Unified action achieves aviation-missile marks

"Readiness for combat is our No. 1 priority, and there is no other No. 1," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said. "We have to be ready to fight tonight."

Readiness is also the top priority for the Aviation and Missile Command's material enterprise and the foundation for Operation Unified Action. In February, the Army Materiel Command issued a mission-realignment order which brings operation control of Aviation Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center and Army Contracting Command-Redstone to AMCOM.

"The Mission Command Realignment Order provides operational control of AMRDEC and ACC-R to AMCOM," Maj. Gen. Doug Gabram, AMCOM commander, said. "Our end state is to increase strategic and unit readiness through synchronization and prioritization of efforts across the aviation and missile portfolios."

This is obviously well-nested to Army Materiel Command's Commander Gen. Gus Perna's priorities of Strategic Readiness; Future Force; and Soldiers and People.

The AMCOM Unified Action team is now involved is all phases of the acquisition life cycle including Material Solution Analysis; Technology Development; Engineering Manufacturing and Development; Production and Deployment; Operations and Support; and Demilitarization.

Unified Action team members have the expertise to assure that supporting equipment is being maintained to high and rigorous standards.

"The mission alignment of AMRDEC and ACC-R has enhanced our ability to jointly provide Soldiers with the best material readiness to meet emerging requirements," Gabram said.

The AMCOM Unified Action team has had numerous successes in less than one year. One example is the fiscal 2016 exceptional year end contract close out actions at ACC-Redstone.

For fiscal 2016, ACC-Redstone was the largest, most diverse Department of Defense buying center with a budget of $18.8 million and more than 16,642 contract actions in FY '16. These contracts included a vast variety of weapons systems programs including 26 Acquisition Category-1 and nine ACAT-2. The diversity of their workload includes Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, Hellfire and Patriot missiles, Expedited Professional and Engineering Support Services or EXPRESS, and the Prototype Integration Facility. Army Contracting Command-Redstone contracts for more than 75 weapon systems, programs and organizations.

Unified Action allows ACC-R, AMCOM and AMRDEC to work together as a team, discussing processes and developing improvements for an exceptional year end.

"We actually adjusted our processes with AMCOM and AMRDEC and drastically reduced our lead by several months to 13 days," Rebecca Weirick, executive director of the Army Contracting Command-Redstone, said. "This saves money and speeds output to the warfighter, so that the warfighter gets what they need, when they need, in a much better fashion."

James Lackey, director of the Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center, agreed. "We've aligned ourselves in a more unified manner to attack our process," he said. "We recognized our procurement lead times were too long, so we really drove together from a teaming relationship between my organization and Mrs. Weirick's."

The Unified Action team is devoted to streamlining processes, increasing the teaming relationships and communicating while sharing a common database so metrics are tracked together. "It's about applying critical thinking and doing things smarter, and getting the team's structure to be more innovative on how they do business," Lackey said.

"Readiness is a team sport," Gabram said. "Teams are built on trust, relationships and attitude. The name for the operation is Unified Action, the definition of that term exemplifies what we are trying to achieve."