[17][18][19][20] Between 1995 and 2009, the Army spent $32 billion on programs such as the Future Combat System[21] that were later cancelled with no harvestable content.

[a] Over his tenure as Army Secretary, Esper led a process known as "night court", working with other top service officials, to free up and shift billions of dollars into modernization programs and based the new command in Austin, Texas, an area known for its innovative, technology-focused workforce.

[31][32][33][34] The Army gave the command's chief and the leaders of new groups, dubbed "§ cross-functional teams", the authority to manage requirements and the leeway to direct dollars.

Murray announced plans to stand up an Army Applications Lab[Note 1] to accelerate acquisition and deployment of materiel to the soldiers, including by using artificial intelligence (AI).

[62][63] More than 30 projects[64][65] were envisioned to become the materiel basis needed for overmatching any potential competitors in the 'continuum of conflict' over the next ten years[27][66] in multi-domain operations (MDO).

[92] Army Secretary Christine Wormuth announced the top six areas for the Army of 2030:[93][94]: minute 43:30  1) improved intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; 2) "Coordination at greater speed";[c] 3) "Win the Fires fight"; 4) concealment[95][96] via improved mobility and reduced signature; 5) "talk often and quickly";[97][j] and 6) logistics.

[93][98][46][47] [99][100] [101] [102] By 2022, Futures Command was conducting the third annual iteration of Project Convergence: experiments and joint tests of 300 technologies by the Defense Department and its allies and partners.

[a][108][94]: minute 51:00 [98][109][110] Two months later, Futures Command hosted a conference with representatives from AMC, TRADOC, FORSCOM, and Headquarters Department of the Army.

Each CFT must strike a balance amid constraints—the realms of requirements, acquisition, science and technology, test, resourcing, costing, and sustainment—to produce a realizable concept before a competitor achieves it.

AFC personnel also operate in and from dozens of military installations around the country, including:In 2018, the Army secretary ordered AFC to draft an execution order to create an Army AI Task Force (A-AI TF) to support the DoD Joint AI center.

[228][229][36][230] The Army AI task force establish scalable machine learning projects at Carnegie Mellon University.

[231][232] That same year, the Army Applications Laboratory was established along with AFC to help connect Army-future efforts and commercial products and ideas.

[Note 1] In 2019, the Army CIO/G-6 was ordered to create an Identity, Credential, and Access Management system to efficiently issue and verify credentials to non-person entities (AI agents and machines)[233] As well, DCS G-2 will coordinate with CG AFC, and director of A-AI TF, to provide intelligence for Long-Range Precision Fires.

[234][235][236][237] In 2022, DEVCOM Analysis Center (DAC) signed a cooperative agreement with Northeastern University's Kostas Research Institute (KRI) to build on KRI's analytic framework, with six other universities on artificial intelligence and assistive automation (AI/AA), to further Army sub-goals ("mission effectiveness analysis, ontology for decision making, automatic target recognition, human systems integration, cyber resilience/electronic warfare threat defense, and assessing autonomous maneuver/mobility").

[246] The Army looks for ideas from defense contractors In 2018, for example, the Network CFT and the Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications—Tactical (PEO C3T) hosted a forum so vendors could learn what products might soon work as testable or deployable systems.

[197][247][248][249] Vendors submitted hundreds of white papers; ones with "very mature ideas" were passed to the Army's acquisition community and to the Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC).

[89] In January 2020, the optionally manned fighting vehicle solicitation was cancelled when its requirements added up to an unobtainable project;[251] By October 2021, experiments with a company-sized tele-operated / unmanned formation were underway at Camp Grayling, Michigan.

[255][254][256][257] The 18 light and medium robotic combat vehicles (RCV), in concert with surrogate heavy RCVs (modified M113 armored personnel carriers), proxy manned control vehicles (MET-Ds), and drones for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), were to complete ATEC (Army Test and Evaluation Command) safety testing in May 2022[257] and live-fire drills in August 2022.

[268] This consolidation of expertise thus reduces the risks in a Materiel development decision (MDD), for the Army to admit a prototype into a program of record.)

So really all we're trying to do is get them all lined up under a single command…..from concept, S&T, RDT&E, through the requirements process, through the beginnings of the acquisition system—Milestone A, B, and C.[48]The PEOs work closely with their respective CFTs.

[15][154] The development process will consist of one or more cycles (prototype, demonstration/testing, and evaluation,[54][278]) meant to find and discard unrealistic requirements before a project becomes a program.

In June 2019, the prototypes were for long-range hypersonic weapons, high-energy laser defense, and space,[281][282][283] The Army tripled its spending on speed and range capabilities from 2017 to 2019.

TARDEC Ground Vehicle Center is working on high-voltage components for extended range cannon artillery that save on size and weight.

[133][291] Acquisition specialists are being encouraged to accept lateral transfers to RDECs where their skills are needed: Ground Vehicle Systems Center (formerly TARDEC, at Detroit Arsenal.

ASA(ALT) Bruce Jette says the acquisition community should seek to fail and find a new solution rather than commit a program to a drawn-out failure.

[269][28][a] During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Acquisition Executive and the AFC commander created a COVID-19 task force to try to project supplier problems 30, 60, and 90 days out.

[155][152][Note 2] Some modernization work will be done via the Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and education, Personnel and Facilities (DOTMLPF) framework.

[313] Congress has given the Army Other Transaction Authority (OTA),[314][Note 1] which allows the PEOs to enter into Full Rate Production quicker by permitting the services to control their own programs of record, rather than DoD.

Pne goal is to formulate the plans in simple, coherent language which nests within the national security strategic documents.

[411][412] The US Air Force is seeking to launch Integrated Capabilities Command by year-end 2024 to set future requirements for the USAF.