Subsequent NIEs – NIE 12.1 in November 2011 and NIE 12.2 in May-June 2012 – built on a growing foundation of tactical lessons and technology developments and have paved the way for the Army to field its first truly networked equipment package, called Capability Set 13 (CS 13).

CS 13 will be fielded to eight brigades during fiscal year 2013, with elements of those initial brigades preparing for New Equipment Training (NET) as these pages go to press.

“About 18 months ago we fundamentally changed the way that we were going to test, evaluate, and then subsequently field network capabilities,” explained Brig. Gen. John Morrison, director, LandWarNet/Mission Command, Army G3/5/7. “We were moving away from our old traditional acquisition model, where we had individual stovepipes of network capabilities that were being delivered on their own individual time lines – quite frankly, in many cases, in different units, where we weren’t bringing together that full power of the network in one place. So we instituted a modernization effort called Capability Set Management. And Capability Set 13 is our very first capability set.”

Morrison was part of a recent roundtable presentation assembled to highlight the imminent fielding of CS 13 as a milestone that fundamentally changes the way that the Army plans to approach modernization.

“There’s a subtle change in the business model,” Morrison said. “Before, if you had an acquisition program, you would try to buy for the entire Army, buying that capability until the entire Army was fielded. But Capability Set Management breaks with that traditional construct, because what we’re doing now is buying what we need, when we need it, for those who need it. That’s absolutely key,” he said.

“Now what we’re trying to do is ensure that, through the Network Integration Evaluation construct, we are able to ‘spin in’ the latest capabilities for operational formations,” he added. “We realized that we fundamentally could not build network capabilities like we could build a tank. It’s something completely different. So if you buy into the Capability Set construct, industry is absolutely a key player in that approach. We want to harvest industry innovation as we move network capabilities forward. So what you will see with Capability Set 13 is literally the first time that we have leveraged the NIEs to validate this integrated network capability. And it will provide us with capability that we have never been able to provide to the field before.

The NIE process that has evolved and matured over the past 18 months is an ongoing effort that includes two annual exercises: a “.1” event in the November time frame of each fiscal year; and a “.2” event the following May-June. The .1 events will be smaller, focused primarily on company-level operations, while the .2 events will be full brigade-sized evaluations. As currently envisioned, the .2 events will be used to validate an annual Capability Set. That Capability Set will build on the previous Capability Sets and will then be fielded to a select number of brigades beginning on Oct. 1 of that next year. NIE 12.2, for example, was the final validation for Capability Set 13, scheduled for fielding to eight brigades beginning on Oct. 1, 2012.

Expanding on the role of the NIE in the Army’s modernization process, Brig. Gen. Randal Dragon, commander, Brigade Modernization Command, emphasized that the NIE process “is linked directly to understanding how the Capability Set that we are fielding to the Army performs in the hands of soldiers.”