Rainey: Army must avoid spending money on equipment that is neither 'exquisite' nor cheap

The Army must stop buying equipment that is "expensive but not exquisite" and also doesn't "provide a lot of mass," Gen. James Rainey, the head of Army Futures Command said today.

“We have things that are exquisite and expensive, and we have things that are cheap in mass. And those are about 10% on each end. And we’re trying to avoid spending most of our money on the 80% in between the neither exquisite nor cheap,” Rainey told attendees of the McAleese & Associates defense conference.

Rainey gave few specifics of what equipment falls into each spending category but made the comments while speaking about the Army’s need to prioritize cross-domain-level joint fires in the Indo-Pacific. He added the Army should acquire “cheap rockets that we can buy in the hundreds” for air defense.

One example of the 80% “middle” category would be spending $300,000 on two antitank rounds to “kill one thing,” Rainey said.

“It’s neither exquisite nor cheap. And primarily in the air defense and the offensive fires is where that analogy holds the most true,” he said.

Rainey also said when it comes to acquisition, the integrator model is “not good for the Army” because the service “loses too much agency in downstream selection.”

“Where we’re looking . . . is for industry teams to self-organize around problems and requirements, just like you would self-organize if you were solving any other problem,” he said.