When Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy shops for equipment that will help fight the next war, he likes to smell the gasoline before he decides.
“Ten years ago, we were buying billions of dollars over PowerPoint,” he said during an appearance at the National Press Club on Friday. “Why do I think we’re getting better now? Things are flying and exploding, and you can smell gasoline.”
The move to more quickly develop the next generation of Army hardware requires private sector thinking, he said. To bring contractors on faster, the U.S. Army has leveraged an acquisition tool known as OTA, or Other Transaction Authority, to develop technology at the “speed of business.”
“Ultimately, it’s about speed,” McCarthy said in one of numerous references to the use of OTAs. “You need to get this stuff into the field when it’s relevant and then upgrade over time, like an iPhone.”
The secretary of the Army said he will continue to use OTAs “early and often.”
McCarthy also talked about the Army’s proposed $178 billion fiscal 2021 budget and the Army’s focus on innovation.
Modernization priorities include long-range precision fires, hypersonic missiles, and a replacement for the Black Hawk helicopter, with coming divestitures in legacy programs such as the Abrams tank.
“We’re still maintaining upgrades with the current fleet, but, over time, you’re starting to see us make the progression towards the new capabilities,” he said when asked if cuts to purchases of Black Hawks and Abrams tanks are a sign of things to come in the fiscal 2022 budget.
“That’s where the divestiture of legacy platforms will have to pick up and get into a much higher gear,” he said.
McCarthy made the case that technological capability will be necessary to reorient the Army to confront threats from Russia and China in line with the 2018 National Defense Strategy.
“We want to be the best in the world in all of these capabilities because America has a perfect record in predicting, incorrectly, the next war we’re going to be in,” he said to a laugh from the crowd. “So, we’ve got to make sure we can beat everybody.”
