FORT KNOX, Ky. –
Every munition has a dollar figure, every training exercise has a price, and every Soldier has bills, which is why the Army’s top sustainer invested time with the U.S. Army Financial Management Command recently.
Lt. Gen. Christopher O. Mohan, U.S. Army Materiel Command commanding general, visited with USAFMCOM’s command team, Soldiers and civilian employees during an AMC major subordinate command update at Fort Knox, Kentucky, March 4.
“I’ve been around finance my entire career, but it doesn’t come natural to me,” said Mohan during the visit. “Our Army is changing faster than ever with data in a dynamic environment and in a dangerous, dangerous world, so we have to be ready, and I really do appreciate all that you do to get us there on the [financial management] side of things.”
“It’s always an honor to showcase the tremendous work being done by USAFMCOM employees to transform, modernize and innovate in a way that builds true readiness across our Army formations,” said Col. Michelle M. Williams, USAFMCOM commander, who led the update.
“We were able to show how our AMPOs are building military pay readiness with our Soldiers, how our Army Financial Services directorate and the 45th Finance Center are ensuring our battlefield commanders and operators have the cash they need to sustain and win any fight anywhere in the world, and how our Army Accounting and Audit Operations team is building a fiscally transparent environment that maximizes money and lethality.”
Before heading into a briefing room filled with dashboards and data analytics, Mohan visited the 45th FC’s Team A and learned how that team supports the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility from Fort Knox.
USAFMCOM’s 45th FC serves as the command’s operational arm and early deployer to conduct theater preparation operations with its three teams attached to Regular Army theater sustainment commands, making the TSCs the connective tissue between the Joint Security Area and the Joint Strategic Support Area.
“We were able to demonstrate the 45th FC’s unique distributed teams supporting CENTCOM, [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command], and [U.S. European Command and Africa ] through our three teams, providing significant value to community partners through the core capabilities of central funding, internal control and finance systems support,” said Col. Shaun D. McMurchie, 45th FC director. “General Mohan was particularly impressed with the 45th FC's participation in Exercise Talisman Sabre 25, Exercise Diamond Saber 25 and the Defender Europe [Field Training Exercise], all simultaneously last summer.”
After the walkthrough, Mohan was shown a number of dashboards regarding fiscal strategy, USAFMCOM’s support to the new Western Hemisphere Command, a theater finance common operating picture providing real-time data to available funds in each AOR, and a breakdown of how USAFMC is working to synchronize financial data in the Advana cloud-based platform with operational data in the Army’s Vantage data analytics platform.
“General Mohan was extremely excited on how we are leveraging data analytics to see financial management operations around the globe, providing real-time support across the spectrum of conflict,” recalled Williams. “Both General Mohan and I think there is more we can do to get after leveraging new and emerging technologies to provide even greater information and maximized fiscal support to our warriors at home and abroad, and I know that our team is up for that challenge.”
“It’s all about continuity,” said Mohan. “Whether we are going into different contested environments or different natural disaster areas, how we do business all needs to be the same.”
Mohan agreed with Williams that presents a challenge for USAFMCOM, AMC and the Army as a whole.
“We need to look for opportunities, and where there is friction, I promise you, there is opportunity,” the general added.
Before wrapping up the visit, Gennaro Penn, USAFMCOM’s Military Pay Operations director, briefed how the MPO was evolving its compliance inspections to achieve a better strategic impact.
“In the past, our AMPOs were evaluated on a punitive scoring model where they were focused on passing the test, and we only looked at one AMPO at a time,” Penn explained. “Now, we’ve completely transformed the way we evaluate military pay by looking at one function across all our AMPOs at once and using findings and observations to create recommendations to improve military pay support across our network.”
Mohan thanked the USAFMCOM team for the work they were doing and challenged the command to make sure the right people are in the right jobs doing the right things.
“This is the year of rebalancing,” the general concluded. “Thank you for continuing to work hard and for all that you do to support and sustain our Army.”