The upcoming winter conference held by the Association of the U.S. Army will grant the Army community a forum to discuss and evaluate the path forward for future preparedness and operations.
The annual Global Force Symposium, to be held March 14 through March 17 in Huntsville, Alabama, this year focuses on a theme of "building readiness for today and tomorrow," and features top commanders from across the Army.
"Ignoring readiness shortfalls puts our nation at great risk. The choice to focus on near-term readiness has risk," Acting Army Secretary Patrick Murphy said in a Capitol Hill testimony Feb. 24. "We're mortgaging our future readiness because we have to ensure success in today's battles."
Murphy is scheduled to speak the morning of the final day of the AUSA conference. He'll be joined on the agenda by leaders from Army Materiel Command, Army Training and Doctrine Command, Army Cyber Command, Army Forces Strategic Command and other key commands will speak.
Additionally, Katrina McFarland, acting assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, will address lifecycle management and modernization.
McFarland, who stepped in after the January retirement of the Army's longtime chief weapons buyer, Heidi Shyu, recently touted strides the Defense Department is making in overhauling the acquisition process. She emphasized buy-in from leadership across the Army as a key enabler in acquisition reform.
"I think will make one of the more marked improvements inside of acquisition that I've seen for a long time," McFarland said, according to National Defense. "In many acquisition reform studies that have been written over the years, you'll find that most of the time people focused on the process and not on the people and the product. There was a lot of discussion on people but everyone fell back on the process because it was more convenient and possibly easier."
For full coverage of the AUSA Global Force Symposium, visit the C4ISR & Networks show reporter page.
