JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas — As the Department of Defense Military Health System undergoes significant reform, the Army has pivoted its focus to modernizing itself as a multi-domain force. The newest effort to transform Army Medicine is the recently released Army Medical Modernization Strategy — or AMMS — published by Army Futures Command, which aligns with the Army Modernization Strategy 2035.
The end state of the 2022 AMMS is a fundamentally transformed and modernized Army Health System — focused on formations, capabilities and people — that enables multi-domain operations as part of an integrated, adaptive, responsive and resilient joint medical force through 2035 and beyond.
Lt. Gen. James M. Richardson, Army Futures Command Acting Commanding General, signed the strategy and highlighted the importance of ensuring the changes also support the Army of 2040 and beyond.
“The primary aim is to reimagine and redesign medical capabilities and formations across the entire Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities, Policy; DOTMLPF-P. This will allow previously 'stovepiped' medical entities to converge into one powerful, resilient, joint military-medical enterprise,” Richardson said.
The Medical Capability Development Integration Directorate, or MED CDID, stationed at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas, will utilize the AMMS as a primary guide to driving modernization priorities and requirements for the future.
Col. James Jones, MED CDID Director, noted the significance of AFC approving the AMMS: "This is an important milestone for the Army Health System. It capstones all the efforts from the Medical Research and Development Command to modernize the Army Health System. It focuses our concept, experimentation and requirement development on conserving the fighting strength and supporting future large scale combat operations.”
MED CDID's input in the development of the AMMS started with identifying medical gaps. The gaps led to our approved concept rooted in DOTMLPF-P solutions. These concepts drive strategies and help develop the experimentation plan. Findings from experimentation create the requirements for modernization. Once the requirements are met, the endpoint for the CDID is integration.
"Army Medicine remains in synch with the Army vision and strategy; it will not find itself left behind in 2035,” stated Lt. Gen. R. Scott Dingle, Army Surgeon General and U.S. Army Medical Command Commanding General. “To remain relevant to the Army and the Joint Force, Army Medicine needs a roadmap to guide, with one voice, a relevant path that enables the Army to fight and win on the future battlefield and, most importantly, save lives."
MED CDID will execute the recently approved Army Concept Framework, AFC's Concept for Medical 2028, that focuses on medical operations, identifying solutions to mitigate medical gaps and conducting iterative experimentation events to determine the requirements needed in the future force. These efforts will drive MED CDID's recommendations to the U.S. Army Surgeon General, AFC headquarters, the U.S. Army Medical Center of Excellence and the Futures and Concepts Center.
The Army’s modernization effort must focus on multi-domain operations in 2035 and beyond.
Richardson stated to effectively innovate, “Modernization must be baked in, not bolted on."
Modernization could not exist without materiel solutions for a medical multi-domain operations-capable force. Categories of Army modernization include Next Generation Combat Vehicles, Future Vertical Lift, Network, Soldier Lethality and Synthetic Training Environment, among others. Medical modernization is fully integrated within all of these efforts.
To support the AMMS, the Army medical community will transform through 2035 to become a more adaptable medical force capable of harnessing, integrating and utilizing future technology on the battlefield to save Soldiers.
The AMMS describes prioritized research and development. A few areas of note include: predictive medical logistics support, lighter efficient power supply, disease and non-battle injury, vaccines, wearable sensors and an artificial intelligence/machine learning-enabled, tailorable medical common operating picture.
The AMMS also identifies six Army Health System disruptive research priority areas: humanistic intelligence, bio and human enhancement technologies, data-AI-biotechnology, synthetic biology and additive biology, additive manufacturing and quantum technology.
MED CDID and all of Army modernization now has a roadmap to follow to ensure modernization efforts are nested across the enterprise.
For more information on the topics discussed above, please read the Army Medical Modernization Strategy.
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