Army looks at revamping acquisition, asks for industry help as it builds network of the future
Summary
AUSA 2023 — As the Army works to simplify and modernize its network, service leaders are l ooking at ways to revamp acquisition strategies and send demand signals more creatively, and they’re asking industry for help. “I think we acknowledge that at scale, we do have quite a significant amount of policy gaps … and I think, more than just the Army but across the department, we’ve moved really, really fast in a lot of technology areas, and we’re still kind of trying to pull the policies forward with us,” Army Chief Information Officer Leonel Garciga told reporters Oct. 11. “So the way I look at this right now is we’ve been working really hard to triage where those gaps are, and definitely with industry I will be very transparent with my approach to this on policy reform inside the army,” he added. He added that r esilience in the industrial base is the “most important” thing the service is looking for as it learns from Ukraine. “What we’ve learned this last year, obviously with the surge of munitions in Ukraine, the delivery and drawdown of so many diverse pieces of equipment to the Ukrainians, has shown that our ability to reconstitute and to rebuild and to invest in more manufacturing capacity is absolutely critical to the United States Army,” he said.