with when General George and he reforced it yesterday here in this room talks when he responds to the Army's uh addressing the strategy we're a global Army and so we've got to build contested logistics for a global Army and that's going to mean a balance of capabilities some that will enable us to to provide for logistic and a cont Ed Pacific Theater and others that will enable us to provide for Logistics in a contested European or other theater and then let me just finish this first uh trunch with and as we go down this road we will be tempted to focus on the m and I was glad to hear you know General Haley talked about it and others this is not just an m fight contested Logistics is going to require Solutions across do Mill PF it's going to require us to think about how do we integrate with our joint Partners who bring capabilities and to whom we bring Logistics capabilities and then we'll be dependent upon our allies and being interoperable or interchangeable with our allies uh and then what does industry deliver so with that I'll pause and say thank you excellent and thank you for teeing up our commercial colleagues here as well uh let me turn to Mr jwi or Jerry uh so from your position uh certainly a deoe but also giv your detailed background one thing Mr Watts talked about was uh oh the irony The Tech Guy struggling to turn on the microphone uh the I didn't go to A&M so yeah I'm still trying to figure out how to turn on my camera with zoom U so uh Mr wat talked uh touched on this briefly around autonomous or autonomous systems and resupply uh when you you think about autonomous or semi-autonomous uh systems especially from a a logistics perspective um they have a lot of practicality as we've this has been well identified in sustainment operations um but from your perspective from the commercial uh side of things where do you see commercial industry having the greatest ability uh to support here either from a magnitude perspective or in terms of uh near-term availability to support so first of all it's a privilege to be here today thank you um I've been with deoy for 30 years almost exclusively in the supply chain practice so um in serving commercial clients I would say we operate in a constrained logistic environment not a contested but there's there's similarities um and I mean that humbly there's similarities um I would say that the you know the the autonomous and semi-autonomous Logistics uh capabilities you know if you start if you think about an evolution or a framework they started with you know uh more Warehouse operations we've gone from you know things from automated loading unloading sorting picking palletizing Etc but our client my clients have have been thinking through how do I extend that and how do I do more with less and I think you know something you said Mr Watts earlier about um fund my one of my key takeaways this is the use of autonomous and semi-autonomous Logistics robots and capabilities which I'll describe Beyond just you know what what we have talked about uh around what I call robots has been it'll enable you to do more with less let me give you a couple examples um I have clients in a variety of Industries whether aviation oil and gas Telco industrial manufacturing and Automotive needs are different but that what is consistent is their their supply chain budgets their Logistics budgets are constrained and what they're looking to do is how do I extend the capabilities and innovation in this space to new use cases so for instance as I think about um I think the opportunities are Limitless let me give you a couple specific examples in aviation one of my C is the largest domestic airline in the United States they and their operations are are Global but they don't have footprint globally for repair and operation so they work with Partners oftentimes we'll station um you know Aviation mechanics you know and just a mechanic and a and a small Force call it in Tokyo in major hubs or you know whether it's Japan used to be China but around the world um and when we have an issue a plane goes down it has to be taken out of the line we will use a variety of Technologies we will look at uh AR and VR for diagnosing a problem we'll use visual AI to diagnose a problem we will and then when we figure out what that problem is we'll then move to the arvr we'll have the mechanic con you know put on you what I'll call the equivalent of Google Glass and they will work with you know headquarters maintenance and operations and they will literally see the part the system Etc and diagnose the problem and we will deliver instruction in the glass to figure out how to fix it that's one use case you think about windmills you know you know for for energy generation High Capital High Capital cost you know we have to keep those things running but they're they require maintenance they require um visual inspection well it's too expensive to put and too quite frankly too dangerous to put a person up there we will fly drones with the same visual AI that can ex that can that can inspect the surface quality uh on those windmills while in operation believe it or not I mean here to for that was something we had to you know take that stuff down we had to think about we had to put someone up there stop it and now we can do it all real-time operation and I think about uh oil rigs you know when we need to resupply we're not you know we we we oftentimes have a park go down we will use a drone I mean it's not it's something probably the military is doing now but we will use drones to resupply we won't use planes we'll use drones and they are uh they're loaded to several thousands of pounds um so we'll do that I'd say that the uh something you said earlier about doing more with less uh the ne you know was it um necessi the mother of invention I had toh work with a with an NGO and the United States government on on resupply into um uh a a conflict Zone and also one that we had um a lot of ref Refugee support we needed to build manufacturing capability but the local government said you can have one 3D printer so what do you do we load that 3D printer with the ability to manufacture 14 more 3D printers that was allowed they didn't think of it but things like that it's the so as I think about where we can go with autonomous Logistics and robots I think the opportunities are Limitless I think that the technology and the entrepreneurship has to meet the use case so the takeaway for for the Army here we can help you understand the current use cases and extend your thinking about where and how we're using some of this technology in what I would consider hazardous risky environments obviously lot less risky and hazardous than that than theaters in which you operate but we can we can innovate together on some of those uh applications for you um I'd say the last thing I'd say is we most of the companies that are doing this will share their development road map with you and they will they will take you where the Journey's going and they'll say you know where where and how might you have needs that we can fit in in here um the other thing uh the facilities maintenance when it comes to whether it's um domestic abroad um the same thing applies whether it's um robots to maintain facilities robots to move equipment robots uh to or arvr to diagnose problems on particular equipment all that's in the in the realm in the art of the possible so I'd say that the the use of um these autonomous semi-autonomous systems I won't call them R I'll call them systems will allow you to do more less you're only limited by your imagination in terms of the use cases and that future frankly is now so I'll pause i' like that well go ahead so Jerry you know I really appreciate what you brought up about the less you know less demand because there's it's no secret about our uh recruiting challenges that we have uh today and so what I would say is the more task that we can offload on this these machines that mentioned the more we can free up the war fighters to go do other task and uh really kept help you know uh fill that void uh that we're facing in the future and the demands probably going to be higher in this environment that we're talking about the second thing is I appreciate your comment about the O rigs because we were directed by our commander to go down and and and watch and see how they're kind of resupplying and everything their rigs So yeah thank you yeah I would just like to add that um this discussion on autonomy and human machine interface really going to come down to making legitimate decisions about what must the humans do and then what can the autonomous uh equipment do and then do we have confidence that those autonomous vehicles or equipment are going to do what we've asked them to do and that confidence factor is going to be really important this is not a logistics or sustainment example but shortly after I took over a paladin pin equipped Dev already in 1998 I went to the first training session and one of the firing batteries and I might as well have been in my unit in Germany in 1977 in the Woodline camouflage nets up col meters aiming circles and I'm like what are you doing well we're practicing for degraded Ops I don't want degrade practice for degraded Ops I want to optimize the capability of the Paladin I want to see Tunes moving G we're going to have to do the have the same kind of confidence in our autonomous systems as we move to human machine interface or we're just gonna have nice technology sitting in our conexes in our motor pools Stephen can I make one more comment please I forgot to mention it the other thing I would think the Army may want to look into is the use of digital twins that helps you do simulation it helps you uh think through if when a when a uh situation arises you already have a digital twin existing so we've built digital twins of Aviation systems we've built digital twins of frankly uh for for a a partner Nation their entire fa the equivalent of their FAA system um what this enables you to do is model in advance think about the likely scenarios that you're gonna have to work through and also you can do it in real time so I just want to make sure that that was another technology that you could that can bring to bear and that's a very real set of technologies that exist today so pause so just one more comment about the digital twin piece I was just up at uh Aberdine yesterday and spent some time with atch and so I know that from an atch perspective and a lot of from an industry perspective you're always probably frustrated with the amount of time it takes for us to get through our testing phase um and so they are absolutely incorporating digital twinning into their own modeling and Sims so that we can actually speed up the whole testing environment so that was to me awesome to hear but also too and I know Rick Marsh will probably talk about this in the next panel from a Readiness perspective but just the ability to also manufacture parts and so I know honorable lman is absolutely pushing forward uh to almost look at it like a repository of Parts out there which will which we'll I mean so once we have a digital twin we'll be able to do that as well uh and we'll only well or we'll be able to buy the IP right or you know it's almost like an Amazon or you know like the like the Apple repository I can go buy a song right so uh so absolutely um thank you given the way the conversation is going you know you guys could probably just twin me or put up a chat GPT and this thing would run itself uh uh Mr snow thanks for your uh thanks for your patience um I'm actually going to hit you with two questions and then we'll kind of do more rapid fire uh as the conversation gets rolling here uh so AFC and AMC uh they serve as a connective uh tissue uh to Industry and enable the Army to kind of Leverage What uh the what's in the NSS has codified as a national security innovation base but of course also the oib that's been mentioned before um what does industry need to see from these commands to enabled rapid Innovation and best breed uh technology especially uh from from the private sector in these Mission sets that we've been talking about here okay thank thanks you sir for inviting me to the to this Advantage this is a great opportunity to talk in tested Logistics something that I tend to work on in most of my career and uh since I've retired uh I'll start by talking a few things about environmental considerations uh contested Logistics is all about speed scale things we can do faster and at scale which could mean not only the magnitude of what we've got to do but the distances and the locations where we've got to operate uh definitely longer lines of communications those those lines of Communications in Europe are probably more operational in consideration but the lines in uh in the Pacific will certainly be strategic that last that last thousand tactical miles will be essential to be able to close with and do the things we need to do against our our adversaries and then uh I think logistically we'll be operating uh in more locations and we're going to be operating what I call logistically Independent operations uh we'll do episodic Rel we'll have episodic relationships with those maneuver forces so get it gets to the technology how do we how do we engage across all fronts to ensure that we know what we have we know what people need and we can get it to where that it needs to be it's all about data data is a commodity in in contested Logistics and it's got to be it's got to be controlled and it's got to be there's got to be access to data uh industry has has to have a ready access to definitive data data sources without that information you can't we can't make the decisions that we need to make on what how to approach a problem or develop a solution in addition uh you know with come what comes along with that is the authorities to operate in the networks in the in the systems that the Army and other other uh services use uh transcom and all those other organizations out there that have these definitive databases and have these systems uh that don't allow you to to get in there and put things onto their networks and operate the way uh and and test how we could operate in the future this I think comes down to trust you know we've got to develop those those trusting relationships between industry and uh the organizations that we want to partner with uh partnering will is the only way to get to The Innovation that we need uh allowing industry in early to to see what the problem is or what we believe the problem is allowing industry to help look at how to uh develop requirements that will get you to that insolution that you need and then finally allowing industry to share in the development activities the solutioning of the project or the the product uh much in the same way that AFC and general Murray uh was getting equipment getting capability out to the soldier letting soldiers look at it let soldiers provide feedback tell uh the community what's working what's not working and how we want to improve that uh improve those capabilities uh developing Solutions is hard enough as it is like I said with technology the way it is today what we think may work today probably is not the ultimate solution you know two four six months from now a year from now so we have to have we have to have that access or we would appreciate that access to be able to do the things that we want we need to do to advance technology at the pace of need uh other activities that we probably need to continue to be involved in things like Raider the the the rapid defense experimentation Reserve which is a joint thing however it's where capabilities Logistics capabilities are being demonstrated every year uh to to demonstrate whether they are doing the things that uh the community is looking for or modifying those capabilities to meet the challenges that we Face In addition you know it's great that uh we get to put technology into things like project convergence you know every every couple years putting putting our technology in there demonstrating our Wares and then identifying potential gaps for future development effort this is technology is not a single event they developing technology is not a single event it's an iterative process and what we like I said what we think is needed today may not be needed in six months from now 12 months from now from now based on how the Army approaches you know modernization and delivering solutions to the force and then finally I would just say uh we've talked about additive Manufacturing tech packages uh you know having act not only having access to uh the definitive data sources from the the service perspective but Tech packages we need to be able to share across uh the industry to where you know we can we can help work out Solutions between ourselves and help deliver Solutions on behalf of the army that's all I've got so I'm I'm going to go right back to you uh let me highlight uh a I I recently led a and concluded a major National Security Commission with secretary esper and secretary de James and we had 10 recommendations you mark Dain said sorry I wrote you a a long letter I didn't have time to write you a short letter so final report 14 bloody Pages uh why so you would actually read it seven of the 10 record recommendations we put out there have already been adopted and enacted by H Sask and uh uh OSD and some of them touch on some of these issues both that Mr Watts Mr Watts is talking about as well as Mr snow so uh Mike let me go right back to you uh you talked briefly about this last tactical Thousand Mile mindset we talked about this in our Preparatory call so sensor to Shooter is increasingly moving towards censor to Shooter to sustainer vers sustainment a sustainment model so with that last tactical Thousand Mile mindset if you can explain that a little bit more and also how should the Army sustainment Enterprise incorporate sensors especially with modernized equipment uh in the in a lisco environment okay yeah it lasts tactical thousand miles it's uh you know used to be we get like we've talked about previously everything is echelon you we move stuff from the US we move it to a staging base we move it to a tactical Logistics point we delivered to the final uh the final uh unit location wherever that may be and a and an environment that we're talking about a contested environment it doesn't matter whether we're in the Pacific or whether we're in Europe those fighting fighting to the fight is going to result in the fact that we're GNA have long lines of communications that either have to be tra they'll have to be traversed but they'll have to be protected also so at the end of the day uh geographically you know we may not be able to travel based on uh access B facing an overfly we may not be able to go to through the locations that we want to go through or to uh change how we configure material uh from strategic to operational to Tactical platforms that allow us to get to that uh that destination the example last thousand tactical miles is the first island chain to Taiwan you know or to China that's that's that's the kind of distance and and uh thought process we have to have in in place when we're talking about delivering to the last through the last tactical or Thousand Miles now how we do that watercraft uh uas I I would offer there's going to be a ubiquity of uas uh air ground and sea that are going to have to be employed to accomplish the task that we're talking about accomplish we're not going to be able to do it with the handful that we are presenting the force today they'll have to be uh you know think about them as atrial platforms nobody likes to lose stuff but uh we're going to lose a lot of what we're talking about here so we need to have the capacity to continue to moving it Forward I switching over a little bit to the sensors uh I think we have censored out everything in the AR in the Army inventory and we and we have a pretty good idea of how to understand that information manipulate that information and use that information to become more predictive and more precise uh I would offer the challenges less about sensors and more about Computing at the edge uh I can't send all that information back to AMC and for AMC or transcom or uh The Joint staff to have them give me a solution set I need to be able to use the computing power that I have or the Tactical folks need to be able to use the computing power they have to transition that data to information and into decision their decision-making process and whatever the output of that is meaning small bits of pieces will be delivered back to the Enterprise Solutions so they can then incorporate them into future predictive or uh precise deliveries that they wanted or they have to choose to move so uh like I said how do you do that mesh data networks and all those other cool cool systems uh satellites uh you know space-based Communications platforms but again it's going to be less about the sensor more about the information from Those sensors and how do I make decisions based on that at the appropriate level I think a lot of it's going to be done for so just a couple things great news last Friday General rainia improve the predictive Logistics ack um and so we've seen a lot of success I was again I was just up at Aberdine yesterday and meeting with poo c3t and as well as our mission command Partners up there and uh you know so Mike you mentioned we've had censored data forever we've seen it play out from an aviation perspective and our army of artificial intelligence Center up at Pittsburgh has done a lot of work on the aviation side to give us that decision dominance and those analytical tools out there that will help us uh from an aviation perspective but this will focus us more on the ground side of it um and general bry's guidance was really clear last week um in terms of making sure that we can pull off three five as well as maintenance fault data yesterday he'd be really excited to know that when I sat there and saw the mission command uh PM that was up there they've already you know we actually already there and so we're already pulling off a lot of that three you know pretty much all the class three sensor data that's off of at least the ABS platform right now we demonstrated that actually at project convergence uh two years ago um and used additional analytical tools out there that would then speed the decision-making cycle for a brigade support Battalion to be able to essentially send distribution for both class five as well as class three forward within seconds so I think the pl piece of what we're after from a pull data off a platform to then trans transport it from across an agnostic Network um I know we are absolutely nested with where the chief is going with C2 fix as well as kind of his pivot into C2 next um to make to make that you know a little bit less burdensome on that tactical Commander uh to then being you know being able to see the data for sustainment leaders to actually understand what that data looks like and then to put Ai and ml tools on top of that so that then systems can sense and then people understand so I think we're on the right track to then get to where General Hamilton's trying to get to and where the CFT is trying to go uh you know forward with that whole Precision sustain at piece so I I you know I'm always I've sort of been that naysayer along the way of like oh my goodness this require another requirements document but I will tell you that I think we're actually coming together just again meeting with devcom I think we're all in on this and so I I mean I'm it's really promising all right oh it's that Alabama thing Road tide so you know on the on the data ma'am so to General Don Hugh's point last week General Ry approved the abbreviated cddd so now we've got to focus you know we got a lift and shift uh to get after the CDD and ma'am I agree 100% you know we've we've censored a lot of Maintenance data and some other stuff but now we got to get after all the other classes and the other thing I would say uh I think was General Smith that talked about data interoperability or or interoperability to really get to a prescriptive capability to enable Precision sustainment we've got to receive data that we can consume from the Intel Community from other communities joint Partners Allied partners and I'll just pull a thread on Intel so we want this tool to tell us you know the predict the when we get to Precision sustainment we want that capability to tell a commander hey you need to start moving some ammo to Allen X today because it you know because it's going to know it's going to take 10 days to get there based on the threat that's fed by the Intel community based by the you know on the weather so how it gets there is going to you know be part of this whole uh Precision sustainment because we're going to have to get there you know when I was younger we talked about just in time Logistics I'm not sure we ever really got there we're probably going to have to get there on this one you know and uh because we're going to be moving so so much so for the data it's it is really the keys to the kingdom I think it's really being able to manage it and then use it appropriately and the last thing I'll say is with the data you know one of the things that we're they're toying with right now is having the ability you know for a commander to look at his logistician and say hey what's the fuel you know look like in these three islands and be able to go through this AI tool and spit out those slides you know within a minute or two and instead of going back reading through spreadsheets and generating PowerPoint and then our version of Siri you know I think we call it Watts but probably not we call it you know hey logy what happens if we we change uh this operation to a from five to 10 days and then in real time it gives us that answer through generative Ai and it's it's very doable it's it's you know getting the right data getting it to where it's managing secure area which will all be in classified you know at this level but imagine that tool you know for a commander because the Army loves to what if drills you know you know because we have to because things change all the time but you know that scenario is hey this has changed hey ly what does that mean Hey sir you're gonna run out of fuel who said so well watch did but anyway what Rob you've completely screwed yourself the response to the next RFI that y'all put out are going to be a whole bunch of Industry proposals for hey logy see what you done uh so we got five minutes and 40 seconds left so what I'm going to do um I'm going to jump to some of these questions and feel free to answer them Rapid Fire And if you want to do a two finger and jump in go for it but we'll uh we'll do this cable news style um so let's start out with uh I'll direct this initially to General Donahue so general for Micah highlighted this gorgeous handwriting by the way uh highlighted the strategy to requirements issues how are the cooms uh and uh component commanders highlighting and prioritizing what their requirements are and who in AFC uh Andor AMC uh is pushing these uh uh to our industry Partners well so each of the ccoms SM a nipple uh back through uh OSD um and those are then transmitted down to the services but we also then with each of our ASC Partners as well as even with our tsc's out there remain nested with their own theater campaign plans uh to understand their gaps and so we go through a very deliberate process with AFC uh to kind of go through um very much a threat-based look at each of those theaters uh and so we just having recent Rec L done a couple of iterations out in the Indo Pacific um but we have as general fora highlighted earlier have not lost sight on uh you know our our lessons observed that are coming out of the European theater right now as well as even the lessons observed that are coming out of the sencom a as well um so I think we're nested with where we need to go from a material uh requirements perspective um and we are absolutely um nested with where the CFT is going but we also have our own portfolio of requirements that are underneath are seated um who are nested up underneath Futures and concept Center and so we are absolutely tackling a lot of the watercraft gaps out there uh Rob and his team are working on some of the autonomous uh features in line with I know Trent Mills is over there from DARPA um but we are also looking after you know kind of that fight toight capability that we need from a watercraft perspective uh we are also looking at um again I was just up at Aberdine I keep on saying that but was pretty cool um and I got to see a bfds tanker and so that was a gap that we um had from an mdo perspective back when General Lundy did the whole 17 Army gaps that we had with gap four being Fuel and so that tanker that I took through the A- Rock about four years ago the fact that there's a that it's like material release P right I mean this is where it takes a long time to get some of our systems through the gauntlet um but it was pretty cool to see a a 9,000 K tanker up there that will absolutely um you know meet some of those gaps that we see in the European theater and then to see a met up there too which is our medium equipment trailer also another contested Gap to be able to transport you know essentially um you know oversized equipment through the highways of Europe as well and to get underneath Bridge overpasses so two of those things and then also we just signed for our first boat uh well not the first one but our first modernized boat the maneuver sport vessel light um that we will demo inside of project convergence which is essentially again another you know dd250 to the Army and we've got Army Mariners on that boat right now getting ready to uh to basically sail down to San Diego for project convergence here so again we do Nest both theaters from a gap perspective um and absolutely are tackling a lot of different requirements out there so if Jen judson's still here uh I think the most newsworthy iteman uh that I I've heard is that uh abine is cool um uh let let me ask two brief uh uh uh final questions one let me go uh Rob and feel free to uh uh Gentleman on the end the tea up and then I'll direct final question towards uh general for Micah so Rob you mentioned Advanced power industry is working hard on nuclear capabilities uh for a second I thought I thought that said uh SMH for shaking my head um small SMR small modular reactors are we looking at this your uh to midterm um option and what regulatory or policy challenges are you facing there how to work this thing so the short answer is yes we we are engaged in in those capabilities you now obviously um a lot of challenges with that uh I'm told that it's a lot more stable you know some of the concerns are no longer there but uh for General Smith in the G14 you know obviously uh policies are are going to have to to change to bring that to fruition but the other challenge we've uh identified is where you can actually employ it you know a lot of the countries like in Europe we're not even going to be able to to take it into the country unless we we change some agreements so uh a lot of uh technology out there that could be leveraged but there's a lot of work that has to be done in the building and Pentagon and others to uh to really enable it great and last question uh general for Mah uh sustain modernization Concepts uh we talked about this in our Preparatory call uh need to be well nested across uh services and uh of course they require substantial integration with the industrial base um to meet the challenges both of competition and conflict uh when you talk with leaders across the department so this is you know kind of an extra mural not just Army Focus uh as well as those in the industry what can we or should we be doing to improve from a defense policy or an industrial based policy perspective well that's a loaded question I mean there's a there's a lot we already talked we've heard already about the defense industrial base and the challenges that we have I think we're going to hear more about that in a subsequent panel um so investing in the defense industrial base uh critical to our ability to meet contested Logistics especially when we're thinking about it strategically not just operationally or tactically and then we've referred to it again several times I talked about it my opening comments we're going to have to be nested jointly understanding what capabilities we're going to bring we're required to bring and what capabilities we need to depend on from other services I think you've heard that from this panel uh and and then with our allies and I think all of that um needs to be nested brought together so we can have an army approach to contested Logistics but that's not siloed right it's part of a broader defense department capability so uh apart from reevaluating all their poor life choices that led them to participate in this panel uh I think uh you can clearly see there's uh great relationships and great mind share on uh these very very difficult and challenging uh issues so I'd ask first off thank you General Brown and the USA team for inviting all of us here and please join me and thanking our panelists as [Applause] well

well good morning again now we&#39;re going to get into the fun part of the morning get the panel started uh those of you that got a chance to go out and get a breath of fresh cool air I know you&#39;re energized and ready to go on behalf of lios I&#39;d like to welcome you to the contested Logistics a USA Hot Topic series and thank all of you for joining today my name is Clark Lee Masters I&#39;m representing the great lios team and and specifically our army and Joint Logistics Division our long-standing partnership as a company uh with a USA is incredibly important to us and Li&#39;s proudly supports the Army team those soldiers their families and those amazing army civilians that we&#39;ve talked about already this morning as an innovation company it is lios Mission to support the Army through more resilient Supply chains and Mission ready Communications products and training our 47,000 employees work every day to solve critical problems for our customers especially when Logistics plays a central role in their mission by Levering technology in the cloud our repeatable intelligent Logistics platform capabilities helps transform contested Logistics and enables rapid data integration for endtoend visibility of sustainment solutions as we will be discussing today we know the military is in another evolution of warfare as we&#39;ve heard already in our key speaker introductory comments and lios solutions allow for continuous operations when it&#39;s imperative to sustain the fight across contested domains and terrain it&#39;s through a USA events such as this one that we can come together and share ideas that help the Army continue to execute so that our industry team along with government can continue to deliver what soldiers need when they need it so now let&#39;s get the ball Ro and and it&#39;s my great pleasure to introduce our first panel Army and transition sustaining Army 2030 and transforming to Army 2040 I get to introduce our moderator for the first panel Mr Steve Rodriguez Steve is a managing partner for one defense a Next Generation strategic advisory firm that leverages machine learning to identify Advanced software and Hardware commercial capabilities and accelerate their transition into the defense industrial base Steve has a wide defense commercial and intelligence background he began his career with Booze Allen Hamilton in the National Security sector and his practice as as expert in game theoretic applications he supported the United States intelligence Community Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security he&#39;s also subsequently been a vice president of an artificial intelligence company and served as a chief marketing officer for an international defense Corporation Steve serves on the board of director or Board of advisor for 10 Venture capable back companies he also serves as a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council and a life member at the council foreign relation Steve is an Aggie I didn&#39;t hear any who is or anything in here that may be good or bad okay there&#39;s one I see the horn symbol there and also holds an MA degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Affairs he&#39;s published in foreign policy war on the Rocks National Review and rear clear defense Steve and his great family live here in DC Steve thanks for being here and monitoring our first panel I&#39;ll turn it over to you thank you in the five minutes we have left um uh so right before uh coming here I was actually decisively engaged in a uh major contestant Logistics campaign I have a four six and eighty old and live right across the river here and uh I&#39;ve realized that lisco actually stands for lots of uh lots of sadness crying often as it relates to uh getting your children to school especially somewhat earlier than than they planned and uh certainly my wife did as well uh I&#39;d also like to acknowledge uh the passing of General Sullivan in January I I actually met him in high school in Berlin Germany with General Jen you remember those two gentlemen and you think about the Army and indeed a USA I believe he was uh he was President for 18 years I think of a USA and if we&#39;re about people and families I think you know having someone who&#39;s kind of oversaw the the um the transformation of the army and indeed a USA you think about the a USA that he inherited in 98 I believe uh that&#39;s pretty significant so uh wanted to acknowledge just briefly a remarkable uh American and a u um United States Army soldier as well uh turning to the the topic at hand um we have uh five panelists here right five panelists uh and and so there&#39;s going to be a lot of questions and hopefully we&#39;ll have time for you to actually engage in a conversation as well so this is not just a passive uh engagement uh I I will just say when we think about contested Logistics I&#39;ll offer a brief anecdote as a former uh ASM Warfare group uh OA uh I was engaged in a debate actually it&#39;s it was on Twitter so I&#39;m I&#39;m sure it&#39;s searchable uh like all of my other brilliant observations um I was engaged in a debate in January 20122 January 2022 uh with two very very well-known Russi of experts uh served in uniform some came out of the intelligence community and the the debate went as follows they said Steve you know you you served in Afghanistan and and Central Asia but you never you never served in Russia you don&#39;t speak Russian I said that&#39;s true and and and they said you know we are highly confident the ukrainians or sorry the Russians can resupply their M the btg&#39;s remember when those are a thing Balian tactical groups down uh the the main ball route e95 from bellus to Keith and I said well I don&#39;t know there&#39;s these things and I&#39;m sure you&#39;ll appreciate this uh there&#39;s this thing called rail heads and they said so I said well the rail heads and here right I didn&#39;t even use PowerPoint the rail heads in here and then they have to resupply using trucks from here to here their objective and they said so and so I just did you know I went to A&amp;M so I&#39;m not good at division or multiplication but I can I can add uh and I started adding up trucks like I think I even used the little Tech marks the number of trucks it were to require and the the conversation ends uh with me being pillared because I didn&#39;t speak cilc so I think it&#39;s emblematic of our need to understand uh the complexity of a dynamic issue certainly understanding the region of course when I know we have many Allied Partners here but also uh understanding the math and math I think the term now we use is Affordable Mass uh affordable mass in waging contested Logistics operations uh in a lisco environment so uh teing this up uh we have major general Michelle Donahue from cascom Mr Rob Watts from uh the consensus Logistics CFT uh retired lieutenant general uh Richard Dick for Mah uh and then of course we have Jerry DWI and um geez there so many of y&#39;all uh Michael snow as well so believe it or not we have folks who can talk at every single aspect uh of this issue and so we&#39;re going to Dive Right In uh General Donahue cascom plays a major role in the Army a significant role in the Army in transitioning from a brigade to division level constructs however most of us certainly myself have you know grown up in an army optimized for coin operations especially at the Brigade level so how is cascom refining our Logistics formations and tactics to ensure that what work the coin environment is going to work in uh a future environment that we&#39;re talking about thanks Stephen for that first question so the good news about this is that we weren&#39;t tasked to prepare opening remarks and we&#39;re going to jump right into the question piece of this uh but first I just wanted to one say thank you to everyone who is attending today I see a lot of G4 teammates out there in the audience I see a lot of allies and partners I see a lot of Industry partners that I&#39;ve known over the years um and to and to General Brown um who I&#39;ve spent a lot of time with over the last seven or eight months as part of uh the Chiefs transition team thanks thanks for your leadership here sir and then to General Haley uh who who who didn&#39;t mention that both General Smith then Captain Smith Lieutenant Kenna and major Haley were all in the same unit in Germany back in uh the late really the late 90s and so again um I was a product of both of your leadership and uh lots of lots of mentorship to the young Lieutenant so uh so uh thank you for that I would not probably be here without both of you so thank you so um I&#39;m I&#39;m really excited to have just taken uh uh the Reigns down at ccom um back in November time frame the chief said Michelle I&#39;m done with you from a transition team perspective so you need to move on and uh and and I&#39;m really appreciative one of the leadership of of now Lieutenant General Mark simmerly who is at da who just took over this past Friday and so he really set me up for success but I will tell you that the ccom team has been really really rowing hard um at this building the army of 2030 and helping to design the army of 2040 one from an experimentation perspective uh from a Concepts development perspective very much nested with our sustainment seated partners with the Futures and concept Center underneath Army Futures command um and then on the material development side of the house um I I will say that uh we are absolutely integrated with and have integrated the you know the 30 plus signature modernization efforts across the Army right now that will absolutely transform how we sustain the Army um and essentially as well how we uh transform sustainment as we um essentially as as maneuver modernizes and also transforms in contct uh so it&#39;s it&#39;s exciting times for ccom I look forward to telling a little bit more you know what we&#39;re doing from the doal PF perspective uh but it is an integrated effort across many different teammates out there we are nested across the sustainment community both down at AMC um as well as asalt the Army G4 and our and my partner that&#39;s sitting next to me here from the contested Logistics CFT so um look forward to Future uh to future questions about the doo PF piece great so Mr Watts what what exactly is the contested Logistics CFT uh its Mission and how is it contributing towards the future fight especially with regard to Army sustainment so I think it&#39;d be crazy if I try to improve upon the uh definition that&#39;s really been laid out by General Brown General Haley General Smith I think they laid out really why we exist and what our mission is uh you know everybody agrees that we&#39;ve got to get after Logistics especially in this contested environment and how we do that so our job is to go out and look for material uh capab abilities and develop the requirements uh that that kind of lay out what it should do and what it needs to do so we can turn it over to asalt obviously you know hyper focused on F six uh efforts U I really appreciate General Smith&#39;s comment about the jccl because when we first stood this up we decided you know how do how do you do this so we you know we pulled out the jccl and in that it it describes some desired capabilities that are required to get after this uh and instead of standing up to CFT based off of things you know and that to me that&#39;s one of the mistakes we made early on you know and we didn&#39;t know you know we&#39;re building the cfts originally some of them you know it was you know High Mars you know okay we finish High Mars then what you do so what we did was took a portfolio approach uh sometimes we refer to as lines of effort but it really is a portfolio because we see this CFT is truly an enduring required CFT because this problem is not going to go away after we deliver our first four or five capabilities uh it&#39;s the thing the the environment&#39;s going to continue to change the other signature modernization efforts are going to have to change so we&#39;re going to have to uh continue to lift and shift as and as far as our portfolio what I would say is we are involved with the building of the 2030 and also design 2040 I&#39;ll give you an example for precision sustainment our first portfolio you know our first priority effort is predictive Logistics now most of the folks in this room know that we&#39;ve been working predictive maintenance for a very long time um and so that one I believe we&#39;ve got some opportunities to really move but what we see with predictive Logistics is over time you know we&#39;ll get from predictive Logistics to what we describe in general Hamilton really described as precision sustainment and you know and I&#39;d like to kind of give you a few examples of what I mean by that because you know in the future and everything that the generals have mentioned before about the tyan of distance and and the separation of everything we can never we can no longer afford to deliver two times or even three times What that particular location or a requires we just don&#39;t we want to have the assets and we want to move it or the asset to deliver in a lot of this so we have to be a lot more Precision so we&#39;re going to need some Ai and some other tools to really help us eventually now we see ourselves kind of building this as it you know kind of an incremental approach approach I know that was a bad word for a little while but it&#39;s the only way that you can get you know get a capability out now like predictive Logistics we believe we can get that one out for the army of 2030 but over time we have to incrementally improve it through software or whatever so it grows to that truly Precision sustainment capability in the next area the uh the multi-domain distribution I have to write that one down because I I&#39;ll get Tongue Tied with that one what I would say is uh given General General rainey&#39;s uh recent uh directives and and focus Joe Smith I apologize for not telling you this before yet but we&#39;re going to shift that uh really that naming uh no no you know the naming of it to human machine integrated uh Supply and distribution system the reason is is we want to really describe that human machine integration that this is going to require and and then you&#39;ll hear some of the those capabilities in my next uh but we really did want to highlight that because you know genine is hyperfocused on we have to leverage machines we got to figure out how the human the machines are integrated on the battlefield and you know just the command and control you know of some of those things so the first uh the second effort that we&#39;re working right now is autonomous resupply vessel yes a boat for the Army but a more affordable version to where we can buy lots of them hopefully to where you can if you can kind of Envision a swarm of these autonomous vessels going out to various Island chains delivering you know and not having you know not having to uh Beach because we can have the uavs come in meet somewhere on the over the water grab portions and take that area of A&#39;s portion or whatever it is ammo food blood whatever it is and take it to the point of need no beach unload load Drive unload it&#39;s so that&#39;s what a a concept that we&#39;ve kind of we&#39;ve started a build that brings in the autonomous trucks autonomous MH autonomous water watercraft uavs obviously and over this whole ecosystem you know leveraging that this that capability to move stuff around the battlefield and I say stuff you know repair parts all the Commodities uh so that&#39;s the next one the um Advanced power still doing a lot of U market research uh in that area you know there&#39;s there&#39;s no lack of opportunities it&#39;s just we really have to figure out what&#39;s the thing that we need to tackle as a CFT you know we&#39;re really charged to go after the hard stuff you know it&#39;s going to be you know really game changing so still doing a lot of market research on what it is in advanced power you know how do we get off of fossil fuels and so forth uh and there&#39;s a lot of things out there that you know you know hydrogen power some other things but you know is that something that can be ready for 2035 you know because we have to have it around 2035 so we can get it filled about 2040 obviously and what does that leave me with demand reduction so we&#39;ll go after you know some capabilities and demand reduction a lot of market research we&#39;re doing in that adding manufacturing I don&#39;t know that it&#39;s stalled but what&#39;s that next level of added manufacturing you know we&#39;ve talked about uh manufacturing ammo at the point of need so forth you know just what is it so we&#39;re still in that research phase on demand reduction but on that and my team has coached me very well and I hope they&#39;re watching uh if we get the other three right you know that will equal demand reduction as well so you know Precision sustainment obviously demand reduction fewer trucks delivering fuel fewer bolts moving stuff around and uh and so forth same with the m you know the advanced power and energy you get that right we&#39;re not moving fuel around and we Water Production you know I don&#39;t know how we get there but I believe that&#39;s something we have to figure out once again you get that right demand reduction and it&#39;s just that whole domino effect of fewer trucks equals fewer soldiers which equals less food to move less water less so it&#39;s just you know I believe all our first three portfolios when you add those up it equals demand reduction but we&#39;re also going to go after something in that area so I hope that makes sense can I just make one comment so we have increased from 1970 to now 374 from a fuel perspective and if we want to continue to ensure that sustainment is not the crippling piece from a war Fighter&#39;s perspective we&#39;ve got to reduce demand and so every vehicle that rolls off of a production line ought to be hybrid electric and ought to be a net power producer so just something to throw out there 374 per we also from a maintainability perspective 37% from a maintenance growth perspective the sustainment community cannot continue to be the growth industry for the United States Army those are huge huge statistics uh and uh Mr wats Rob uh you know is a&amp; MLM I think you and your organization might be the most useful or interesting thing that&#39;s come out of Alabama in quite some time um is that too is that too soon I have to keep this rate of PG so I&#39;m just gonna oh no that that that fascinating and that that&#39;s exactly exactly the kind of commentary I was looking for uh general for mik you&#39;ve got as former director of the Army Force management as well as having deep operational experience in theater you know where do you see the Army sustainment mission in 2024 and where do you see it going what do you see is needed uh from your perspective yeah thanks let me uh add my thanks to USA for hosting this um lot of excitement about the thought of contested Logistics um around the department and clearly something that we ought to be having these kinds of professional discussions on so I really appreciate this um I thought I&#39;d play to my strength and step back a little bit because we can delve right into what is contest Logistics and get into some of those specific capabilities and I think we&#39;ll hear those throughout the day but for me it really begs the question why contested Logistics what drives that and how do we bring capabilities into the force right so the Army has a force management framework that brings capability in right starts with the strategy what do you want the Army to do a lot of people don&#39;t pay much attention to that but that&#39;s really fundamental because we don&#39;t write the strategy the strategy is given to us right we have a national security strategy National defense strategy the Army comes up with its plan but it all begins with the strategy what do you want the Army to do and then that we ask the question so what capabilities do we need to have to execute that uh strategy and that&#39;s what we&#39;re going to be talking about today contested Logistics and the capabilities we need in that environment are kind of the capabilities that will Army will be required to have as part of the Joint Force then and as much as we disain processes and money funding right it then comes down to how do we bring those capabilities into the force how do we do that can we do it faster can we do it with more agility but ultimately how do we bring those capabilities into the force then we have to ask ourselves can we afford to organize man equip train sustained station and fund this force that we put together these capabilities that we say we want and then does it meet combatant Commander requirements and with what risk that&#39;s the framework in within which we&#39;re having this conversation so been referenced here already by General Brown General Haley General Smith starts with the strategy National Security strategy focus on China right the national def the national defense strategy tells us China&#39;s the pacing threat but don&#39;t forget Russia is an acute threat and oh by the way we have to address those other threats North Korea Iran still have terrorism and transnational so it broadens it a little bit right and uh and that how the strategy goes then there&#39;s a defense planning guidance that issues specific guidance to the services on where to focus that&#39;s pretty important but if we were to just and this is the first challenge for the Army if we were to just Define ourselves by the pacing threat we&#39;d have a completely different Army than we think we might need and a lot of the capabilities you&#39;ll talk about today will never require right maybe we&#39;d be all watercraft in fact interesting little anecdote when I was a the director of force management I was told to devest watercraft from the Army because we weren&#39;t going to need it right and now here we are so it really does start with the strategy and all of those then we start figuring out what kind of capabilities we want and army Futures command which has changed the way we do capability development in a real way but they&#39;ve defined an army of 2030 and and the army that we want in 2040 and one of them talks about the ability to campaign and the other talks about sustaining endurance to Prevail in prot protracted conflict both of those have really real implications for Logistics and and contested Logistics so when I think about the strategy and what does it mean for contested Logistics I am concerned that we have to we as an army have to decide how do we respond to the strategy what kind of capabilities do we really need and do we apologize for not being a Pacific kind of focused Army the OSD thinks about Navy and Air Force right there&#39;s a huge role for the Army in the Pacific and we should not apologize for that there&#39;s also a huge role for us in in Yukon and oh by the way every time we write our strategy and those at the higher echelons of our government want to think about just paccom or just Russia the Middle East reminds us that they&#39;re there and sooner or later we&#39;ve got to build capabilities like contested Logistics across all of those combatant commands and so I was encouraged uh with when General George and he reforced it yesterday here in this room talks when he responds to the Army&#39;s uh addressing the strategy we&#39;re a global Army and so we&#39;ve got to build contested logistics for a global Army and that&#39;s going to mean a balance of capabilities some that will enable us to to provide for logistic and a cont Ed Pacific Theater and others that will enable us to provide for Logistics in a contested European or other theater and then let me just finish this first uh trunch with and as we go down this road we will be tempted to focus on the m and I was glad to hear you know General Haley talked about it and others this is not just an m fight contested Logistics is going to require Solutions across do Mill PF it&#39;s going to require us to think about how do we integrate with our joint Partners who bring capabilities and to whom we bring Logistics capabilities and then we&#39;ll be dependent upon our allies and being interoperable or interchangeable with our allies uh and then what does industry deliver so with that I&#39;ll pause and say thank you excellent and thank you for teeing up our commercial colleagues here as well uh let me turn to Mr jwi or Jerry uh so from your position uh certainly a deoe but also giv your detailed background one thing Mr Watts talked about was uh oh the irony The Tech Guy struggling to turn on the microphone uh the I didn&#39;t go to A&amp;M so yeah I&#39;m still trying to figure out how to turn on my camera with zoom U so uh Mr wat talked uh touched on this briefly around autonomous or autonomous systems and resupply uh when you you think about autonomous or semi-autonomous uh systems especially from a a logistics perspective um they have a lot of practicality as we&#39;ve this has been well identified in sustainment operations um but from your perspective from the commercial uh side of things where do you see commercial industry having the greatest ability uh to support here either from a magnitude perspective or in terms of uh near-term availability to support so first of all it&#39;s a privilege to be here today thank you um I&#39;ve been with deoy for 30 years almost exclusively in the supply chain practice so um in serving commercial clients I would say we operate in a constrained logistic environment not a contested but there&#39;s there&#39;s similarities um and I mean that humbly there&#39;s similarities um I would say that the you know the the autonomous and semi-autonomous Logistics uh capabilities you know if you start if you think about an evolution or a framework they started with you know uh more Warehouse operations we&#39;ve gone from you know things from automated loading unloading sorting picking palletizing Etc but our client my clients have have been thinking through how do I extend that and how do I do more with less and I think you know something you said Mr Watts earlier about um fund my one of my key takeaways this is the use of autonomous and semi-autonomous Logistics robots and capabilities which I&#39;ll describe Beyond just you know what what we have talked about uh around what I call robots has been it&#39;ll enable you to do more with less let me give you a couple examples um I have clients in a variety of Industries whether aviation oil and gas Telco industrial manufacturing and Automotive needs are different but that what is consistent is their their supply chain budgets their Logistics budgets are constrained and what they&#39;re looking to do is how do I extend the capabilities and innovation in this space to new use cases so for instance as I think about um I think the opportunities are Limitless let me give you a couple specific examples in aviation one of my C is the largest domestic airline in the United States they and their operations are are Global but they don&#39;t have footprint globally for repair and operation so they work with Partners oftentimes we&#39;ll station um you know Aviation mechanics you know and just a mechanic and a and a small Force call it in Tokyo in major hubs or you know whether it&#39;s Japan used to be China but around the world um and when we have an issue a plane goes down it has to be taken out of the line we will use a variety of Technologies we will look at uh AR and VR for diagnosing a problem we&#39;ll use visual AI to diagnose a problem we will and then when we figure out what that problem is we&#39;ll then move to the arvr we&#39;ll have the mechanic con you know put on you what I&#39;ll call the equivalent of Google Glass and they will work with you know headquarters maintenance and operations and they will literally see the part the system Etc and diagnose the problem and we will deliver instruction in the glass to figure out how to fix it that&#39;s one use case you think about windmills you know you know for for energy generation High Capital High Capital cost you know we have to keep those things running but they&#39;re they require maintenance they require um visual inspection well it&#39;s too expensive to put and too quite frankly too dangerous to put a person up there we will fly drones with the same visual AI that can ex that can that can inspect the surface quality uh on those windmills while in operation believe it or not I mean here to for that was something we had to you know take that stuff down we had to think about we had to put someone up there stop it and now we can do it all real-time operation and I think about uh oil rigs you know when we need to resupply we&#39;re not you know we we we oftentimes have a park go down we will use a drone I mean it&#39;s not it&#39;s something probably the military is doing now but we will use drones to resupply we won&#39;t use planes we&#39;ll use drones and they are uh they&#39;re loaded to several thousands of pounds um so we&#39;ll do that I&#39;d say that the uh something you said earlier about doing more with less uh the ne you know was it um necessi the mother of invention I had toh work with a with an NGO and the United States government on on resupply into um uh a a conflict Zone and also one that we had um a lot of ref Refugee support we needed to build manufacturing capability but the local government said you can have one 3D printer so what do you do we load that 3D printer with the ability to manufacture 14 more 3D printers that was allowed they didn&#39;t think of it but things like that it&#39;s the so as I think about where we can go with autonomous Logistics and robots I think the opportunities are Limitless I think that the technology and the entrepreneurship has to meet the use case so the takeaway for for the Army here we can help you understand the current use cases and extend your thinking about where and how we&#39;re using some of this technology in what I would consider hazardous risky environments obviously lot less risky and hazardous than that than theaters in which you operate but we can we can innovate together on some of those uh applications for you um I&#39;d say the last thing I&#39;d say is we most of the companies that are doing this will share their development road map with you and they will they will take you where the Journey&#39;s going and they&#39;ll say you know where where and how might you have needs that we can fit in in here um the other thing uh the facilities maintenance when it comes to whether it&#39;s um domestic abroad um the same thing applies whether it&#39;s um robots to maintain facilities robots to move equipment robots uh to or arvr to diagnose problems on particular equipment all that&#39;s in the in the realm in the art of the possible so I&#39;d say that the the use of um these autonomous semi-autonomous systems I won&#39;t call them R I&#39;ll call them systems will allow you to do more less you&#39;re only limited by your imagination in terms of the use cases and that future frankly is now so I&#39;ll pause i&#39; like that well go ahead so Jerry you know I really appreciate what you brought up about the less you know less demand because there&#39;s it&#39;s no secret about our uh recruiting challenges that we have uh today and so what I would say is the more task that we can offload on this these machines that mentioned the more we can free up the war fighters to go do other task and uh really kept help you know uh fill that void uh that we&#39;re facing in the future and the demands probably going to be higher in this environment that we&#39;re talking about the second thing is I appreciate your comment about the O rigs because we were directed by our commander to go down and and and watch and see how they&#39;re kind of resupplying and everything their rigs So yeah thank you yeah I would just like to add that um this discussion on autonomy and human machine interface really going to come down to making legitimate decisions about what must the humans do and then what can the autonomous uh equipment do and then do we have confidence that those autonomous vehicles or equipment are going to do what we&#39;ve asked them to do and that confidence factor is going to be really important this is not a logistics or sustainment example but shortly after I took over a paladin pin equipped Dev already in 1998 I went to the first training session and one of the firing batteries and I might as well have been in my unit in Germany in 1977 in the Woodline camouflage nets up col meters aiming circles and I&#39;m like what are you doing well we&#39;re practicing for degraded Ops I don&#39;t want degrade practice for degraded Ops I want to optimize the capability of the Paladin I want to see Tunes moving G we&#39;re going to have to do the have the same kind of confidence in our autonomous systems as we move to human machine interface or we&#39;re just gonna have nice technology sitting in our conexes in our motor pools Stephen can I make one more comment please I forgot to mention it the other thing I would think the Army may want to look into is the use of digital twins that helps you do simulation it helps you uh think through if when a when a uh situation arises you already have a digital twin existing so we&#39;ve built digital twins of Aviation systems we&#39;ve built digital twins of frankly uh for for a a partner Nation their entire fa the equivalent of their FAA system um what this enables you to do is model in advance think about the likely scenarios that you&#39;re gonna have to work through and also you can do it in real time so I just want to make sure that that was another technology that you could that can bring to bear and that&#39;s a very real set of technologies that exist today so pause so just one more comment about the digital twin piece I was just up at uh Aberdine yesterday and spent some time with atch and so I know that from an atch perspective and a lot of from an industry perspective you&#39;re always probably frustrated with the amount of time it takes for us to get through our testing phase um and so they are absolutely incorporating digital twinning into their own modeling and Sims so that we can actually speed up the whole testing environment so that was to me awesome to hear but also too and I know Rick Marsh will probably talk about this in the next panel from a Readiness perspective but just the ability to also manufacture parts and so I know honorable lman is absolutely pushing forward uh to almost look at it like a repository of Parts out there which will which we&#39;ll I mean so once we have a digital twin we&#39;ll be able to do that as well uh and we&#39;ll only well or we&#39;ll be able to buy the IP right or you know it&#39;s almost like an Amazon or you know like the like the Apple repository I can go buy a song right so uh so absolutely um thank you given the way the conversation is going you know you guys could probably just twin me or put up a chat GPT and this thing would run itself uh uh Mr snow thanks for your uh thanks for your patience um I&#39;m actually going to hit you with two questions and then we&#39;ll kind of do more rapid fire uh as the conversation gets rolling here uh so AFC and AMC uh they serve as a connective uh tissue uh to Industry and enable the Army to kind of Leverage What uh the what&#39;s in the NSS has codified as a national security innovation base but of course also the oib that&#39;s been mentioned before um what does industry need to see from these commands to enabled rapid Innovation and best breed uh technology especially uh from from the private sector in these Mission sets that we&#39;ve been talking about here okay thank thanks you sir for inviting me to the to this Advantage this is a great opportunity to talk in tested Logistics something that I tend to work on in most of my career and uh since I&#39;ve retired uh I&#39;ll start by talking a few things about environmental considerations uh contested Logistics is all about speed scale things we can do faster and at scale which could mean not only the magnitude of what we&#39;ve got to do but the distances and the locations where we&#39;ve got to operate uh definitely longer lines of communications those those lines of Communications in Europe are probably more operational in consideration but the lines in uh in the Pacific will certainly be strategic that last that last thousand tactical miles will be essential to be able to close with and do the things we need to do against our our adversaries and then uh I think logistically we&#39;ll be operating uh in more locations and we&#39;re going to be operating what I call logistically Independent operations uh we&#39;ll do episodic Rel we&#39;ll have episodic relationships with those maneuver forces so get it gets to the technology how do we how do we engage across all fronts to ensure that we know what we have we know what people need and we can get it to where that it needs to be it&#39;s all about data data is a commodity in in contested Logistics and it&#39;s got to be it&#39;s got to be controlled and it&#39;s got to be there&#39;s got to be access to data uh industry has has to have a ready access to definitive data data sources without that information you can&#39;t we can&#39;t make the decisions that we need to make on what how to approach a problem or develop a solution in addition uh you know with come what comes along with that is the authorities to operate in the networks in the in the systems that the Army and other other uh services use uh transcom and all those other organizations out there that have these definitive databases and have these systems uh that don&#39;t allow you to to get in there and put things onto their networks and operate the way uh and and test how we could operate in the future this I think comes down to trust you know we&#39;ve got to develop those those trusting relationships between industry and uh the organizations that we want to partner with uh partnering will is the only way to get to The Innovation that we need uh allowing industry in early to to see what the problem is or what we believe the problem is allowing industry to help look at how to uh develop requirements that will get you to that insolution that you need and then finally allowing industry to share in the development activities the solutioning of the project or the the product uh much in the same way that AFC and general Murray uh was getting equipment getting capability out to the soldier letting soldiers look at it let soldiers provide feedback tell uh the community what&#39;s working what&#39;s not working and how we want to improve that uh improve those capabilities uh developing Solutions is hard enough as it is like I said with technology the way it is today what we think may work today probably is not the ultimate solution you know two four six months from now a year from now so we have to have we have to have that access or we would appreciate that access to be able to do the things that we want we need to do to advance technology at the pace of need uh other activities that we probably need to continue to be involved in things like Raider the the the rapid defense experimentation Reserve which is a joint thing however it&#39;s where capabilities Logistics capabilities are being demonstrated every year uh to to demonstrate whether they are doing the things that uh the community is looking for or modifying those capabilities to meet the challenges that we Face In addition you know it&#39;s great that uh we get to put technology into things like project convergence you know every every couple years putting putting our technology in there demonstrating our Wares and then identifying potential gaps for future development effort this is technology is not a single event they developing technology is not a single event it&#39;s an iterative process and what we like I said what we think is needed today may not be needed in six months from now 12 months from now from now based on how the Army approaches you know modernization and delivering solutions to the force and then finally I would just say uh we&#39;ve talked about additive Manufacturing tech packages uh you know having act not only having access to uh the definitive data sources from the the service perspective but Tech packages we need to be able to share across uh the industry to where you know we can we can help work out Solutions between ourselves and help deliver Solutions on behalf of the army that&#39;s all I&#39;ve got so I&#39;m I&#39;m going to go right back to you uh let me highlight uh a I I recently led a and concluded a major National Security Commission with secretary esper and secretary de James and we had 10 recommendations you mark Dain said sorry I wrote you a a long letter I didn&#39;t have time to write you a short letter so final report 14 bloody Pages uh why so you would actually read it seven of the 10 record recommendations we put out there have already been adopted and enacted by H Sask and uh uh OSD and some of them touch on some of these issues both that Mr Watts Mr Watts is talking about as well as Mr snow so uh Mike let me go right back to you uh you talked briefly about this last tactical Thousand Mile mindset we talked about this in our Preparatory call so sensor to Shooter is increasingly moving towards censor to Shooter to sustainer vers sustainment a sustainment model so with that last tactical Thousand Mile mindset if you can explain that a little bit more and also how should the Army sustainment Enterprise incorporate sensors especially with modernized equipment uh in the in a lisco environment okay yeah it lasts tactical thousand miles it&#39;s uh you know used to be we get like we&#39;ve talked about previously everything is echelon you we move stuff from the US we move it to a staging base we move it to a tactical Logistics point we delivered to the final uh the final uh unit location wherever that may be and a and an environment that we&#39;re talking about a contested environment it doesn&#39;t matter whether we&#39;re in the Pacific or whether we&#39;re in Europe those fighting fighting to the fight is going to result in the fact that we&#39;re GNA have long lines of communications that either have to be tra they&#39;ll have to be traversed but they&#39;ll have to be protected also so at the end of the day uh geographically you know we may not be able to travel based on uh access B facing an overfly we may not be able to go to through the locations that we want to go through or to uh change how we configure material uh from strategic to operational to Tactical platforms that allow us to get to that uh that destination the example last thousand tactical miles is the first island chain to Taiwan you know or to China that&#39;s that&#39;s that&#39;s the kind of distance and and uh thought process we have to have in in place when we&#39;re talking about delivering to the last through the last tactical or Thousand Miles now how we do that watercraft uh uas I I would offer there&#39;s going to be a ubiquity of uas uh air ground and sea that are going to have to be employed to accomplish the task that we&#39;re talking about accomplish we&#39;re not going to be able to do it with the handful that we are presenting the force today they&#39;ll have to be uh you know think about them as atrial platforms nobody likes to lose stuff but uh we&#39;re going to lose a lot of what we&#39;re talking about here so we need to have the capacity to continue to moving it Forward I switching over a little bit to the sensors uh I think we have censored out everything in the AR in the Army inventory and we and we have a pretty good idea of how to understand that information manipulate that information and use that information to become more predictive and more precise uh I would offer the challenges less about sensors and more about Computing at the edge uh I can&#39;t send all that information back to AMC and for AMC or transcom or uh The Joint staff to have them give me a solution set I need to be able to use the computing power that I have or the Tactical folks need to be able to use the computing power they have to transition that data to information and into decision their decision-making process and whatever the output of that is meaning small bits of pieces will be delivered back to the Enterprise Solutions so they can then incorporate them into future predictive or uh precise deliveries that they wanted or they have to choose to move so uh like I said how do you do that mesh data networks and all those other cool cool systems uh satellites uh you know space-based Communications platforms but again it&#39;s going to be less about the sensor more about the information from Those sensors and how do I make decisions based on that at the appropriate level I think a lot of it&#39;s going to be done for so just a couple things great news last Friday General rainia improve the predictive Logistics ack um and so we&#39;ve seen a lot of success I was again I was just up at Aberdine yesterday and meeting with poo c3t and as well as our mission command Partners up there and uh you know so Mike you mentioned we&#39;ve had censored data forever we&#39;ve seen it play out from an aviation perspective and our army of artificial intelligence Center up at Pittsburgh has done a lot of work on the aviation side to give us that decision dominance and those analytical tools out there that will help us uh from an aviation perspective but this will focus us more on the ground side of it um and general bry&#39;s guidance was really clear last week um in terms of making sure that we can pull off three five as well as maintenance fault data yesterday he&#39;d be really excited to know that when I sat there and saw the mission command uh PM that was up there they&#39;ve already you know we actually already there and so we&#39;re already pulling off a lot of that three you know pretty much all the class three sensor data that&#39;s off of at least the ABS platform right now we demonstrated that actually at project convergence uh two years ago um and used additional analytical tools out there that would then speed the decision-making cycle for a brigade support Battalion to be able to essentially send distribution for both class five as well as class three forward within seconds so I think the pl piece of what we&#39;re after from a pull data off a platform to then trans transport it from across an agnostic Network um I know we are absolutely nested with where the chief is going with C2 fix as well as kind of his pivot into C2 next um to make to make that you know a little bit less burdensome on that tactical Commander uh to then being you know being able to see the data for sustainment leaders to actually understand what that data looks like and then to put Ai and ml tools on top of that so that then systems can sense and then people understand so I think we&#39;re on the right track to then get to where General Hamilton&#39;s trying to get to and where the CFT is trying to go uh you know forward with that whole Precision sustain at piece so I I you know I&#39;m always I&#39;ve sort of been that naysayer along the way of like oh my goodness this require another requirements document but I will tell you that I think we&#39;re actually coming together just again meeting with devcom I think we&#39;re all in on this and so I I mean I&#39;m it&#39;s really promising all right oh it&#39;s that Alabama thing Road tide so you know on the on the data ma&#39;am so to General Don Hugh&#39;s point last week General Ry approved the abbreviated cddd so now we&#39;ve got to focus you know we got a lift and shift uh to get after the CDD and ma&#39;am I agree 100% you know we&#39;ve we&#39;ve censored a lot of Maintenance data and some other stuff but now we got to get after all the other classes and the other thing I would say uh I think was General Smith that talked about data interoperability or or interoperability to really get to a prescriptive capability to enable Precision sustainment we&#39;ve got to receive data that we can consume from the Intel Community from other communities joint Partners Allied partners and I&#39;ll just pull a thread on Intel so we want this tool to tell us you know the predict the when we get to Precision sustainment we want that capability to tell a commander hey you need to start moving some ammo to Allen X today because it you know because it&#39;s going to know it&#39;s going to take 10 days to get there based on the threat that&#39;s fed by the Intel community based by the you know on the weather so how it gets there is going to you know be part of this whole uh Precision sustainment because we&#39;re going to have to get there you know when I was younger we talked about just in time Logistics I&#39;m not sure we ever really got there we&#39;re probably going to have to get there on this one you know and uh because we&#39;re going to be moving so so much so for the data it&#39;s it is really the keys to the kingdom I think it&#39;s really being able to manage it and then use it appropriately and the last thing I&#39;ll say is with the data you know one of the things that we&#39;re they&#39;re toying with right now is having the ability you know for a commander to look at his logistician and say hey what&#39;s the fuel you know look like in these three islands and be able to go through this AI tool and spit out those slides you know within a minute or two and instead of going back reading through spreadsheets and generating PowerPoint and then our version of Siri you know I think we call it Watts but probably not we call it you know hey logy what happens if we we change uh this operation to a from five to 10 days and then in real time it gives us that answer through generative Ai and it&#39;s it&#39;s very doable it&#39;s it&#39;s you know getting the right data getting it to where it&#39;s managing secure area which will all be in classified you know at this level but imagine that tool you know for a commander because the Army loves to what if drills you know you know because we have to because things change all the time but you know that scenario is hey this has changed hey ly what does that mean Hey sir you&#39;re gonna run out of fuel who said so well watch did but anyway what Rob you&#39;ve completely screwed yourself the response to the next RFI that y&#39;all put out are going to be a whole bunch of Industry proposals for hey logy see what you done uh so we got five minutes and 40 seconds left so what I&#39;m going to do um I&#39;m going to jump to some of these questions and feel free to answer them Rapid Fire And if you want to do a two finger and jump in go for it but we&#39;ll uh we&#39;ll do this cable news style um so let&#39;s start out with uh I&#39;ll direct this initially to General Donahue so general for Micah highlighted this gorgeous handwriting by the way uh highlighted the strategy to requirements issues how are the cooms uh and uh component commanders highlighting and prioritizing what their requirements are and who in AFC uh Andor AMC uh is pushing these uh uh to our industry Partners well so each of the ccoms SM a nipple uh back through uh OSD um and those are then transmitted down to the services but we also then with each of our ASC Partners as well as even with our tsc&#39;s out there remain nested with their own theater campaign plans uh to understand their gaps and so we go through a very deliberate process with AFC uh to kind of go through um very much a threat-based look at each of those theaters uh and so we just having recent Rec L done a couple of iterations out in the Indo Pacific um but we have as general fora highlighted earlier have not lost sight on uh you know our our lessons observed that are coming out of the European theater right now as well as even the lessons observed that are coming out of the sencom a as well um so I think we&#39;re nested with where we need to go from a material uh requirements perspective um and we are absolutely um nested with where the CFT is going but we also have our own portfolio of requirements that are underneath are seated um who are nested up underneath Futures and concept Center and so we are absolutely tackling a lot of the watercraft gaps out there uh Rob and his team are working on some of the autonomous uh features in line with I know Trent Mills is over there from DARPA um but we are also looking after you know kind of that fight toight capability that we need from a watercraft perspective uh we are also looking at um again I was just up at Aberdine I keep on saying that but was pretty cool um and I got to see a bfds tanker and so that was a gap that we um had from an mdo perspective back when General Lundy did the whole 17 Army gaps that we had with gap four being Fuel and so that tanker that I took through the A- Rock about four years ago the fact that there&#39;s a that it&#39;s like material release P right I mean this is where it takes a long time to get some of our systems through the gauntlet um but it was pretty cool to see a a 9,000 K tanker up there that will absolutely um you know meet some of those gaps that we see in the European theater and then to see a met up there too which is our medium equipment trailer also another contested Gap to be able to transport you know essentially um you know oversized equipment through the highways of Europe as well and to get underneath Bridge overpasses so two of those things and then also we just signed for our first boat uh well not the first one but our first modernized boat the maneuver sport vessel light um that we will demo inside of project convergence which is essentially again another you know dd250 to the Army and we&#39;ve got Army Mariners on that boat right now getting ready to uh to basically sail down to San Diego for project convergence here so again we do Nest both theaters from a gap perspective um and absolutely are tackling a lot of different requirements out there so if Jen judson&#39;s still here uh I think the most newsworthy iteman uh that I I&#39;ve heard is that uh abine is cool um uh let let me ask two brief uh uh uh final questions one let me go uh Rob and feel free to uh uh Gentleman on the end the tea up and then I&#39;ll direct final question towards uh general for Micah so Rob you mentioned Advanced power industry is working hard on nuclear capabilities uh for a second I thought I thought that said uh SMH for shaking my head um small SMR small modular reactors are we looking at this your uh to midterm um option and what regulatory or policy challenges are you facing there how to work this thing so the short answer is yes we we are engaged in in those capabilities you now obviously um a lot of challenges with that uh I&#39;m told that it&#39;s a lot more stable you know some of the concerns are no longer there but uh for General Smith in the G14 you know obviously uh policies are are going to have to to change to bring that to fruition but the other challenge we&#39;ve uh identified is where you can actually employ it you know a lot of the countries like in Europe we&#39;re not even going to be able to to take it into the country unless we we change some agreements so uh a lot of uh technology out there that could be leveraged but there&#39;s a lot of work that has to be done in the building and Pentagon and others to uh to really enable it great and last question uh general for Mah uh sustain modernization Concepts uh we talked about this in our Preparatory call uh need to be well nested across uh services and uh of course they require substantial integration with the industrial base um to meet the challenges both of competition and conflict uh when you talk with leaders across the department so this is you know kind of an extra mural not just Army Focus uh as well as those in the industry what can we or should we be doing to improve from a defense policy or an industrial based policy perspective well that&#39;s a loaded question I mean there&#39;s a there&#39;s a lot we already talked we&#39;ve heard already about the defense industrial base and the challenges that we have I think we&#39;re going to hear more about that in a subsequent panel um so investing in the defense industrial base uh critical to our ability to meet contested Logistics especially when we&#39;re thinking about it strategically not just operationally or tactically and then we&#39;ve referred to it again several times I talked about it my opening comments we&#39;re going to have to be nested jointly understanding what capabilities we&#39;re going to bring we&#39;re required to bring and what capabilities we need to depend on from other services I think you&#39;ve heard that from this panel uh and and then with our allies and I think all of that um needs to be nested brought together so we can have an army approach to contested Logistics but that&#39;s not siloed right it&#39;s part of a broader defense department capability so uh apart from reevaluating all their poor life choices that led them to participate in this panel uh I think uh you can clearly see there&#39;s uh great relationships and great mind share on uh these very very difficult and challenging uh issues so I&#39;d ask first off thank you General Brown and the USA team for inviting all of us here and please join me and thanking our panelists as [Applause] well

Transcript for:Contested Logistics: AUSA Hot Topic Lecture Notes

Transcript for:
Contested Logistics: AUSA Hot Topic Lecture Notes