Claude M. Bolton Jr., assistant secretary of the Army talks to Defense AT & L

Defense AT&L, Nov-Dec, 2004

A former Defense Systems Management College commandant, Claude M. Bolton Jr., serves as the Army acquisition executive, the senior procurement executive, and the science advisor to the secretary of the Army. Bolton is also the senior research and development official for the Department of the Army. His responsibilities include appointing, managing, and evaluating program executive officers (PEOs) and program managers (PMs); managing the Army Acquisition Corps; and overseeing research, development, test, evaluation, and acquisition programs.

On Aug. 16, 2004, Paul McMahon, DAU liaison to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, with the assistance of Christina Cavoli, Defense AT & L contributing editor, interviewed Bolton in his Pentagon office. Bolton covered a broad range of topics, including new combat systems; budgetary and personnel challenges facing the Army; AT & L education and training; the basics of terminating a program; and a new uniform that he dubs "the best thing since sliced bread."

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Q

Your office is responsible for providing weapon systems and equipment for the Army. You have often said that in your position, you serve the soldier. What are you doing to help soldiers accomplish their missions successfully and return home safely?

A

We have two focuses. One is the immediate concerns of soldiers, particularly those in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the past 18 months, we've had our acquisition and logistician folks on the ground. That involvement led to something we call the rapid equipping. We sent a colonel to Afghanistan to ask, "What do the soldiers here need?" What we needed in those days was to clear caves, which put soldiers' lives at risk. So he took over PackBots--robots that soldiers used to clear caves.

That became a larger initiative: we will field to the soldier from zero time to 90 days. We've fielded things to them in as little as 12 hours. When we needed to check wells for caches of weapons, we modified a camera and put it on a tether within six hours, and it was on a mission 12 hours later. Within the first mission or two, we were able to find large caches of weapons. This initiative provided shims to open locks. Locks may not be that expensive to you and me, but for homeowners in Afghanistan, locks are expensive. Initially, we had to destroy locks to gain access, but now, with a simple metal shim, we can open the locks, clear the building, and lock it back up. It helps everybody out.

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The initiative that looks at the longer term is the RFI--the rapid fielding initiative--done by PEO Soldier [Program Executive Office Soldier]. A couple of years ago, we outfitted about 20,000 soldiers with about $3,000-worth each of arm pads, knee pads, weapons optics, and soldier-type items. This year, we will outfit over 176,000 soldiers.

IBA--interceptor body armor--consists of SAPI [small arms protective inserts] plates and the outer tactical vest that provide body armor for the soldier. We've gone from a couple of thousand sets a month to 25,000 sets a month and from two contractors to six contractors. A year-plus ago, we were producing about 12 fully up-armored Humvees[R] [HMMWVs--high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles] a month. Since then, we've accelerated production to 350 a month, and starting in October, we'll produce 450 a month with the same two contractors. I've been very impressed with the way industry has stepped up to the task of helping soldiers.

There are two parts to this. The first part is tactical: Got to have it right now. The second is more strategic: What are we going to do in the future? That really gets into how we are reorganizing acquisition and sustainment and how we are working with contractors and the industrial base to help ourselves in the long run.

Q

The Army is working to increase capabilities for the soldier by merging the sustaining and equipping sides of the house. Can you tell us about this initiative?

A

Gen. Paul Kern, commanding general of U.S. Army Materiel Command, and I recently signed an MOA [memorandum of agreement] that formalized the process of bringing together the sustainment part within the materiel command and the acquisition side. The idea is to grow the staffs and the processes together. What the commanders are doing now is writing an implementation plan: How does this really work? What does the workforce really do? Even better, there are metrics--as you may recall, I like the big "M" word--and they allow us to understand how well we're achieving what we want to achieve and how to change it for the better.

Here in the Army, we have program evaluation groups, or PEGs, for the development and management of budgets in our separate functional areas--equipping, manning, installations, sustaining, and training. We're in the throes of rethinking our "equip" PEG. We're saying, for equipping and sustaining, "Bring 'em together!" One PEG, and call it "life cycle PEG." The job is to figure out what capability is needed over the program objective memorandum--DoD's five year planning horizon--by year for the soldier. Not, what is acquisition supposed to be doing? Not, what should logistics do? But, together, how do you put that to the field to make it work?