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US Army unveils its ‘Big 8’ initiatives

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command laid out its "Big 8" initiatives Wednesday during the Association of the US Army's Global Force Symposium. The goal of the Big 8 is to stay ahead of global threats and maintain overmatch against present and future adversaries. Listed, not necessarily in order of priority are: • The Future…

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command laid out its "Big 8" initiatives Wednesday during the Association of the US Army's Global Force Symposium.

The goal of the Big 8 is to stay ahead of global threats and maintain overmatch against present and future adversaries.

Listed, not necessarily in order of priority are:

• The Future Vertical Lift effort.

• Active protection.

• Cross-domain fires.

• Combat vehicles.

• Robotics and autonomous systems

• Expeditionary mission command

• Cyber electromagnetic

• Soldier/team performance and overmatch.

Moving these efforts from initiatives to fielded capability will prove challenging.

via www.defensenews.com

One of the major procurement successes of the post Vietnam era was the "Big 5" initiative, where the Army focused virtually all its procurement budget on the M1 tank, the M2/M3 Bradley, the UH-60 Blackhawk, the AH-64 Apache, and the MIM-104 Patriot.

Will the Big 8 focus work? I don't know. If they can manage to tightly focus each program, and avoid gold plating and programmatic bloat, there's a fair chance at least most will proceed.

Unfortunately, the Army hasn't had a lot of success managing major programs in a timely manner in the last 30 years.

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Responses to “US Army unveils its ‘Big 8’ initiatives”

  1. Quartermaster

    If they’ll prevent constant changes of what the system is supposed to have in the first iteration, they can solve most of their procurement problems. Freeze the specs and build the system. Look at improvements in the ‘B.’

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  2. Hmm

    Those “initiatives” don’t impress me. For the most part they’re vague – no picture comes to mind when you read them. They’re not “a thing”, like a tank or a helicopter, with measurable attributes. Only one of them (cross-domain fires) seems to involve killing the enemy. And who is the enemy that they are intended to defeat? Does ISIS lose if we have totally awesome “cyber electromagnetic” capability?
    The list strikes me as an ominous indication that the Army has no idea what its mission is and what tools it needs to accomplish its mission.

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  3. Esli

    Looks like some useful focus, but hardly comparable to the Big 5. These are essentially research focus areas. Probably a long time before any of these bear fruit. Of course as I write this it occurs to that back in the old days, the Big 5 might have started as “generate overmatch in heavy maneuver with combat vehicles combined with a third dimension, move Soldiers and cargo rapidly and knock enemy stuff out of the sky.

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