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Why the Army picked Austin for Futures Command
My understanding is that the Austin HQ will initially begin with a staff of 500 and grow from there. May success be their constant companion.
7/13/18
After whittling down a list of more than 150 cities to five, the U.S. Army has decided on Austin, Texas, for its new four-star command designed to tackle modernization priorities that will help it fight the next wars. Questions on the distance from the Pentagon and other major four-star commands have cropped up overnight as well as whether or not the Army will struggle to fit in and be accepted by hip, anti-establishment entrepreneurs with whom it hopes to collaborate to gain a vast technological edge against peer adversaries. The Army Futures Command was stood up in October at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington. The plan is to realign the Army’s modernization priorities under a new organization that will implement cross-functional teams that correspond with the service’s top six modernization efforts: Long-Range Precision Fires, Next-Generation Combat Vehicle, Future Vertical Lift, the network, air and missile defense, and soldier lethality. These priorities address gaps the Army found — as it looked toward fighting complex, hybrid wars against near-peer adversaries — as the result of a focus on asymmetric warfare and counterinsurgency operations over the past 15 years. “We are in the midst of a change in the very character of war,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said at a July 13 Pentagon press briefing. “And we don’t, and didn’t, have the organization solely dedicated to that.”
Austin beat out a short list of Boston, Massachusetts; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “The choice was very difficult, but we ultimately had to make a choice that was best for the U.S. Army,” Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters during the briefing. While the service will have a headquarters established in an office building in downtown Austin for leadership, it will also embed personnel within incubator hubs already well established in the city, places where entrepreneurs sit in a “sea of laptops” collaborating on big problems and ideas, McCarthy described. Milley noted that the establishment of Army Futures Command in Austin is only beginning — its initial operational capability — but it will reach a full operational capability in one year from now. “It will take one year,” he said, “to stand this command up, have all of its processes fleshed out, have all of the people assigned and to start seeing some initial results.” Army Secretary Mark Esper added that much is likely to change over time. “We have to be comfortable operating in the gray over time. There may be things that we pull into the organization and move them back out as we evolve and learn. … That is part of the culture that we are trying to build, is flexibility to adapt your organization, your processes to the needs of the time.”
My understanding is that the Austin HQ will initially begin with a staff of 500 and grow from there. May success be their constant companion.