AN INFORMATION ENABLED ARMY

Achieving the full spectrum dominance of the Objective Force requires changing the way we fight. Changing the way we fight requires a holistic transformation of Logistics, Personnel, Installation Management, Acquisition, Aviation, business practices - every aspect of The Army must transform. The Objective Force requires innovative changes and out-of-the-box ingenuity in the way we take care of our people and manage the information and material that enhances their readiness and answers their needs - both personal and professional, at home and in the short sword warfight at foxhole level. Simply put, we cannot achieve the Objective Force capabilities without leveraging the full potential of the technological advances that our Nation's industrial base and science and technology communities are developing. The Army has consolidated management of Information Technologies (IT) into a single effort Army Knowledge Management (AKM). AKM capitalizes on IT resources unique to our Nation and harnesses them for Transformation, for The Army, and for the Combatant Commanders.

Information management is critical to achieving The Army Vision, and Army Knowledge Management supports Transformation through the development and implementation of a network-centric, knowledge-based Army architecture interoperable with the joint system. AKM will accelerate the Detect-Decide-Deliver planning processes and enable warfighters to see the adversary first - before our forces are detected; understand the Common Relevant Operating Picture (CROP) first; act against adversaries first; and finish the warfight with decisive victories see first, understand first, act first, finish decisively. AKM will provide knowledge at the point of decision for all leaders from the factory to the foxhole.

Enabling collaborative mission planning and execution among widely dispersed locations around the globe, Army Knowledge Management will provide a rapid and seamless flow and exchange of actionable information and knowledge. The Network-centric operations that AKM enables will decrease our logistic footprint and enhance sustainability of the Objective Force through multi-nodal distribution networks reaching forward to the theater and back to installations. Advanced information technologies will dramatically enhance Battle Command. Command, Control, Communications, and Computer (C4) decision tools seamlessly linked to Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets produce a radically improved Common Relevant Operating Picture (CROP) and enable Battle Command.

AT WAR AND TRANSFORMING

AKM will dramatically enhance the warfighter's ability to distribute, process, fuse, and correlate unprecedented amounts of actionable data into information securely, reliably, and quickly enough to enable leaders to synchronize and mass effects for decisive results. Network-centric operations enable information awareness, information access, and information delivery.

The Army Knowledge Enterprise (AKE) construct describes The Army's process to enable improved strategic and tactical information distribution and collaboration. In short, AKE leverages the ingenuity and resourcefulness of our people in shaping the environment to achieve dominance and helps leaders achieve decision superiority and mission efficiencies.

Integration and refinement of existing Army networks is the first step in achieving a network-centric, information-enabled force that creates efficiencies and provides secure, reliable, actionable information communications. To this end, The Army activated the Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM). NETCOM is The Army's single authority assigned to operate, manage, and defend The Army's information infrastructure. NETCOM has assumed technical control of all Army networks Active, Guard, and Reserve. This new policy allows NETCOM to evaluate any system, application, or piece of equipment that touches The Army Networks. NETCOM will improve the capacity, performance, and security of our networks at every level.

Among others, one tangible product of NETCOM is the consolidation and removal of
redundant servers across The Army. This example of better business practice will harvest
significant savings in resources both dollars and managers while increasing the
effectiveness of the network. Since the first quarter FY02, we have reduced the number
of servers Army-wide by 16% - 311 in the National Capitol Region alone.
Army Knowledge Online (AKO) begins to allow The Army to decentralize the
management of information. AKO is The Army's secure, web-based, internet service
that leverages The Army's intellectual capital to better organize, train, equip, and maintain
our force. It gives our people a means to collaborate, to improve their situational
awareness, and to access their personnel data. Already, hard-copy processes that formerly
took days and weeks can now be accomplished almost instantly from pay to personnel
actions to assignments, to name a few. And AKO is just an early glimpse of the potential
capabilities of a Network-centric, knowledge based organization that harnesses the
potential of the global infostructure.

OPERATIONAL ARMY

The Objective Force

The Army is actively engaged in global operations supporting Combatant Commanders today, but it is our obligation to prepare for the future, as well. The Objective Force is The Army's future full-spectrum force that will be organized, manned, equipped and trained to be more strategically responsive, deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable

and sustainable than we are today - across the full spectrum of military operations as an integral member of a cohesive joint team.

The Nation will continue to face adaptive, asymmetric threats that capitalize on the power of information. To dominate and maintain superiority over these emerging challenges, The Army is changing the way we fight - a paradigm shift more significant than the 20th Century's introduction of the tank and the helicopter. The Army is changing from sequential and linear operations to distributed and simultaneous operations. The Objective Force - characterized by networks of people enabled with systems that provide actionable information and decision superiority will dissuade, deter or decisively defeat our adversaries anytime, anyplace, and anywhere.

The Objective Force will consist of command structures scaled to meet Joint Force
Commander requirements and modular combined-arms units tailored according to each
situation. Objective Force integrated, mobile, air-ground teams will conduct mounted
and dismounted operations and employ both manned and unmanned platforms to achieve
decisive victories. Capable of forcible entry and operations in austere environments to
address the spectrum of military operations - from humanitarian assistance to warfighting
the Objective Force will conduct simultaneous combat and
stability operations and master transitions between phases of
operations. It will be an offensively oriented, multi-dimensional
force enabled by advanced information technologies that give
Soldiers real-time intelligence and actionable information.
The Objective Force will arrive in theater combat capable -
deployment will be synonymous with employment. The
Objective Force will be strategically responsive and rapidly
deployable on the US Air Force family of inter-theater and intra-
theater aircraft. An Objective Force Unit of Action (UA) will
deploy on approximately one-third the number of aircraft required
to deploy a heavy brigade combat team today. It will be
operationally deployable and capable of operational maneuver
over strategic distances by air, land, or sea. Soldiers will overcome
anti-access and area denial strategies and environments through
precision maneuver and decision superiority.

of

Equipped with new systems designed to meet the needs of The Army's future fighting formations, the Objective Force will be a systems. This system of systems includes Soldiers equipped with

networked system
the Land Warrior system; a family of 18 integrated, synchronized, manned and unmanned
Future Combat Systems (FCS); and critical complementary systems such as the Comanche
and the Future Tactical Truck System. The components of the FCS are being
synchronously developed and fielded as a complete family to achieve the warfighting

AT WAR AND TRANSFORMING

capabilities the Nation requires to defeat adaptive, asymmetric conventional and unconventional adversaries.

Soldiers are the centerpiece of The Army's formation - not equipment. And Soldiers of the Objective Force will leverage dominant knowledge to gain decision superiority over any adversary. They will seamlessly integrate Objective Force capabilities with the capabilities of joint forces, Special Operations Forces, other federal agencies, and multinational forces. The Objective Force Soldiers will enable the United States to achieve its national security goals in a crisis, rather than simply inflict punitive strikes on an adversary. Employing FCS capabilities in formations called Units of Action (UA) and Units of Employment (UE), Objective Force Soldiers will provide campaign quality staying power - that means precision fire and maneuver to control terrain, people, and resources, without having to resort to indiscriminate collateral damage. The Land Warrior system will integrate individual Soldiers in the network while providing them increased protection and lethality. And FCS will give Soldiers the capability to destroy any adversary any weather and environment with smaller calibers, greater precision, more devastating target effects, and at longer-ranges than available today.

in

Joint C4ISR a network-centric information architecture nested within the Global Information Grid (GIG) will connect the Objective Force's system of systems. Capitalizing on the synergistic power of the information network enterprise, every Objective Force Soldier and platform will be capable of sensing and engaging the enemy while maintaining situational awareness of friendly forces. Advanced information technologies and C4ISR decision tools and assets will enhance the Common Relevant Operating Picture (CROP). The Objective Force will identify, locate, and engage critical targets with lethal or non-lethal affects and assess battle damage on those targets. The joint C4ISR linkages will enable the attack of targets with whatever joint or Army assets are available for immediate employment, whether the force is in contact or out of contact. Similarly, enhanced situational awareness will facilitate multi-layered active and passive defense measures including both offensive and defensive counter air against air and non-air breathing, manned and unmanned aerial vehicles.

The CROP and Network centric operations will enhance sustainability of the Objective Force through multi-nodal distribution networks that reach forward to the area of operations or reach back to the Home Station Operations Center. Increased reliability through equipment design and commonality among the FCS family of systems will enhance sustainability while reducing logistics demands. Advanced technologies will enable robust Objective Force operations while shrinking the logistics footprint and lift requirements of deployed forces.

The FCS is a transformational approach to meeting this Nation's requirements for the Objective Force. We designed and will field the FCS family in a carefully balanced manner to avoid optimizing a component at the expense of sub-optimizing the overarching capabilities of Objective and joint forces. The acquisition and requirements development

processes are being updated to accommodate the Department of Defense's (DoD)
direction to field a networked system of systems rapidly through spiral development and
an open architecture that allows maturing technological insertions as they occur.
The Army embraces the ongoing DoD and Joint Staff Capabilities and Acquisition
processes reform efforts to achieve revolutionary capabilities in the fielding of a new
generation of equipment. This collaborative DoD and JCS effort enables The Army to
design new information-age capable organizations holistically, use evolutionary acquisition
strategies to equip those organizations, and see the Objective Force fielded before the
end of this decade.

Science and Technology - Moving Toward the Transformed Army Preempting our adversaries' technological surprises over the past three years, Army Science and Technology investments are already providing America's Army with sustained overmatch in all materiel systems. And The Army has increased and focused its Science and Technology (S&T) investments. We are demonstrating the enabling joint interoperable technologies essential for Objective Force capabilities and accelerating their arrival. Our S&T program is pursuing a wide spectrum of technologies for unmanned air and ground systems that will expand the range of joint warfighting capabilities, reduce risk to Soldiers, and reduce the logistics footprint of the force. Realizing the full potential of unmanned

systems requires technological development in sensors that improve navigation and mission performance, in intelligent systems for semiautonomous or autonomous operation, in networked communications for mannedunmanned teaming, and in human-robotic interfaces, among many others.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Army partnership contracted for a Lead Systems Integrator (LSI) to accelerate the transition of FCS to the System Development and Demonstration (SDD) Phase, with a Milestone B decision in May 2003. The Army is on track to achieve first unit equipped in 2008 and an initial operating capability of one Objective Force Unit of Action (UA) in 2010. To accelerate development and in partnership DARPA, the focus on key transformation technologies for the FCS has been narrowed to the systems with the most promise. Our highest priority S&T efforts remain technological advances for the Future Combat System (FCS).

The Army will field FCS as a family of systems built on information age technologies embedded in manned and unmanned air and ground platforms. Integral to joint fires, the family of systems will integrate long-range air- and ground-based sensors with longrange cannon and missile precision munitions. The family of systems will also provide increased joint capabilities to conduct battle command, reconnaissance, mounted combat