ADELPHI, Md. – As the Army of 2030 is delivered in a few short years, the efforts to understand what challenges the Army of 2040 and beyond will face sits squarely in the hands of a group of future thinking experts from Headquarters, Department of the Army, U.S. Army Futures Command, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Futures and Concepts Center brought together more than 200 subject matter experts from across the Army enterprise to Adelphi, Md., from April 8 -12, to help build a roadmap to bridge the 2030 to 2040 space.
Lt. Gen. David Hodne, FCC director, provided opening comments that set the stage for the week and emphasized the importance of coming together for one common goal.
“There is a sense of urgency with the work we are doing. The lieutenants and privates of today will be the battalion commanders and command sergeants major who depend on the work you are doing this week,” stated Hodne.
The FCC Off-Site’s criticality lies in its capacity to foster a unified vision that propels us toward revolutionary breakthroughs and solidifies our preparedness for the challenges ahead. The Army's uncertain future needs creative, forward-thinking leaders to drive change.
With groups ranging from 10 to 60, the Concept Required Capabilities sessions (or breakout sessions) provide the foundation for collaboration across Capability Development Integration Directorates, AFC, and other Army stakeholders. CRCs are measurable in their ability to solve a military problem potentially and sufficiently detailed to facilitate the transition to capability development processes.
"Early collaboration is the bedrock upon which our future concepts are sculpted. It's akin to a symphony—each note is essential, and when played in concert, the result is harmonious and powerful, said Col. James Jones, Medical Capability Development Integration Directorate director. "In the pursuit of modernizing our capabilities, we've recognized that early, integrated teamwork is the key to transforming ideas into actionable strategies that ensure our forces maintain a decisive advantage."
In late 2022, AFC leadership identified the need for a "running estimate" of future challenges the Army of 2040 might face, including how it is likely to be shaped by rapidly evolving technologies and shifting global geopolitics.
An initial version of the document, which focused on the 2040 timeframe, was developed by AFC’s Directorate of Intelligence and Security in early 2023.
"Army Futures Command's critical mission is to transform the Army through new capabilities, formations, and operational concepts that provide war-winning readiness. Understanding the conditions of the future operational environment and how adversaries may fight is necessary to inform the command to develop the capabilities, formations, and concepts to achieve overmatch in those conditions," said Jacob Barton, Ph.D., AFC's future operational environment intelligence chief.
FCC is designing the future force by developing integrated concepts and requirements, which are informed by experimentation and synchronized into AFC and Army processes to drive persistent Army modernization.
The vision for FCC is the establishment of a cutting-edge and distributive center for the exploration of the future that is adept, adaptive, innovative, inquisitive, out of the box, technology-enhanced, closely linked to the threat and technology communities and our Joint and Coalition partners and dedicated to examining the future operational environment to provide the Army with a path to the future.
The groundbreaking work of AFC’s headquarters directorates, subordinate commands, research laboratories, innovation hubs and Cross-Functional Teams isadvancing the Army's six modernization priorities: long range precision fires, next generation combat vehicle, future vertical lift, air and missile defense, network and Soldier lethality.
AFC pursues and integrates these advances in close coordination with other members of the Army transformation enterprise, strengthening the Army’s ability to develop and maintain future readiness as an integrated team.
Through continuous transformation, the Army ensures our adversaries cannot out-range or outpace us on traditional battlefields or in the new frontiers of space and cyberspace.
Throughout the week, FCC held the CRC sessions to look at the capability and functional problem sets and began the development of the road map for 2040. This is the start point in building that bridge. Many of the actions and ideas this week are being briefed at the next level of Army coordination in the upcoming weeks and will continue this process as we transform the Army each day in the future.
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The Future and Concepts Center executes four core functions (Concepts, Experimentation, Requirements, and Integration), ensuring the Army can establish a modernization path to the Army needed 5 to 15 years into the future that can defeat all threats in the Future Operational Environment.
