< Previouswww.ausa.org 10 AUSA Extra | March 28, 2025 ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY P ower generation, autonomous capabilities and more efficient operations are among the top efforts underway in the Army’s sus- tainment enterprise as it works to transform for the future fight. “We are absolutely thinking differ- ently about how we sustain the fu- ture Army,” said Maj. Gen. Michelle Donahue, commanding general of Army Combined Arms Support Com- mand and the Sustainment Center of Excellence. Speaking Wednesday on a panel during the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama, Donahue and her fellow panelists out- lined recent lessons learned from the Project Convergence capstone event and the transformation in contact ef- fort in the 25th Infantry Division. The 25th Infantry Division’s sus- tainment brigade has been involved in the Army’s transformation in con- tact initiative for almost a year, when the division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team was tapped as one of the first three units for the effort. During that period of experimenta- tion, leaders identified two key pieces of equipment—the Infantry Squad Vehicle and a Solar Stik that can be used as a solar-powered generator, said Col. Christopher Johnson, com- mander of the 25th Division Sustain- ment Brigade. Army sustainers must think differently for future fight On a recent training rotation, soldiers from 2nd Brigade Com- bat Team, 25th Infantry Division, brought 95 Infantry Squad Vehicles instead of Humvees, Johnson said. The sustainment brigade was able to support the soldiers for 15 days of force-on-force training with 2,700 gallons of gas, he said. Infantry Squad Vehicles “sip on gas,” compared to Humvees, which “drink diesel fuel like a college kid on spring break,” Johnson said. During a similar exercise the year before, to support the Humvees, the sustain- ment brigade pushed over 45,000 gallons of gas, he said. Reducing the demand for sustain- ment items such as fuel “lessens the burden on the enterprise, and it makes our job easier,” Johnson said, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, with its far-flung locations. The other addition that made a big difference was the Solar Stik, which Johnson described as a large power bank. It enabled the unit to go from running its generators 24 hours a day to just six hours a day, which meant a smaller and quieter footprint for the command post, Johnson said. “Overall, it’s a big win,” he said. Power generation and reducing soldiers’ load are critical missions, said Brig. Gen. Shane Upton, direc- tor of the Contested Logistics Cross- Functional Team. “We’re figuring out how to produce things like power so we’re not hauling towed genera- tors around,” he said. “We’re going to have a big power demand on some of the weapons we’re bringing to the battlefield.” One example is the new hypersonic weapon, Upton said. “That power de- mand is not going to reduce,” he said. “We have to work with you in indus- try to figure out how we provide that power at the point of need or where we need it strategically.” Military and civilian leaders discuss transformation in the Army's sustainment enterprise during AUSA's Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama. (AUSA PHOTO) Soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division train with the Infantry Squad Vehicle at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany. (U.S. ARMY/PFC. RAYONNE BISSANT)www.ausa.org 12 AUSA Extra | March 28, 2025 ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY M ismatched helmets, uni- forms and night-vision goggles characterize the Army’s nine-man infantry squads, and the service wants to do some- thing about it—and fast. “We recognize the squad is the most complex and variable weapon system on the battlefield,” said Brig. Gen. Phillip Kiniery, director of the Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team and commandant of the U.S. Army Infantry School. The Army fights formations, but the problem is the squad was “put together with no thought to how they interact, much less how they inte- grate,” Kiniery said Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army's Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama. “We’ve been focusing our efforts on the individual soldier for so long, we’ve burdened them with redundant capabilities developed in a stovepipe and added extra weight,” said Ki- niery, who participated in a panel discussion and later spoke at a War- riors Corner presentation about his efforts to accelerate the architecture to field the squad as a system, not in- dividual soldiers. Kiniery explained that the “Squad as a System” effort centers on the understanding that soldiers serve in different roles within the squad, and “they work together as one system.” As chief of infantry, Kiniery not- ed, he’s responsible for what he de- scribed as a “confederation of tribes,” such as airborne, mechanized, Rang- er and arctic formations, each with its own infantry culture and equip- ment. While those formations may have some specialized requirements, Kiniery wants to establish a base- line uniformity for every one of the Army’s 1,800 infantry squads. To achieve that, a test is being de- veloped with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command to evaluate a squad’s shoot, move and communicate functions to come New infantry initiative builds squad as one system up with metrics that can apply across the infantry. “So, if industry comes back with a piece of equipment and says, ‘Hey, this is more lethal, this will make a squad more lethal,’ in- stead of us just jumping into it, we're like, ‘OK, well, let’s test it against our system,’” Kiniery said. Reducing soldiers’ load is not a new idea, nor is it novel, he said. “We’ve been talking about it for genera- tions,” Kiniery said. “It’s an extreme- ly hard problem to solve, but we, as Army leaders, would be derelict in our duty if we quit trying to solve it.” Kiniery asked industry for help. “What we plan to do is establish a common architecture that they can build to,” he said. “We must ensure we are no longer producing things in a vacuum. We must reduce redun- dancy and increase combat power.” Brig. Gen. Phillip Kiniery, director of the Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team and commandant of the U.S. Army Infantry School, speaks at a Warriors Corner presentation during AUSA's 2025 Global Force Symposium and Exposition. (AUSA PHOTO) Soldiers with the 3rd Infantry Division prepare to breach a bunker during a squad training exercise March 15 at the Zagan Training Complex in Poland. (U.S. ARMY/SGT. MCCANTS MARQUIS)www.ausa.org 14 AUSA Extra | March 28, 2025 ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY Q uickly scaling capabilities requires an “iterative, agile” approach in close partner- ship with industry, a senior Army officer said. During a panel discussion on con- tinuous transformation and scaling change at speed, Brig. Gen. Cain Baker, director of the Future Verti- cal Lift Cross-Functional Team, said that continuous transformation can only work in partnership with indus- try. “We’re not just looking for a one- type capability that we buy and put inside a formation and leave it. … That is not the partnership that we’re doing with industry,” Baker said Thursday at the Association of the U.S. Army's Global Force Sym- posium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama. “It’s an iterative, agile approach that we broaden the capability across multiple partners so we can scale as Agile approach critical to boosting capabilities quickly quickly as possible when the need is there,” Baker said. When it comes to continuous trans- formation and the ability to scale at speed, Baker said, the cross-func- tional teams are guided by three principles, beginning with the vola- tile and rapidly changing global landscape influenced by technology. Secondly, just as combatant com- manders forge partnerships with their geographic area partners, the cross-functional teams do the same with industry partners “with a mind- set of expanding an industrial base so we can actually scale,” Baker said. Brig. Gen. Rory Crooks, director of the Long-Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team, said the Army must optimize for production rather than performance. “We have to reframe our requirements to in- centivize that,” he said. When it comes to long-range preci- sion fires, Crooks said, “we absolute- ly need precision, we need mass. We need mass precision.” “What we try to get when we opti- mize performance is that 5% of extra performance you might squeeze out starts to drive the cost so high that I can't acquire these things at volume, and that's a problem for me when I need a lot of mass or mass precision,” Crooks said. With long-range precision fires, he said, the Army should avoid be- ing “too prescriptive” because there now are multiple options outside of the traditional military acquisition channels. “Now I can talk to industry that's very competent about rockets that didn't exist 10 years ago in the same way it does today,” Crooks said. “We have to come up with a tranche sort of method … with certain procurement demand signals that would make it worthwhile, economically feasible, for our industry partners.” Soldiers assigned to the 18th Field Artillery Brigade, XVIII Airborne Corps, fire a rocket from the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System during a live-fire exercise on March 11 at Fort Stewart, Georgia. (U.S. ARMY/SGT. BERNABE LOPEZ)www.ausa.org ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY March 28, 2025 | AUSA Extra 15 S ince the Army’s earliest days, NCOs have driven transfor- mation by identifying require- ments, and they are still driving transformation today, a panel of se- nior enlisted leaders said. “The NCO at the tactical edge can help with our scientists, except the scientists are building things in a nice little clean laboratory, and [NCOs] are out there rolling up their sleeves in the dirt … [and] giving candid feedback on form, factor, func- tionality, all the little things that they're going to try to break,” said Command Sgt. Maj. T.J. Holland, se- nior enlisted leader for Army Forces Command. In remarks on Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Associa- tion of the U.S. Army's Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Hunts- ville, Alabama, Holland was joined by Command Sgt. Maj. Brian Hes- ter of Army Futures Command and Command Sgt. Maj. Raymond Har- ris of Army Training and Doctrine Command to talk about the role of the NCO in driving transformation. Using the 82nd Airborne Division as an example, Holland said, “if you want to find out if something works, you can put it in the hands of an 82nd paratrooper. They're purpose-built to break things, right? That’s exactly what the NCO’s role is out there, to make sure that it doesn't break in times of need when you're in a two- way live-fire.” The Army, Holland said, is “expo- nentially learning” by having elevat- ed foundational training to the divi- sion level and putting “divisions in the dirt” to experiment, assess and validate new technology. NCOs can play a “huge role” in or- ganizational innovation, too, Hester said. “When we bring a new capabil- ity to the formation, we might think that we're going to use it and fight with it in one way, and when we de- liver it and [NCOs] take it to the dirt to start to use it, … where are they NCOs play 'huge role' in transformation at every level seeing opportunities organization- ally to change?” Hester said. “Is the rifle squad we have today going to be the same rifle squad we’ll have five or 20 years from now?” With the proliferation of experi- mentation on equipment and even formations, Harris pointed out that at some point, it’s got to come togeth- er in doctrine and the codification of systems. “There’s lots of experimentation and testing all these things, but then we’ve got to have the team that tri- ages it and determines what needs to be doctrine, what doesn't need to be doctrine, what's good for just a unit to have as a [tactic, technique and procedure] or a local standard operating procedure, and what actu- ally informs how we're going to train this and develop the materiel that's going to go on the battlefield for our soldiers,” Harris said. Harris also pointed out that, while some formations have been designat- ed as transformation in contact units with a mission to test, experiment, evaluate and give feedback on cut- ting-edge equipment and technology, every formation should be combat- ready and lethal. He noted that NCOs should be thinking about how their formations are organized with the equipment they have on hand and how they’ll be successful in combat. “You may not get that kit for 10 years,” he said. “Let the transformation in contact formations really focus on that for you, that's what they're designed and why they were picked to do it.” Senior enlisted leaders from across the force address a panel discussion during AUSA's 2025 Global Force Symposium and Exposition. (AUSA PHOTO) Sgt. Mahdi Amirouche, assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, prepares to launch a drone March 7 during Project Convergence-Capstone 5 at Fort Irwin, California. (U.S. ARMY/SGT. MATTHEW WANTROBA)www.ausa.org 16 AUSA Extra | March 28, 2025 ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY A mid the fastest transforma- tion the Army has ever seen, the service must make sure the institutional force is moving for- ward alongside its fighting forma- tions, said Maj. Gen. Christopher Beck, commanding general of the Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence. Speaking on a panel during the As- sociation of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama, titled “Insti- tutional Training and Transforma- tion,” Beck said that transformation is a team sport. Nested with every transformation in contact organization should be an element from the institutional Army, whether it’s Army Training and Doc- trine Command, the Combined Arms Center, the centers of excellence or the schoolhouses, Beck said. “We’ve got to ensure that we’re learning not just the materiel do- main lessons, but the entirety of the Institutional Army must adapt, adopt real-time lessons Experiments and teamwork drive Army transformation T hrough continuous experimen- tation and close coordination, the Army’s transformation has rapidly evolved, a senior Army leader said. Using the first Project Convergence experiment in 2020 as an example, Lt. Gen. David Hodne, director of the Futures and Concepts Center at Army Futures Command, said it was clear that the cross-functional teams established to focus on each of the Army’s modernization priorities needed to work together. “We realized if we didn't coordi- nate with each other, we would ac- tually potentially go in different di- rections,” Hodne said Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army's Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama. Hodne, a former director of the Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team, said the teams were deter- mined to “make sure … they could link sensors and shooters with the technology we're pursuing. That’s what converging our capabilities was, where we developed that, it was the first one.” As the fifth iteration of Project Convergence gets underway, the event will extend across the Indo- Pacific into the Philippines, Tahiti, Japan and Australia, Hodne said. “You can see the evolution” that has taken place each year since the first one, he said. This year’s Project Convergence, which tests new technologies and capabilities in the dirt, began at the corps level and below. When the sec- ond part begins next month, Hodne said, it will be “all the way to the corps [joint task force] level all the way down to the edge, the edge being the rifle squad on point, and we’re go- ing to do it across the geographical distance.” “If we can converge that data-cen- tric command-and-control from the combatant command to the corps, and the corps to the squad ... we can be far more effective,” Hodne said. Lt. Gen. David Hodne, director of the Fu- tures and Concepts Center at Army Fu- tures Command, addresses AUSA's 2025 Global Force Symposium. (AUSA PHOTO) DOTMLPF,” he said, referring to doctrine, organization, training, ma- teriel, leadership and education, per- sonnel, facilities and policy. “That’s what makes this so important.” Resources still determine how quickly and thoroughly programs of instruction are updated at the schoolhouses, but “at the same time, every one of them, every one of the commandants, are making real-time changes to ensure that our young leaders are graduating and they’re ready to lead in the Army,” Beck said. Leaders also continue to look for different ways to incorporate lessons learned from ongoing operations or exercises, Beck said. As an example, a team from the Combined Arms Cen- ter went to Europe to capture lessons learned from the fighting in Ukraine. Upon their return, the team briefed Army senior leaders, but those les- sons also were “immediately” shared to each center of excellence and regi- ment, Beck said. Without capturing those lessons, “we’re not going to be able to sustain it,” he said. “So, at the end of the day, this means that we require ev- erybody to be part of this discussion. This is deliberate transformation, and ultimately continuous transfor- mation, that drives lethality in our warfighting and [allows] us to deliver combat-ready formations.” Maj. Gen. Christopher Beck, commanding general of the Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence, speaks during AU- SA's Global Force Symposium. (AUSA PHOTO)www.ausa.org ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY March 28, 2025 | AUSA Extra 17 D riving transformation on a large scale begins with small ideas derived from observa- tions made in everyday life, said Rad- ha Plumb, former chief digital and AI officer for the Department of Defense. In remarks on Tuesday at a Gener- ation Next Forum at the Association of the U.S. Army's Global Force Sym- posium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama, Plumb pointed out that in any organization, people who are starting out may not feel their ideas are big enough to mention, much less be implemented, by more experienced teammates. “Most of us are keen observers in our own environment of what's work- ing and what's not, and yet, at the end of the day, a lot of times those ideas never go beyond us having in- formal chats or complaints about how ineffective or inefficient something is,” Plumb said. Still, she said, there is “transfor- mative potential” in how those little ideas can be translated into action over time. “I think a lot of times we stall out on applying those little ideas be- cause we assume those ideas don't Plumb: Small ideas can have 'transformative potential' matter,” Plumb said. “You think to yourself, 'Well, who am I? I'm this junior person. I've got three or four layers above me. All of them need to approve it. I'm not important enough for these people to listen to.'" Acknowledging that she has felt that way too, overwhelmed by “what needs to be navigated, unmotivated because it basically feels impossible to make progress,” Plumb encour- aged forum participants to put their small ideas into place consistently over long periods of time. Plumb urged participants to focus on managing people, including the boss, to motivate and incentivize them to get results. She encouraged leaders to “lean into the process” of navigating a bureaucracy, to move slowly, deliberately and consistently. She also pointed out the importance of managing themselves, to use their “superpowers to get results.” “Experiment, rinse and repeat, and do it over and over and over again un- til you start getting something that looks right and then figuring out how to buy that thing at scale and get the licenses you need,” Plumb said. Hosted by AUSA’s Center for Lead- ership, the Generation Next Forum provides an interactive workshop for emerging leaders to network and learn from industry and military leaders. This year’s event featured about 75 participants and the theme, “Empowering Tomorrow’s Leaders: Navigating AI in Dynamic Environ- ments.” Emerging leaders network and learn from industry and military leaders at the Genera- tion Next Forum during AUSA's Global Force Symposium . (AUSA PHOTO) Radha Plumb, former chief digital and AI officer for the Department of Defense, ad- dresses a Generation Next Forum hosted by AUSA's Center for Leadership during the association's Global Force Symposium and Exposition. (AUSA PHOTO)www.ausa.org 18 AUSA Extra | March 28, 2025 ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY Scenes from Global Force 2025 Attendees at AUSA’s Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama, including soldiers, defense industry represen- tatives, AUSA members and more, explore new technologies and networking opportunities in the exhibit hall. (AUSA PHOTO) Soldiers and civilians interact on the exhibit floor during the AUSA Global Force Symposium and Exposition. (AUSA PHOTO) Members of AUSA's national headquarters staff speak with sol- diers and defense industry representatives during AUSA's 2025 Global Force Symposium and Exposition. (AUSA PHOTO)Your mission. Our code. Solutions driven by customized machine learning. Building trusted AI. Ensuring a safer world.Next >