MOUNT-ACTD — A Positive Training Experience - Army Test and Evaluation Command

Program Manager, March, 2000 by BRYAN J. McVEIGH, Thomas D. Zeberlein, Michael C. Ryan

ATEC's Perspective for Program Managers

Throughout the world, urban centers are increasingly becoming likely sites for U.S. military operations, and they are likely to re main hotbeds well into the 21st century. The complexities of this environment, such as line-of-sight restrictions, inherent fortifications, limited intelligence, densely constructed areas, and the presence of noncombatants, constrain our current forces and technology More worrisome is the fact that the Army and Marine Corps do not currently possess an overwhelming technological advantage in an urban environment, unlike most other hostile environments where, technologically they maintain weapons and information superiority.

Bridging the gap between mission and capabilities is the Military Operations in Urban Terrain Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (MOUT-ACTD), which has proven and is still proving its worth as a beneficial partnership among developers, users, testers, and evaluators.

The Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) first became involved with the MOUT-ACTD in October 1998. Since then, Army and Marine Corps developers and users received and continue to receive the benefit of independent assessment by ATEC, while testers and evaluators gained and will continue to gain data and insights to support future testing efforts. Equally important, the MOUT-ACTD demonstrated and continues to demonstrate how teamwork and cooperation between all the key players can strike a reasonable balance between the need to gather data and the need to provide warfighters with a positive training experience.

ATEC, which is formally known as Operational Test and Evaluation Command, became involved with the MOUT-ACTD in October 1998. In this article, we provide a general background, overview, assessment opportunities, ATEC's Assessment Methodology, and finally insights into the overall ACTD process from our perspective as lead analysts and evaluators. These insights include such issues as clearly defined requirements early on; advantages of multiple experiments; good idea cutoff date; transition to the acquisition process; and transition to the test and evaluation process.

Pressing Deficiencies Prompt Action

In 1994, the Department of Defense established the ACTD process to exploit mature technologies and improve rapid-response rates for urgent military requirements. From its inception, the ACTD process was designed so that the end user -- the warfighter -- could evaluate proposed technological solutions to military needs earlier in the acquisition life cycle.

In FY97, DoD established the joint Army and Marine Carps MOUT-ACTD, to address the most pressing deficiencies facing our troops in a MOUT environment. After a thorough review, identified deficiencies were then translated into 32 operational requirements agreed upon by the Army and Marine Corps. Covering a broad range, the resultant requirements addressed deficiencies in several areas: intelligence collection and dissemination; virtual mission planning; providing a stand-off breaching capability; the need for a blunt training round; as well as the need for more effective personnel restraints and casualty evacuation. These requirements were derived from operational deficiencies experienced by soldiers and Marines in past MOUT operations in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, and Haiti. With troops currently deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo, resolutions of these deficiencies are as critical today as they were in past conflicts.

Force-on-Force Experiments

The MOUT-ACTD objective is to improve a unit's tactical capabilities to dominate the MOUT environment. Accordingly, the MOUT-ACTD Program Team designed this ongoing ACTD to assess the military utility of emerging technologies combined with supporting tactics, techniques, and procedures. When placed in the hands of soldiers and Marines, these technical capabilities should increase their Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (C4I) engagement, force protection, and mobility.

Arguably, the key to a successful transition of any of these products into the acquisition process will be the thoroughness of the technical and operational assessments. To provide the supporting data for this assessment, the MOUT-ACTD Program Manager scheduled a series of 10 force-on-force experiments, which focused on establishing military utility of the individual technology candidates at the squad- and platoon-levels. The Army conducted six force-on-force experiments at Fort Benning, Ga., while the Marine Corps conducted four at Camp Lejeune, N.C. (Figure 1).

The best candidate technologies were selected from the 10 experiments; these selected technologies then underwent further experimentation at the company- and battalion-levels during the Joint Experiments. Those technologies demonstrating operational utility during the Joint Experiments will be integrated into the Culminating Demonstration, followed by a two-year Extended User Evaluation.

While the Joint Experiments and Culminating Demonstration focus on the operational utility of the integrated technology package, many candidate technologies are stand-alone products. These stand-alone products are expected to transition as individual technology solutions for specific user requirements. Such transition could include a combination of several initiatives: a streamlined acquisition process; nomination for the Warfighter Rapid Acquisition Program; inclusion into the Soldier Enhancement Program and the Marine Corps Enhancement Program; or placement on the General Services Administration schedule.