________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Evaluation Agency and others to set up field evaluations that would be truly an evaluation of
the value the M9 ACE brought to the combined arms team on the battlefield. The tests were
to be conducted at Fort Hood under realistic battlefield conditions.
What I could not understand was the out-and-out adversarial approach the Operational Test
and Evaluation Agency was taking. Colonel John Burlingame led that effort, and it was as if
he asserted the M9 was no good and that he would ensure the tests came out that way. Many
times in the field, he would make certain assumptions that would eliminate the D7 tractor-
trailer shortcomings. Major Tim Wynn, our Engineer School project officer, did an
exceptional job of fighting off killer assumptions and ensuring realistic field relationships
were maintained. I made five trips to Fort Hood myself during this period to ensure the M9
was not killed by evaluator zealots who seemed to think their measures of success would be
to kill a system rather than to try to field a system to the battlefield troops that badly needed
it.
There were many other challenges in the Pentagon with many armchair tacticians trying to
kill the M9 ACE. Mr. [Walter W.] Hollis set out one challenge--that providing armor plate
to protect the D7 operator would suffice. A full laydown of the issues to him removed that
obstacle. Colonel Ted Vander Els worked very effectively in all these skirmishes, pulling
together all the facts.
Each budget cycle found another challenge from the Department of Defense, mostly out of
Program Analysis and Evaluation. They were usually deterred by senior commanders'
messages from the field and the Army's making M9 ACE funding a priority issue to defend.
One bizarre challenge came in 1986 when a Marine lieutenant colonel told the Department of
Defense, Program Analysis and Evaluation, that the M9 was inferior to the British combat
engineer tractor. We made a full direct comparison of the two and the M9 was superior
across the board. I met with Major Generals [Ray M.] Franklin and [Carl E.] Mundy of the
Marine Corps and they agreed not to stand in the way of our procurement. Oddly, the Marine
lieutenant colonel, who was then retiring, later went to work for Royal Ordnance, the
producer of the combat engineer tractor. Max Noah and I then briefed David Chu in the
Department of Defense on the comparability issues and the M9 advantages, and the M9
stayed in the program again that year.
The evaluation at Fort Hood was a success, and the M9 ACE proved itself in a combined
arms FTX at Fort Hood in May. Lieutenant Colonel Pete Sowa [commander, 17th Engineer
Battalion, 2d Armored Division] did a superb job of supporting the tests and employing the
M9 ACE in the FTX.
The final Army Systems Acquisition Review Council process was held in early September
1985. At the Army program review with Mr. [James R.] Ambrose, the Under Secretary of the
Army, and attended by General Thurman and a host of others, the decision was made to go
ahead with the M9--with fixes of some minor items that had been identified during the
follow-on evaluation. I can tell you that was a happy day for a lot of engineers that had
devoted countless hours to that effort.
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