Chiarelli praises Army aviation community - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Chiarelli praises Army aviation community

The rest of the Army has a lot to learn from the service’s aviation community and how it manages its portfolio of weapon systems, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli says.

Chiarelli is leading the service’s capability portfolio reviews, a series of cost-benefit analysis studies intended to determine whether or not the Army is making the right investments. For instance, the precision fires portfolio review led to the cancellation of the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, among other decisions.

Chiarelli discussed the aviation and combat vehicle reviews at the Army’s recent Armor Warfighting Conference at Fort Knox, Ky.

Chiarelli described the aviation branch as “the most responsive organization” throughout the process. Because helicopters and other lift assets are in such high demand in Iraq and Afghanistan and the equipment has been reset so many times, the aviation community keeps excellent tabs on where everything is and the status of it, Chiarelli said.

“It has really come to light as we’ve done these portfolio reviews, they really understand what they have and why they have it,” he said. “I mean I asked, ‘Where did that requirement come from?’ to other folks and … it’s like I just asked them to define the theory of relativity — only for some of them that would be easier, the system is so convoluted.”

The Army is also conducting a combat vehicle portfolio review that includes the new Ground Combat Vehicle in its analysis.

“We’ll talk about GCV and how it fits into the force structure,” Chiarelli said in an interview following remarks.

“If you look at anyone of these systems as an individual system, you can sell just about anything. But, when you look at entire portfolio, you can start to see where we have duplication in different systems or maybe we’re overinvesting in one and underinvesting in another.”

When the number of systems is reduced, it results in a number of second- and third-order effects, Chiarelli said. “If I take one vehicle out of the inventory, the impact that that has from maintenance to parts to logistics to everything else is just huge.”

The combat vehicle review is also examining how the Army will distribute Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles in the future.

When he canceled the Manned Ground Vehicles component of the Future Combat Systems program, Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the Army to devise a plan to integrate MRAPs into the force.

The Army’s Training and Doctrine Command did the analysis work last summer and recommended putting about 3,700 vehicles into the Army’s tables of organization and equipment, particularly for Combat Support and Combat Service Support units, according to Chiarelli. The rest of the vehicles would be put into packaged sets available to units getting ready to deploy but not be part of their standard equipment, he said.

“At the same time we’re relooking that to see if it doesn’t make some sense to put MRAPs in our active formation and not put the lion’s share into these combat sets that would be made available to units who need them to deploy,” Chiarelli said. This means putting more MRAPs down at the unit level, he said.

“So our initial look at integration of MRAPs is to put about 3,700 into our combat formations and make capability sets available both for units to train with and deploy with. But with the combat vehicle portfolio review, we may look at getting into those sets and providing more down to unit level for training.”