TAMPA, Fla. — It’s time for the sustainment community to go faster; that was the message the Army’s senior sustainer had for the military and industry leaders at National Defense Industrial Association’s Logistics Forum, Feb. 17-19 in Tampa.
Army Materiel Command’s top leader, Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, charged those in attendance to push themselves and their teams to move quicker to find the solutions for today’s Army.
“I’m the guy responsible for materiel readiness for the United States Army, and I’m going to push, I’m pushing our team, and I’m going to push you,” said Mohan. “We’ve got to go faster. The pace of change is unlike anything I’ve seen in my military career. The Army we grew up in, is not the Army we need today.”
Mohan recreated the image he painted at last year’s NDIA — a future scenario of a unit at the tactical edge with a HIMARS in need of repair involving telemaintenance, 3D‑printed parts and unmanned delivery.
“We held ourselves accountable to provide these capabilities to Soldiers - and we have made great strides,” he said. “We no longer need a two‑way telemaintenance link. Communications-Electronics Command developed an AI‑enabled maintenance capability that we have deployed across the Army, which uses a chat bot to help diagnose and fix problems. Soldiers are using it in the field today.”
This capability links perfectly with the Army’s growing advanced manufacturing capabilities, which Mohan said is fundamentally changing the way the units do tactical maintenance.
“Advanced manufacturing is helping us solve readiness challenges today,” he said, pointing to more than 1,000 fully qualified parts in the Army’s digital repository and new capabilities being fielded across the Organic Industrial Base, including 3D‑printed wiring harnesses and brushless motors.
Mohan called on industry to work with the Army to solve supply chain issues, saying the command has 34,000 delinquent orders, equal to hundreds of millions of dollars in repair parts.
“We are committed to preserving your intellectual property, but you’ve got to help us,” Mohan said. “A Soldier on an M1 tank doesn’t care about IP. They just want to train on the vehicle he or she raised their right hand to operate. When we talk about IP rights, we need to remember this is about them. Shame on us if we can’t solve this.”
Mohan called the current parts‑qualification process a major barrier to speed.
“We haven’t crossed the great Rubicon yet,” he said. “We’ve got to move qualification to the beginning, working on qualify the process and the machinery, so we don’t have to wait until after the part is produced to qualify it. We can’t wait a year to get a part that our Soldiers need now.”
To bring additional speed to tactical maintenance, Mohan highlighted the command’s Operational Readiness Program, saying participating units are seeing double‑digit improvements in readiness rates throughout a very intensive training cycle and reducing Class IX consumption, saving approximately $30 million in the first cycles.
“Underpinning all of this is an aggressive integration of data and artificial intelligence,” Mohan said about many of the command’s tools including Weapon System 360, ParaLine and Soldier Equipping and Asset Management System, or SEAM.
He also highlighted the command’s recent successes in enhancing the Soldier experience, including the opening of the first Campus-Style Dining Venue at Fort Hood, Texas, and successfully 3D printing barracks at Fort Bliss, Texas.
“We have to innovate and we have to move faster,” said Mohan. “We have to challenge the status quo because our Soldiers are demanding it and we owe it to them.
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