AUSTIN, Texas — Just as innovation does not happen in a vacuum, transformational military advances do not occur in siloes.
With this in mind, Army leaders are working across commands and with members of the joint and multinational force to identify, evaluate and accelerate new solutions for the warfighter.
At Army Futures Command, innovation experts and concept developers are focused on ensuring that any potential changes consider all parts of doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities and policy — a holistic scope more commonly referred to in military circles as DOTMLPF-P.
“We’re trying to look across domains and keep everything synced,” said Lt. Col. Mike Eisenlohr of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team.
Eisenlohr serves as the NGCV CFT’s requirements officer for the XM30 Combat Vehicle, formerly known as the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle. He and the rest of the NGCV CFT began hosting quarterly DOTMLPF-P summits around specific lines of effort approximately one year ago.
Each summit brings together roughly 50-60 Army stakeholders from around the country to conduct a deep dive on a particular topic. During the gatherings, participants discuss each area of DOTMLPF-P, evaluating progress against long-term timelines and briefing senior leaders.
Eisenlohr appreciates that the summits offer “an opportunity to take a more active role” as program integrators and believes the summits have “elevated the level of engagement and the quality of the feedback we’re getting.”
Eisenlohr emphasized that the groups allow equal amounts of time for briefing and questions, encouraging information exchange on multiple topics, from maneuver to sustainment.
“It is an enterprise-level effort at a localized scale,” he explained.
Eisenlohr also sees how the ongoing nature of the meetings is helping to amplify participation and professionalism within the DOTMLPF-P integration process.
“The value of this will be in its repeatability,” he said.
At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the Army’s Air and Missile Defense (AMD) CFT similarly hosts quarterly sync meetings to assess current progress on signature efforts and to brainstorm ways to overcome existing challenges. Meeting participants often include Army Capability Managers (ACMs), members of Army Test and Evaluation Command, the Air Defense Artillery Commandant and signature effort program managers, along with subject matter experts from an array of Army teams.
The AMD events provide a platform for sharing updates on system development, timelines and testing; briefing new information; reviewing decisions; and addressing friction points.
Meanwhile, the Long Range Precision Fires (LRPF) CFT, also at Fort Sill, has demonstrated its ability to rapidly advance development of a signature modernization system, the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), through in-depth DOTMLPF-P forums. These forums engage general officers, colonels, action officers and materiel developers, including from ACMs, the Fires Center of Excellence Directorate of Training and Doctrine, the Field Artillery Commandant's Office, Capability Development and Integration Directorate (CDID) Force Design, Army Materiel Command and Headquarters, Department of the Army G-3/5/7.
By synchronizing efforts, the LRPF CFT has been able to reduce risk and mitigate programmatic delays while keeping senior leaders and key stakeholders apprised of delivery schedules and milestones; the Army plans to field early operational capability missiles in early 2024 as a result. The LRPF CFT has also coordinated with various Army partners to ensure development of new equipment training, software compatibility and facility readiness for PrSM.
Another collaborative DOTMLPF-P effort led by the LRPF CFT helped establish platform and munition training tables that resulted in an approved Battalion Training Ammunition allocation and inclusion in Department of the Army Pamphlet PAM 350-38: Standards in Weapons Training. These munitions requirements will additionally be inserted into the G-3/5/7-endorsed Total Munitions Requirements.
At Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, the Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing/Space (APNT/Space) CFT integrates with Futures and Concepts Center ACMs and CDIDs and Training and Doctrine Command's U.S. Army Intelligence, Fires, Space and Missile Defense, and Mission Command and Cyber Centers of Excellence. Adopting a collaborative approach allows the CFT to inform materiel solution requirements documents and other tenets of the DOTMLPF-P change management framework.
As a transformation integrator, the APNT/Space CFT also accelerates capabilities alongside Army and inter-service developers like U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM), Engineering Research Development Command, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Intelligence and Special Operations communities to analyze best-of-breed technologies, architectures and policies in order to assist in effort development and maximize investments.
The work is particularly critical given the ubiquitous nature of position, navigation and timing signals, which enable protected communications, maneuver, aviation and precision targeting capabilities, even in contested environments. These capabilities influence the way the Army trains, organizes, maintains and operates its formations; as such, the APNT/Space CFT informs doctrine, leader development and professional military education frameworks to account for added capability and associated new tactics, techniques and procedures, many of which are refined through the CFT’s annual Positioning, Navigation and Timing Assessment Experiment (PNTAX) and other persistent experimentation efforts.
The Soldier Lethality CFT, based at Fort Moore, Georgia, also embraces a team-oriented approach to working groups and other activities, briefing by community alongside partners to ensure no detail goes unexplored.
“We’ve been quoting President Truman as long as anyone can remember: ‘It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit,’” said Brig. Gen. Monte L. Rone of the Soldier Lethality CFT.
“I see that within the enterprise today more than I’ve ever seen it, and maybe I see it clearly because I serve as the chief of infantry and the Soldier Lethality CFT director. I don’t see the CFT or proponent, Maneuver CDID or our DEVCOM and Program Executive Office partners wrestling with issues of ownership so much as laboring together in multiple forums to make sure no aspect of DOTMLPF-P is neglected,” Rone said.
“There is a real unity of effort, a shared purpose, and that is the Soldier. We are a team, and we’re working collectively to ensure we keep the needs of the Soldier at the center of everything we do.”
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