WASHINGTON — Since its inception late last summer, the Army’s Global Tactical Edge Acquisition Directorate (G-TEAD) has been awarding contracts and delivering tech at speeds the service has never seen, the colonel in charge of the directorate told Breaking Defense.
“The G-TEAD in general, we’re fighting against a cultural problem right, an identity. What does acquisition look like in the eyes of our warfighters, which is really important at the tactical edge,” Col. Christopher Hill said. “It’s really an understanding of what acquisition officers and operational commanders do. How are we a combat multiplier? And how we can take a system that is historically slow, and how can we weaponize that system to be flexible and responsive for the warfighter?”
The establishment of the G-TEAD was part of the Army’s overarching goal of continuous transformation, Hill said. G-TEAD was born to get capabilities with a technology readiness level (TLR) of seven or above into the hands of the warfighters as quickly as possible, specifically within 180 days or less from when the directorate publishes white papers, Hill said. (There are nine total TLR levels, with seven marking when a prototype can successfully demo in an operational environment. TLR level nine is when a system is fully proven through successful mission operations.)
