Life-Cycle Management - Army Logistics University - U.S. Army

Life-Cycle Management:
Reducing the Burden
on the Soldier
BY MAJOR GENERAL JAMES H. PILLSBURY
The life-cycle management command initiative is
changing how the Army’s technology, acquisition,
and sustainment activities function. What does this
change mean for the soldier in the field?
As reported in the last two issues of Army Logistician,
the Army has undertaken a major initiative to bring
together the major subordinate commands (MSCs) of the
Army Materiel Command (AMC) and the program executive
officers (PEOs) and program managers (PMs)
reporting to the Army Acquisition Executive (AAE) to
form life-cycle management commands (LCMCs). The
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics,
and Technology (ASAALT), who is also the AAE,
signed an implementation directive on 5 October 2004
establishing the first LCMC, the Aviation and Missile
LCMC at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. Army Logistician
invited the commander of the Aviation and Missile
LCMC, Major General James H. Pillsbury, to discuss
the LCMC initiative and what it means for logisticians in
the field.
What is the basic thinking behind the LCMC initiative?
What problems with the current structure of
AMC MSCs and PEOs and PMs is the initiative
designed to remedy?
Since its creation in 1962, AMC has grown and
undergone many reorganizations. Much of the organizational
change has sought to address the question
of how best to manage the command’s two major functional
areas—materiel development and materiel readiness
(or sustainment). AMC’s organization has tended to
alternate between periods when the two functions were
merged into MSCs largely organized along commodity
lines (aviation and missile, tank-automotive, etc.) and
periods when the two functions were separated. The latter
arrangement was most clearly evident from 1976 to
1984, when AMC was known as the Army Materiel
Development and Readiness Command (DARCOM)
and organized into parallel commodity MSCs, one for
research and development and one for materiel readiness
2
Major General James
H. Pillsbury is the
Commanding General
of the Army Aviation
and Missile LCMC.
for each commodity area. In 1984, the parallel commands
were reunited into single commodity MSCs and
AMC reassumed its original name. Then, in 1987, the
materiel development and acquisition functions were
largely removed from AMC to a new structure of PEOs
and PMs reporting to a new position outside of AMC—
the AAE. This change, to some degree, reinstated the
DARCOM division between materiel development and
acquisition functions and sustainment functions.
At present, the missions remain divided, the ASAALT
with development and acquisition and AMC with sustainment.
The vision of the life-cycle management command
is to unite those mission areas by creating single
commands with responsibility for all three areas (technology,
acquisition, and sustainment).
The organization chart of the Aviation and Missile
LCMC looks rather complicated. To what
degree will the staffs of the Aviation and Missile
Command (AMCOM) and the PEOs and PMs
be integrated?
The Aviation and Missile LCMC initially will be
comprised of all elements of the current Aviation and
Missile Command and the Program Executive Office,
Aviation. The PEO Tactical Missiles and the PEO Air,
Space and Missile Defense are working on plans to
merge into a single PEO. Effective 1 June 2005, the
merged PEO Missiles and Space organization will be
included as part of the Aviation and Missile LCMC.
I am the commander of the LCMC, and Paul
Bogosian, PEO Aviation, assumes additional duties as
the Deputy to the Commander for Aviation. When the
newly merged PEO Missiles and Space joins the LCMC
in June, Brigadier General Mike Cannon will assume
additional duties as the LCMC Deputy Commanding
General for Missiles and Space.
MARCH–APRIL 2005