Posted on 07/15/2018 3:23:19 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
The U.S. Army is standing up the Army Futures Command in Austin, the capital of Texas, in its first major reorganization in more than forty years, Army leaders announced on Friday.
The new command will consolidate all Army efforts to prepare for war fighting, from planning to developing future combat systems. The Army had considered more than a hundred locations, but decided on Austin, Texas, since it is a growing tech hub close to top schools and affordable to live in.
The Army made the right choice. The Austin Mega Region has 6,500 high-tech companies, an innovation ecosystem with 36 incubators and accelerators, and dozens of companies that supply all manner of advanced technology to our military. There are tens of thousands of students and hundreds of thousands of veterans in the area, said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in a statement.
Army leaders during a press conference at the Pentagon said the Army is gearing up for potential wars in the future that will be fought with high-end technology, while still maintaining focus on current fights.
The character of war is fundamentally changing and whoever gets there first, will have unmatched lethality on the battlefield for years to come, said Army Secretary Mark Esper at a Pentagon press conference. Thats why this is so critical to get at, to make sure we can get there first.
The Army Futures Command will consolidate the Armys entire modernization process under one roof, and focus on developing critical technologies such as directed energy for air missile defense, hypersonics for long-range fires, and robotics for artificial intelligence for the next generation combat vehicle, Esper said.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Im guessing the military will find Texas considerably more friendly than the east coast/west coast tech centers. God Bless Texas...
And, hopefully, they can civilize that pocket of socialism that blights Texas.
That will not last long. Some rat will sell to the highest bidder.
Again though, Hooray for Texas. Another piece of technology to keep once we sever our ties with the 49 biotches.
Better this than the Amazon HQ.
In my long military contracting career, I worked on numerous Army projects including Crusader and Future Combat Systems. But what was apparent, even in the other projects, was the Army had only marginal capabilities in determining what they needed and whether the contractor was meeting their needs. Crusader was ridiculous. I don’t remember the exact weight but I want to say it was 90 tons for the original and fifty-something for the next version. That means it could only be delivered by ship and the weight meant it could only use specially prepared surfaces and probably no bridges you’d find in a combat zone. It had only marginal maneuver capabilities and, on top of that, it was supposed to eventually be an electric vehicle. I was making my living off this turkey and even I was glad when it was cancelled.
Later, via the magic of politics, Crusader became the first “working” FCS vehicle, despite having nothing in common with the new “common vehicle architecture.” The Crusader was a giant, autoloading cannon that could drop three 155? mm shells on target at the same time, by calculating powder load and drop angle. By that time the weight had dropped to a more politically acceptable level, but was not high enough for reality. I asked our top mechanical engineer what would happen over the life of a tank that was used in the auto-fire mode. He said, “It will destroy itself and the crew.” It wasn’t as if the engineers hadn’t tried to warn the army, it’s that the top brass didn’t want to hear it. They wanted their monster tank and it didn’t matter how they had to rearrange reality to get it.
Then came FCS. Because it had to be air delivered and it was also chocked full of technology, it had slab sides. We know that to have any possibility of survival in battle that armor, of which it had none, has to be slopped at around 30 degrees. I asked a colonel how the vehicles would survive a hit and his answer was a blithe, “We will have such control over the battle space that nothing will get close enough to land a hit.” That was a rather stunning statement and shortly after we started losing vehicles in Iraq to roadside bombs and guys carrying a wire guided missile. Everywhere was the battlespace. There were no battle lines.
The FCS was doomed from its inception by a variety of management flaws. There were two “integrator of integrators.” Nobody was managing the project. Nobody had decision authority AND, our top management got their award fee based on how much they spent; whether we had any documents to design by or not. So we spent the money without knowing what we were supposed to design. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was canceled.
LMAO.
It could only move along its own special rail bed, but it really hurt if it hit you with its main gun.
There isn’t room on an existing Army base to set it up?
Thats a common theme in the acquisitions realm. Careers and reputations are at stake. Programs take on a life of their own despite the glaring evidence that a weapons system in development is in fail mode. I witnessed the same effect with the Comanche Program. It too finally died an ugly death, but not until $$$$$$$$$ was thrown at it.
This just in:
Elements of the US Army fell back to central Texas today, as the virus of pot-smoking, transgender, hippie communism continued to spread among populations along the coasts.
Military leaders said they hope that there they will have enough time to develop new means to counter the growing threat.
More at 11:00.
” It too finally died an ugly death, but not until $$$$$$$$$ was thrown at it. “
The military needs someone like Donald Rumsfeld to keep them in line. Unfortunately, visionary leaders whose vision is based in reality are thin on the ground.
Also, those contracts are full of high dollar political plums. Gay and lesbian outreach, ISO-9000 requirements (consulting dollars) and EPA madness. I wouldn’t be surprised to find somewhere in a modern contract that everybody working on it had to be a practicing vegan.
LMAO. So true...
The Army made the right choice. The Austin Mega Region has 6,500 high-tech companies, an innovation ecosystem with 36 incubators and accelerators, and dozens of companies that supply all manner of advanced technology to our military. There are tens of thousands of students and hundreds of thousands of veterans in the area, said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in a statement.
...
It’s also infested with liberals.
...hopefully, they can civilize that pocket of socialism that blights Texas.
That would be great. However, Ft Bliss has not made El Paso conservative.
And, San Antonio is somewhat liberal, and has Ft Sam Houston.
But, we can hope :-)
San Antonio has Lackland AFB as well. I would have said that the USAF was the most liberal service, but today it seems that race is undetermined.
That said, Austin is known as the San Francisco of Texas for a reason.
Defense acquisitions needs tremendous reform. I haven’t done very much with the Army, but it sounds like the Army is messed up. But I have done a lot with the Air Force and the Navy. We could swap stories. I would be surprised if any branch is more messed up than the Air Force. Sometimes I think that they don’t even want weapon systems. They just try to spend money. Nothing else matters.
Ft. Hood is only about 50 miles North of Austin. Home of the 1st. Cavalry Division.
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