Now that I've taken command and been welcomed aboard, I want to take a moment to tell the rest of the organization and anyone interested in Army technology how excited I am to join the Research, Development and Engineering Command team.
This is an exciting time for RDECOM and our community. We are on the front lines of supporting Warfighters in two war zones, helping to transform the Army materiel enterprise and, here at Aberdeen Proving Ground, transforming this into the premier science, technology and engineering installation in the Army.
To me, this is the perfect time to take command. Some people will see challenges, but I see opportunities. I've been in the acquisition community long enough to know the RDECOM team is interested in doing the very best job it can to support our Soldiers. We won the Superior Unit Award for just that reason. So my outlook is that I've been given the world's best team, and together we will find ways to improve our support to Soldiers and our combat formations every day.
I'm sure many of you are interested in how I plan to do that. I will have more details in the future, but there is one thing I would like to pass on now that each of us can do better than anybody else. That is stepping outside our own perspectives and looking at what we do from the outside. How do we look to our customers' How do we look to the rest of the Army' Are we accessible' Are we relevant to their needs' Do we do business how they need it done' We need to put aside our insider's knowledge and any assumptions we have and look at ourselves and our processes with fresh eyes.
We are the Army's organic research and development capability, so we can apply a business and engineering framework to solve problems that nobody else can - because we are unique. We are already in every nook and cranny of the Army from the laboratory to the battlefield. Now we need to use that understanding to lead the conversation between warfighters, our industry and academic partners and ourselves to define what is possible to help Soldiers.
When we succeed at this we will honor those who made it possible. When we fail we will use it as an opportunity to do better. In the end there is one measure of our success, and only one: did we deliver something that made our Soldiers' lives better'
I will meet many of the command's leaders in the coming weeks, and no small number of my new team members. You will all hear more about me and what I think, and I hope to hear more about all of you because we're in this together, serving Soldiers.
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