The Army's aviation branch chief relayed his priorities to industry members and the Army aviation acquisition community during his presentation at the Army Aviation Association of America Summit March 30-31 in Nashville.
"There are a lot of things going on in the Army and Army aviation," Maj. Gen. Mike Lundy said. "We have to be careful that we don't lose sight of the great things. … We have phenomenal leadership across the branch all the way to the Soldier level. The things that they're doing every day in support of our nation, in support of our partners is absolutely remarkable. Regardless of the challenges that we have to meet, they get it done."
Lundy showed a slide depicting some of the significant accomplishments made by Army aviation over the past year. Some of the highlights included the continued fielding of UH-60Ms, CH-57Fs and AH-64Es; the Shadow v2 unmanned aircraft system Follow On Test and Evaluation that was completed, TH-67s and OH-58Ds being divested, the Improved Turbine Engine Program Analysis of Alternatives completed, Joint Multi Role Technical Demonstrator awarded to two vendors, the UH-60V milestone decision approved, operations in more than 36 countries, 20,475 students trained at Fort Rucker -- among many other accomplishments.
Lundy gave credit to Heidi Shyu, the Army's top acquisition officer, for being a tremendous advocate for Army aviation. "The one person who has truly made an impact for our branch … and she always asks me, what does the war fighter need and that's the most important question that anybody making prudent decisions can ask."
Army aviation continues to be an asymmetric advantage for the nation, Lundy said, noting that the last 50 years since Vietnam where air mobility really became a part of how the U.S. fights as a nation -- "We've been there," Lundy said. "We could not have done the last 13 plus years in combat without Army aviation leading the way, providing the capabilities for our Soldiers on the ground."
The Aviation Restructure Initiative is the largest restructure that Army aviation has ever done in its history, Lundy said. "We are touching every single unit, all three COMPOs are being impacted by ARI. We're reorganizing four CABs (Combat Aviation Brigades), we've deactivated a number of units … all the while that's going on, we're fielding new equipment to units every day and then deploying with them.
"We're under modernization pressure," he continued. "We've got a clear modernization plan and we've got some great capabilities out there, but it's a very slow burn as we field these units.
"The Aviation Restructure Initiative is the best course of action for our branch, for our nation, for our Army," he continued. "If we don't execute it, it will cripple aviation modernization in the future and we can't let that happen. We have to put all emotions aside, put all the politics aside and be very pragmatic and think about what's best for our nation, what's best for our branch."
Additionally, sequestration will impact every modernization program in Army aviation, including the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator, which will feed into the Future Vertical Lift effort.
"Even though we're under significant fiscal pressure, and we've lost 40 percent of our modernization account, we're doing very well in maintaining those priority programs that we need to. As we push forward with the Improved Turbine Engine Program, we have JMR-TD on the horizon -- all of those things, even though they're slower than we want them to be, continue to track," Lundy said.
However, capability gaps today threaten the unique, indispensable maneuver advantage which will limit national options and increase risk to the force if we don't close the gap through ARI.
"We cannot wait 25 years for FVL. We must close those key gaps now," Lundy said.
According to Lundy, the aviation community needs to close key capability gaps through the disciplined investment of savings gained from divesting legacy aircraft and reduced structure. This will retain the asymmetric advantage and overmatch in Joint Combined Arms Operations by fielding disruptive technologies today, committing to training and leader development, and fully execute ARI to maximize the combat power of a smaller force structure.
"I'm concerned we're not moving fast enough. How do we maintain asymmetric capability into the future. I will say that there is some risk out there. A lot of it has to do with resourcing. And so we have to think about where do we make the best investments to prevent this vulnerability gap," Lundy said.
He focused on some of efforts needed to meet the goals driven by the Army Operating Concept: increase speed, range and payload to enable expeditionary ops; fly and fight in all environments, weather and visibility conditions; agile survivability solutions that stay ahead of emerging threats; expeditionary and survivable UAS that are reliant on airfields; improved trainability; cockpit commonality; scalable and multi-functional technology (no niche solutions); reduced maintenance burden; fully networked air-ground connectivity, and unmanned systems need to be unmanned.
Lundy also stressed the importance of going after a degraded visual environment capability very soon. "We have to be able to fly and fight no matter the weather, no matter what the visual conditions are in order to maintain the game changing capability we already have," he said.
"We have to get away from relying on an airfield for UAS, so our future family of UAS are not going to require an airfield, and that (requirement) is coming soon. We're also looking at cockpit commonality so that we reduce the training base. That's what we're looking for in FVL.
"We have to figure out how we reduce the maintenance burden," he added. Lundy talked about the ratio between war-fighting systems to the sustainment systems required to keep them operating, alluding to the fact that the Army needs to maintain the amount of "teeth," and in order to be able to accomplish and afford that, the Army has to become more efficient in the way it sustains and maintains the fleet so it can reduce the cost of the "tail."
Lundy also noted that the Army is forcing its Soldiers and aviators to have to learn a great deal of technical information. "We need the machines to do some of this for us," he said.
"Our unmanned formations are bigger than our manned formations. We need to unman your unmanned stuff. It takes too many Soldiers to operate and maintain this. They're great capabilities but as we think to the future, that's what we need to be thinking about because our Army are going to have less Soldiers.
"We're also reshaping how we're going to do flight school. We're focused very heavily on what I call defragging the hard drive -- we have to change some of the training quals (qualifications) that we have and become less enamored with the technical things and more enamored with the operational things, so we're looking hard at how we're doing check rides -- not to make them easier. They're going to be harder, but they're going to be focused on the right things," Lundy said.
"Requirements are high, the demands are there, but the Army aviation branch is getting after it.
"I'm very, very proud of all that they are doing every day."
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