FORT NOVOSEL, Ala. — Fort Novosel and the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence conducted its annual Aviation Industry Days event to foster dialogue among Army experts and aviation industry representatives Aug. 9-10, 2023.
The event including a two-day lineup of guest speaker sessions and on-site technology displays from more than 40 aviation industry representatives.
Event host Maj. Gen. Michael C. McCurry, Aviation branch chief, welcomed an audience of hundreds who gathered at the Post Theater to learn more about aviation’s needs for the future battlefield.
“It’s an exciting time to be part of aviation, and this forum provides an excellent chance to see new opportunities, address challenges, and have fruitful dialogue with you and industry about the future,” he said. “I’m confident that you will provide the solutions to effectively fight and win on a (multi-domain) battlefield.”
As this year marks the 40th anniversary of Army Aviation as a separate maneuver branch, the theme for the event was honoring the past, and transforming for the future.
“This week specifically we’re focused on the second part — transforming for the future. It’s prescriptive of the actions we must take collectively to ensure we field the required capabilities for the force of 2030 and beyond,” McCurry said.
Since its inception, Army Aviation has been a mufti-domain solution, McCurry explained.
Though the military’s interest in the skies dates back to the use of hot air balloons during the Civil War, Army helicopters came to redefine the battlefield in the 20th Century. They were used in Korea to support medevac, command and control and sustainment, and during the Vietnam conflict validated their value in reconnaissance and security and the speed of aerial maneuver.
After Vietnam, Army Aviation’s size and sophistication increased, prompting challenges across training, procurement, doctrine, and personnel, which gave rise to the creation of the Aviation branch. As Army Aviation modernized, its fleet served well in Desert Shield and Desert Storm and for two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“We are at another nexus: We are coming off 20 years of (counterinsurgency operations). We’re updating our doctrine and professional military education to focus on sharpening technical and tactical skills,” McCurry said.
“Our (Combat Training Centers) are adapting to greater distances, lethality, and refocusing formations on integration of capabilities. We’re focused on sustaining our all-volunteer force. Our structures and organizations are under pressure. All of this sounds eerily familiar, daunting, and urgent and it should, but we have been here before,” he said.
“Army Aviation is synchronized with the Army Modernization Strategy to transform and meet the challenges of large scale combat operations. The capability enhancements of Future Vertical Lift manned and unmanned platforms and launched effects are transformational and will exponentially improve the speed, range, and lethality of the air-ground team. These coupled with advancements in simulation in the form of the (synthetic training environment) and updates to our doctrine and leader development will keep us competitive and give us an advantage against any adversary. We do all of this with a keen eye on the modernization of our current fleets,” McCurry said.
Going forward, Army Aviation must be able to operate in more austere environments, with smaller maintenance teams operating remotely away from large logistics hubs, and longer maintenance-free operating periods.
McCurry called for industry’s help setting the conditions to win in the future.
“The challenges we face are less daunting because of you and your workforce. As industry partners your solutions are pivotal to our nation’s success. But we need your help on a few things — on speed and affordable solutions that keep us on a sustainable strategic path. Programs that deliver on time and on cost will place our Soldiers in a position of advantage,” he said.
The future battlefield requires the ability to see and sense further, move across greater distances, strike from unexpected directions and extend the reach of ground forces, the ability to rapidly converge and rapidly disaggregate forces and capabilities before the adversary can respond.
Gen. Gary M. Brito, commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, said he was excited to see how industry partners will continue to contribute to the modernization of the Army and Army Aviation, as the Army transforms to maintain overmatch.
Brito said this year marks not only the 50th anniversary of TRADOC, but also of Army Forces Command and the Army’s all-volunteer force, all tracing back to when the Army was at a post-Vietnam inflection point. Going forward, transformation and modernization will continue to be a team sport.
TRADOC priorities include acquiring the best Soldiers, providing them the best training, as well as shaping the future force and the culture of the Army, which includes working to eradicate harmful behaviors.
“We won’t get away from that because our Army is a subset of society,” he said, adding that he believes the Army should be better than society.
“Shaping the culture is largely a TRADOC responsibility from day one. Young men and women will join, whatever they had on their kitchen table — or not, whatever they got at church — or not, whatever they got from their football coach — or not. They’re going to join with whatever cultural aspects they had at 18 or 19 years old.”
“So we’ll hit it early, and we should at building the Army culture of warfighting. Readiness, trust, cohesion, dignity and respect starts with us, starts with you,” Brito said.
He also emphasized the importance of people and of connecting America with its Army, and the necessity of integrating the DOTMLPF-P aspects as the Army transforms and modernizes.
Lt. Gen. Richard R. Coffman, U.S. Army Futures Command deputy commander, described the context for the Army of 2040 in large scale combat operations.
“It will always be a human endeavor … because no country is going to capitulate because they got ‘cybered’. It will be because there is a Longbow Apache or some other killing machine staring them in the eye with a threat to take away their way of life. That human endeavor will never change,” Coffman said.
“Land will always be decisive,” he said. “It’s going to require women and men on the earth in (the enemy’s) face, and that will be decisive.”
“We will always be an ethical force. Our enemy shoots on detect. We shoot on identify. Think about that. That gives us less time to react, so we have to identify them further out than they can detect us,” he said. “We must be ethical in the application of artificial intelligence. We have to be ethical in our algorithmic warfare.”
The future battlefield will also be lethal, unpredictable and close combat will be unavoidable, he said.
“We had better have aviation overhead, because without you we will not be successful,” he said.
He called for industry’s help including with algorithmic sensors that are reliable, over the horizon sensing and fires, seamless communication between air and ground, signature management while in the air, reducing the burden on aviators in the cockpit and others.
Other guest speakers represented Forces Command, Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, the Maneuver Center of Excellence, and the aviation enterprise including sessions with program managers for various aviation platforms.
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