At Rock Island, Army infuses innovation into manufacturing, acquisition

Terry Gerton Lynda, thank you so much for joining me here on the floor of AUSA, it’s great to see you. You are at Army Contracting Command-Rock Island, which has kind of a particular niche in terms of how Army is doing acquisition. Tell us a little bit about the mission.

Lynda Armer So, at Army Contracting Command-Rock Island, we have the workforce at Rock Island, plus now we have the workforce located in New Jersey, including Picatinny and Fort Dix. Our largest mission is our munitions mission. We do all of the conventional

ammunition for the joint force. We do production as well as modernization of facilities — because most of our facilities are 1940s facilities, we spend a lot of time and investment trying to bring our facilities up to a more modernized state. And then we support the Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center that’s located on Rock Island Arsenal. They are a subcommand to TACOM, Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, up in Detroit Arsenal, and they do advanced manufacturing for the Army and then we provide all of the global logistics for the Army. So, we do the LOGCAP contract, which is the base life support that we do globally for soldiers, as well as the EAGLE contract, which is supply maintenance and transportation at all of our installations. We do global security contracts; so we’re adding guards contracts to some of our bases today, stateside, that we hadn’t previously done in the past. We had them overseas guarding our forward operating bases, but we haven’t used them stateside, and we’re starting to do that more recently. And then we have some other support to the installations that include Rock Island Arsenal, Picatinny Arsenal. We do some support at Fort Dix as well, as support to the Army Reserves there. We also have the Futures Directorate that we do all of our Other Transactions, which is all of our prototyping. We do prototyping for OSW, a lot of the services — to include the Army — and if we do well, we go into production off of those same vehicles.

Terry Gerton Wow, you have got your hands full then, or maybe I should say your fingers in a lot of pies.  From your perspective, what are the biggest challenges that Army is facing in its industrial base today?

Lynda Armer The industrial base was built in the 1940s, and the facilities are old, the equipment is old. But we are really struggling in replacing it, because a munitions line is very complex. It’s not just as easy as buying new equipment, plugging it in and it works. Everything requires additional tooling and additional work to ensure that it actually is producing a munition that can be qualified and fired out of a piece of equipment. And so we are really struggling with how to move from the 1940s technology to today.

Terry Gerton How are you approaching that? Are you looking at allied technology? Are you manufacturing new?

Lynda Armer We have tried several things. Unfortunately, I would say a lot of our contractors are going back to the 1940s’ technology, because it actually has been proven out and works. We have struggled with finding a solution that we need today, which is a more modular, flexible solution. The goal that our portfolio acquisition executive has placed before us is, how do we find a facility — modular, flexible, turn the switch off when we don’t need it, turn to switch on when we do need it? Right now, we struggle because we have to keep a minimal amount of munitions flowing through our lines. If we shut the line down, the whole supply chain shuts down and we lose all of those vendors. And then we end up having to start over from scratch, working to put that line back together, and sometimes it takes years to get it back into production.

Terry Gerton How does that all fit with the Army’s ammunition strategy then? An Army in combat is going to consume an awful lot of ammunition.

Lynda Armer Our PAE is looking at what is the strategy. We have several DODICs that are in the system that are different, similar munitions, but more exquisite. Perhaps they have proximity fuses, perhaps they go a little bit farther, perhaps they are more damaging when they explode. And we’re looking at, how do we figure out what is the actual rounds that we need? Do we need 20 similar rounds, or could we just go with one for all services that we can mass produce faster? That would be the goal.

Terry Gerton And how are you doing that with public-private partnerships?

Lynda Armer We have utilized public-private partnerships to ensure that our government-owned, government-operated sites stay in production. What we found with Ukraine is the government-owned, contractor-operated sites and the government-owned, government-operated sites really saved us. We really struggled in putting new facilities in place fast enough, and so we were able to ramp up production within our own facilities. So having them with a viable workforce, a viable workload, actually reduces the overhead cost, allows us to stay in production and work-loading our personnel. And so that is the goal — to get more partnerships in there. So we’re working with industry to bring in their business, and we would do the actual work; so it’s kind of a reverse contract. They come to us with the requirement, they come with the money, we do the work and we get paid for it. And so we are willing to commercial work as well as government work as long as it fits within the scope of that installation. We’ve really done a lot to move that faster. Previously I had heard stories of, it takes 180 days or it takes a year or two years to get a public-private partnership put in place. Well, if you’re a company and you’re trying to sell a product and make money, you don’t have that long to wait. And so we have been working; our goal is to get them in place within a 30-day period. That’s what we’ve been working toward. We’ve been making a lot of progress to achieve that, but bringing in more capability is really the goal. So, you know, we are looking at right now — when we put out our production requirements, do we also put in the contract that we have a preference for some of the work? Maybe it’s a component, maybe it’s the load-assemble-pack of the munition, maybe the whole thing, but have a preference of putting that in a government-owned, government-operated site as part of the competition.

Terry Gerton A lot of times we hear going with public-private partnerships as a way to introduce innovation into the system. Ammunition doesn’t seem like a space where you’re getting a lot of new technology, but how are you bringing new tools, new innovation into the assembly?

Lynda Armer There is a lot of new innovation into the mix. The program offices go out and they find some capabilities. A lot of them are overseas, so if we can bring overseas capability to our installation, have that company set up the line there and then we do the work, that is ultimately the goal. So we have worked some of that as well to bring those lines where we need that particular round or warhead, but we want to bring it stateside, because if we have it stateside then we know that when we need it we can produce it.

Terry Gerton And as you’re dealing with these assembly lines that may be 1940s technology, maybe later, how are you managing the workforce? How are you keeping people engaged in that? How do they feel about that? How do you keep them trained?

Lynda Armer So the GO-GOs, they have skilled artisans that they continually bring on, and they do a really good job of ramping up when they have workload; and then unfortunately if they don’t have workload, they have to ramp down and reduce their workforce. But the goal is to take those skilled artisans who are trained, but perhaps when we bring in a modernized line, they’re learning new skills and they continue to execute. We have them in places where we are reaching out to technical centers that are growing, welders and foragers and machinists, that we have a really good connection within the community.

Terry Gerton So as you think about all of the missions that ACC-Rock Island has, what are you looking at as the biggest challenges in front of you? What’s ahead?

Lynda Armer Where we have been going lately is really has to do with where the administration wants us to go: holding contractors accountable, moving faster. Not just moving faster and putting the contracts in place faster, which is part of it, but in the execution place. And so as we’ve looked at some of our modernization projects across the OIB, it was taking us — and other contracting activities — seven to nine years to put a new facility on one of our OIB sites. Seven to nine years is too long. And so an individual at USACE had said, and this was a couple years ago, that over the course of six years, the cost of construction had gone up 400%. Well, 400% is unaffordable for the Army. So, if it takes us seven to nine years to go from start of design to completion of construction and ready to start production, then the cost becomes unaffordable for us. So we need to tighten that up. So, we have used different vehicles. We’ve used the new authority that allows us to do construction, the 2808 Other Transaction authority; we have used the 1244 and 1242 Ukraine authorities to move faster on our acquisitions. And so that has helped. And then we have found, in some cases, new entrants who are set to build facilities within a 48-month time period, which includes the design, all of the construction and the qualification of the round. So that is a big step in the right direction.