Though the focus was largely on materiel at the 2018 Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, April 25-27, Army Aviation's branch chief highlighted the many other ongoing efforts of the Aviation enterprise.
"There's so much work going on across the branch and the enterprise that I don't want those great efforts to be lost in just modernization," said Maj. Gen. William K. Gayler, commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker, to hundreds of industry representatives, Soldiers and Army Aviation supporters gathered inside the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center April 26.
The efforts of the branch proponent run the gamut of changes to doctrine, organizational structure, training, leader development, facilities, policy and personnel.
Gayler recognized the senior leaders across the Aviation enterprise for "the critical work they're doing across the spectrum of every Aviation issue we have," he said. "I'm humbled and proud to be part of this group of professionals. It's truly amazing," he said.
With Army Aviation 84 percent committed on a daily basis, Aviation Soldiers are busy serving on an operation, returning from an operation, on assigned missions like global response force missions, training for approximately 20 combat training center rotations per year, and participating in a rotational force in the Pacific or Europe, he said.
"That is today, that is every day. That global demand (for Army Aviation) is a no-fail mission," Gayler said.
After 16 years, Aviation is "phenomenal" at counterinsurgency operations, he said, but the focus needs to shift now to Large Scale Combat Operations.
Because budget realities over the past decade resulted in the Army choosing a strategy of incremental modernization, aircraft those fielded units need in order to train must be taken away to feed a remanufacture line to produce upgrades.
"That makes it now a balancing act between meeting demand, training for larger scale contingency, and then also balancing modernization," he said.
To Gayler, existing challenges are an opportunity to take a holistic look across the branch in an attempt to identify areas to improve, with a primary focus on doctrine.
A quick reaction test of techniques and systems in a high-threat environment found areas to correct, he said.
"We learned a great deal from that. The power of the enterprise is literally within two months of the test we had produced the training support package in an (Army Techniques Publication) 3-04.2 classified manual and populated it to the field. That has been a superb document to help units train to that level," Gayler said.
One goal is a common battlebook of standard operating procedures for all formations in all Army components (active Army, Army National Guard, and U.S. Army Reserves), which Soldiers will become acquainted with as early as during flight school at Fort Rucker, rather than waiting until they get to their unit.
"That way, when an aviator shows up to flight school to learn to fly they immediately learn what a battlebook is, how we use (those) and what criteria we use to select a certain technique," he said.
The intent is for a better informed aviator and a smoother transition to the unit.
"We're also going to take a very hard look at what we teach and what we evaluate inside of Professional Military Education at Fort Rucker, to include flight school," Gayler said.
The Aviation Captains Career Course and Basic Officer Leader Course devote training time to higher echelon aspects such as the Military Decision Making Process, but not much time to training how to do troop leading procedures which is more appropriate for their level of what they will do inside of a brigade, according to Gayler.
The branch may potentially assess whether the current Combat Aviation Brigade "one size fits all" structure may need to be modified (for example, whether CABs should be tailored in the future to the role and mission of the division they support).
An emphasis on the Aviation Warfighting Initiative will ensure the focus of Aviation content is not overly technical when it should be tactical, he said.
"This isn't a license to know less. This is a responsibility to know more. You will know more about your branch and how to fight, because that's what our nation is going to ask us to do," Gayler said.
While the future focus is modernization, the immediate focus is training.
No single technology is "more important than our units training with frequency and repetition under tough realistic conditions," Gayler said.
Future battlefield challenges that will drive how Aviation thinks about modernization include challenges with potential access to theater, operational maneuver, tactical maneuver and common situational understanding, he explained.
"(The Army's) Training and Doctrine Command has done a very good job of explaining and conceptualizing the Army Operating Concept, and then we have turned that into Multi-Domain Battle as a strategy or means to achieve success on that future battlefield. Now we have to build and operationalize Multi-Domain Battle," he said.
As the Army looks to make Soldiers more lethal in the future, it means more than just munitions. It must include the ability to sense, see, identify, geolocate, share, target and kill; and the network is a critical enabler.
"We will be contested, and we cannot maneuver without long range precision fires," Gayler said.
Modernization priorities include improvement to Aircraft Survivability Equipment, Future Vertical Lift, and Advanced UAS.
One thing remains constant: the Aviation Soldier's sole focus to support the commanders and Soldiers on the ground.
"An aviation soldier is needed, trusted and valued to that ground force," Gayler said. "Our soldiers are and will continue to be professional, demonstrating character, competence and commitment to our branch and to our nation. They will be expert in that doctrine I was describing, and they will be expert at warfighting."
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