Major General Hale from Fort Huachuca was on First Watch with Sheriff Mark Dannels to talk about the Team Huachuca Strategic Plan.
MG Hale: Monday at 10:00 o'clock, at the roundabout on the installation, at the Buffalo Soldier statue, we're going to sign the Team Huachuca Strategic Plan. This started about seven months ago, back in October/November when we had a group come together, all the tenants on the installation, as well as the city, county, and state personnel, came together. What I tasked my team to do is develop a plan to propel Fort Huachuca into the Army of 2030 to make sure that we remain relevant for not only the Army but for the Department of Defense.
We have a great capability here in Southern Arizona in the electromagnetic space, and with our restricted, gated airspace where you can do things here that you can't do anywhere else in the continental United States.
Over the last seven months, our team has come together. We've had multiple working groups. We had my partner on the installation, Major General Chris Eubanks, involved and his team. We had the city Major Mayor McCaa, and his team engaged, as well as the county planners. We also had personnel from all the academic institutions in Southern Arizona as well as Tucson with the University of Arizona and up in Phoenix with the Arizona State University. They came together; we came up with a plan for how do we push Fort Huachuca into the future? What's going to keep us relevant? How are we going to be that shining installation for the Army and for DoD?
In the last seven months, we've come up with four lines of effort to improve ourselves on the installation. The first line of effort is growth and modernization. So how do we modernize our installation to support testing and training events that the Army and the DoD needs?
We also looked at IT Line of Effort #2, which is the infrastructure on the installation. What type of infrastructure do we need to update? Think about fiber and electricity, and water, and sewer, and roots, all those infrastructure things that we need to improve to make sure that we're that installation that can contain the support the army and DoD line of effort.
Three, probably not a surprise, quality of life. How do we support our families on the installation? How do we support our soldiers? How do we support our civilians that work on the installation as well as our contractors? So what quality of life, things that can we do to increase a family looking at for what you can say and that's an installation I want to serve it. We're doing a lot of things, for example, with the city and the Canyon Vista Medical Center and Sean Phillips, CEO there, that partnership and improving some of our health. We are also looking at bringing in some additional food vendors on the installation where we can actually have a place to sit down and have somewhere to eat on the installation other than the PX food court. We don't have a restaurant on the installation where soldiers who don't have vehicles can walk to and sit down and have a meal on the weekend.
In line of effort #4 is talent management. How do we get the people that we need their expertise? You know, think about engineers, think about those technical people that work at the network command, NETCOM. Think about those technical people that work at the electronic proving grounds. How do we get those engineers, those technicians here in southern Arizona? How do we keep them here? What do we need to do for talent management so that we have the right people working on the installation to support our mission? I say it like this if a new person is looking for a job and we really target young people graduating from college. They're coming into the workforce or anybody for that matter, if they are making $100,000 in Southern Arizona, or they're making $160,000 in New York City. I guarantee you that at the end of the month, you'll have more in your bank account if you're in Southern Arizona than if you were in New York City. What do we do to attract those people? So the team wants you to the strategic plan and looks out to where we want the installation to be in 2030. Now know that seven years away, but we've got near-term wins, we've got mid-term wins, and then we've got some longer-term projects that we know that we'll have to maybe change some policy or maybe update. I would tell you that we have a great partner in our elected officials here in Southern Arizona. And in Arizona, Congressman Ciscomani has been down multiple times already since his installation into office there in the House. And then also Senator Kelly, a big proponent of what we're doing with his military background here in Southern Arizona. So we've got some great elected leaders that are supporting us. We're going to sign this thing on Monday at 10:00 o'clock.

 

Photo Credit Grady Butler CANVA
Photo Credit Grady Butler
CANVA
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