Mr. Douglas Bush, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology sits down for an interview with Warrior Maven’s Kris Osborn.
The two discuss Project Convergence, Long Range Hypersonic Weapons, the Abrams Tank, Top Priorities and more.
Partial transcript below – click video for full insights:
Kris Osborn Hello, and welcome to warrior Maven, the Center for Military Modernization. The words I would use to describe this today is excellent and extremely significant. We are joined by the army acquisition executive, very important role oversees hundreds of weapons and technology programs. Mr. Douglas Bush, he is the Assistant Secretary of the Army for acquisition logistics and technology.
Sir, it’s such a pleasure to have you. So much to discuss. I wanted to start with Project Convergence. Because gosh, you’d go back many years following the army programs as an expert. Project convergence really seems to represent a breakthrough in terms of what the Army has been hoping to do for years back with FCS the system of systems, this idea of networking, the force. Now that’s essentially happening, what are your thoughts on the progress and what things look like for this year, sir?
Mr. Douglas Bush Yeah, so the big thing about convergence is unlike some similar efforts in the past, it’s stayed focused on being experiment. So it’s truly a learning environment. We’re not doing formal weapons testing. It’s truly just trying new things out to see what works.
Over time, it’s become more and more focused on the network. So I think that’s what I think John Richardson would call the center of gravity of the event. And I think that’s the right center of gravity, because developing individual systems is something the army is pretty good at.
Networking, everything together, given the pace of the threat and the complexity of that technology, is something that all the services struggle with, I think, that environment they’re using every year to really push hard on the edge of what’s possible. There’s is the right approach for kind of networking at scale.
Kris Osborn Roger, that’s all I recall showing up and Project Convergence in 2020. Now, as the service looks forward to 22, by recall, the the basic paradigm was truncating, that sensor to shooter time from as far as 15 to 20 minutes to a matter of seconds. What is your take on what that means for future warfare?
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Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization and the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
