Transforming PEOs to Problem Solvers To Spur Innovation

Across the U.S. Army, program executive officers, or PEOs, are changing how they bring in technologies, capabilities and services that the Army of the future needs now. This is bringing in capabilities much sooner, at a lower risk and scale and forging partnerships across the service.

These changes are necessary as the service continues to shift its unit of action from the brigade combat team to the higher division level to better adapt its warfighting for great power competition against equal or better adversaries.

At the heart of this shift is the addition of the TIC, or the transforming in contact, concept.

These are the identified user groups within organizations that will foster feedback and conduct experimentation in the field—as the Army shifts from purely laboratory-developed technology processes that do not incorporate early user input to a soldier-centered design process.

The TIC structure will have groups across the Army rapidly test equipment and services for the PEOs so the Army can quickly and effectively acquire and field technology needed for a changing battlefield.

“There are a lot of big changes going on across the Department of Defense, across the Army,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Tim Reyna (Ret.), moderating a panel of PEOs on August 19 at AFCEA International’s TechNet Augusta conference, held August 18-21, in Augusta, Georgia.

For the Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI), that evolution means solving problems, said Lee James, PEO STRI’s acting deputy program executive officer.

The PEO delivers, maintains and manages more than 300 simulation, training and instrumentation products, which includes cyber capabilities and testing technologies. And the PEO manages about 200 security cooperation efforts (foreign military sales) across 64 countries.

“We support warfighter exercises, and our training aides, devices and simulators drive and enable all of those events and engagements, and we also maintain as our own sustainment arm,” James noted. “So, when we are talking about Army readiness, we are talking about PEO STRI as part of that equation. With continuous transformation, for us that means transforming project management (PM) from cost, schedule, performance efforts to becoming problem solvers. We can do the PM stuff in our sleep, but what we really need to focus on is what those problem areas are and help the Army use that authority to help solve some of these problems.”

With the large digital framework that PEO STRI orchestrates, the PEO is working to not only reduce manpower and overhead but the information technology stacks as well.

“We are really taking that next-generation constructive training capability to the cloud,” James noted.

At the Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications and Networks (PEO-C3N), the Army’s office for developing its next generation of critical C3N technologies, one key shift is drastically reducing scale in the acquisition cycle, including for requirements, said Ward Roberts, assistant PEO for Command, Control, Communications and Network.

Instead of developing requirements for 100,000 systems across the whole Army, the service can drop down to fielding 10,000 systems for a certain division, tailored just to what they need.

“When you shape that requirement and ask industry to deliver a capability or shape a program at that scale, the risks associated with that also come at a much smaller scale,” Roberts noted. “The magnitude of risks are much lower.”

This shift means a greater focus on commercial solutions, technologies that are relatively off the shelf—ready today—and scoping them to a scale that is appropriate for the division and its timeframe. The move has also delegated authority down to lower leaders closer to end users and with smaller contract values.

“That is what fundamentally has allowed us to tailor programs, to be more agile and more responsive, and then build in an iterative cycle where we learn lessons first, and before we even finish the first iteration, we are already on to the next one, taking those lessons learned,” Roberts explained. “As opposed to the old days where we would spend three years negotiating a $200 billion contract and then be stuck with that same vehicle for the next five, six years.”

Laurence Mixon, acting deputy PEO, Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors (PEO IEW&S), sees the evolving processes injecting crucial capabilities in 12- to 18-month cycles.

“That means we are getting clear requirements from the stakeholder community, from the Army leadership, the G2, G3,5,7, as well as the units themselves, in order to modernize and transform,” Mixon said. “We have been very aggressive across our entire portfolio, in that regard, forming new partnerships with several units and then extending partnerships.”

Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. Robert J. (RJ) Mikesh, Jr., USA, deputy PEO, Program Executive Office Enterprise, said his office's transformation began in 2023, with the pivot to agile software.

“That has fundamentally changed how we think about software, from the requirements through delivery and, of course, sustaining those activities,” Mikesh offered. “Another big change is that we have completely changed our relationship with software original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), putting OEMs on direct contract with the government and having them help us work with systems integrators to ensure that they know their product better than anyone, to make sure that we are making the right configurations and the right employment of that software.”

That shift, in addition to involvement of the functional community, as well as the emergence of the Commercial Solutions Opening (CSOs) program that brings in more startup companies, has changed the way PEO Enterprise pursues contracting and digital solutions.

“Also, a game-changer is maximizing the use of low-code, no-code platforms,” the general stated. “That is becoming more prevalent in almost every single new program we have across the PEO.”

TechNet Augusta is organized by AFCEA International with help from the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence. SIGNAL Media is the official media of AFCEA International.