WASHINGTON — The US Army is streamlining and modernizing its upper-echelon command posts so they need fewer people and equipment when deploying to crises and training missions, officials said Monday at the Association of the US Army annual meeting.
The Army is responding to answering a formal requirements for the Home-Station Mission Command initiative in response to a 2014 needs statement from Army Forces Command. The effort, focused at division, corps and theater commands, would move all the functions supported at a deployed command post to a home-station "sanctuary."
"That connectivity, that seamlessness lets the commander and his staff interact the way they need to, regardless of their physical location," said Jeff Witsken, the Army's chief of network integration. "It really turns on its head the definition of a command post, which has been the command post is where the commander and their staff do their business. These days, where the commander and the staff are, that is the command post."
The idea is in the long term to take the various hardware and software capabilities — like the ones that govern artillery, intelligence, battle command — and merge them into a common software environment that can run them all as thin-client applications. These would run in command posts at home, in aircraft en route and while deployed.
This would give commanders the ability to manage campaigns from home station at the earliest phases and reduce the footprint of a deployed combat or humanitarian force.
"Robust, redundant communications are the fundamentals that allow mission command to occur, that ultimately give a commander more flexibility than he's had in the past," said Lt. Col. August Muller, the product director for the Installation Information Infrastructure Modernization Program, and acquisitions point person.
The goal to deploy the full capability is 2025. The first phase involves an overhaul or technical refresh for the command posts. Meanwhile, Training and Doctrine Command is undertaking a yearlong study, directed by the Army headquarters operations directorate (G-3/5//7), to determine the precise way ahead
The concept is not new. The Installation as a Docking Station (IaaDS) initiative has been employed to provide lower echelons at several installations access to the tactical mission command systems they would use when deployed.
In July 2011, the 43rd Sustainment Brigade, Fort Carson, Colorado, became the pilot location for IADS, followed by Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Drum, New York; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Riley, Kansas; Joint Base Lewis-McCord, Washington; Fort Gordon, Georgia; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Stewart, Georgia; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. About 90 percent of the Army was directed to comply with IADS.
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Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
