Austin’s New Army Command Plans More Outreach With Private Sector In AFC

Army Futures Command in Austin, plans to collaborate more frequently with the private sector by removing historical bureaucratic obstacles and having less of an active-duty military presence…

Lt. Gen. John Murray, the new leader of the Army Futures Command (AFC) in Austin, plans to collaborate more frequently with the private sector by removing historical bureaucratic obstacles and having less of an active-duty military presence at the new, 500-person command center.

The initial home of the command will be in The University of Texas (UT) Systems Office in downtown Austin and the Capital Factory accelerator on Brazos Street. This is the first new Army command to be headquartered in an urban center and is the most significant reorganization of an Army command since 1973.

AFC staff plan to visit innovation centers and accelerators such as Capital Factory and the science and engineering departments of local universities as well as UT. While AFC is standing up a headquarters in Austin from scratch, most of its subordinate organizations are already in existence and won’t move from their current locations.

Some of those include the Army’s research, development, and engineering laboratories (RDECOM), the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC)- its in-house think-tank on future war and the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA).

Austin won selection for the new command center in competition with Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Raleigh, N.C., the other cities that had made it into the finalist category.

The command will work closely with private-sector companies and academic research institutions to rapidly adopt innovative technologies that solve problems facing the American soldier. Next-generation combat vehicles, missiles and vertical-lift aircraft are among the Futures Command focus areas.

The new command should be producing outputs no later than Aug. 24, 2019.

This story originally published by Strategic Partnerships, Inc.