Photo By Lindsay Grant | Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, Army Materiel Command commanding general, and Rich Martin, AMC...... read more read more
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REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. – The U.S. Army faces significant threats that will hamper its ability to support Soldiers from the strategic homeland. Army Materiel Command has implemented several strategies to tackle obsolescence issues that the military’s supply chain continues to experience. Leaders from across the Army gathered December 3-4 to discuss how advanced manufacturing can address and resolve supply chain issues.
The AMC Advanced Manufacturing Summit occurred a year after U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command’s Advanced Manufacturing Wargame, where leaders set a strategy to proliferate advanced manufacturing across the Army. One year later, the message was clear: while the Army is on the right track to introduce advanced manufacturing at every echelon, we must move faster and more decisively.
“As a collective body, we’ve made significant progress in our leveraging processes, technologies and authorities and the partnerships we’ve built,” said Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, AMC commanding general. “All the people I see in this room can help us go faster. We need all of you to help us break down the stove pipes.”
The summit brought together leadership from AMC lifecycle management commands, Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Materiel Readiness and U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. AMC also invited experts from four universities and multiple non-profit organizations to provide expertise on how to improve standardization of parts qualification and compatibility of machinery across the enterprise.
“I encourage you to lean on the experts here this week to help us understand where we need to make prudent, reasonable investments that give us the most interoperability and how we can expand capacity across the Army’s supply chain ecosystem,” said Rich Martin, AMC director for supply chain management.
Attendees were organized into breakout groups to collaborate on a more refined problem set within the Army’s advanced manufacturing strategy. Group topics included updating the advanced manufacturing strategy, enhancing the data repository, refining the parts qualification process and how the Army will implement these capabilities at echelon.
“This summit is your platform to collaborate with one another, push boundaries to think boldly and to break processes and rebuild them together,” said Carolyn Farmer, AMC principal technical advisor for advanced manufacturing.
A major goal of Army senior sustainers is to prove investments in advanced manufacturing can give Soldiers an additional, easy option to fabricate repair parts instead of ordering from original equipment manufacturers that may experience lead times from 14-17 months.
Presentations from AMC LCMCs and DEVCOM served as examples of major cost and time savings for the replacement of repair parts and components on weapon systems and other major end items when advanced manufacturing was deployed. Each command also expressed commitment to working together to shorten the time it takes to get a part qualified for wider use.
U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command displayed several 3D-printed parts that are being tested on Army aircraft, including a prototype AH-64 gasper in partnership with Wichita State University’s National Institute for Aviation Research and a cargo door cable activation link developed in partnership with Rock Island Arsenal-Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center.
At the end of the summit, attendees presented their collaborative findings from each breakout group to AMC and LCMC leadership. Briefs included ideas on how to improve user experience on the data repository, lessons learned from how 3D printers are used by Soldiers in the field and policies that need to be changed to enable proliferation of advanced manufacturing at every echelon.
Leaders acknowledged the benefits of experts from all ends of the Army’s acquisition and lifecycle management workforce collaborating to find processes and opportunities for advanced manufacturing to help Soldiers obtain safe and cost-effective parts to sustain their equipment.
“It takes a team of teams to discover how the Army can leverage advanced manufacturing to improve readiness across our formations,” said Lt. Gen. Gavin Lawrence, AMC deputy commanding general. “This summit gives us the opportunity to better understand how we can use this technology to set the theaters and maintain operational momentum.”
| Date Taken: | 12.07.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 12.08.2025 12:34 |
| Story ID: | 553382 |
| Location: | ALABAMA, US |
| Web Views: | 21 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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