Essay Sample on The Global Combat Support System of the Army

The Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS) is the ERP system that enables the o armies in real-time to facilitate the sustainment of their activities while they are on a mission. The GCSS plays a significant role in facilitating the logistics of the armies by modernizing the management of logistics. The GCSS-Army has replaced the tactical logistic management information system that was not efficient in terms of enhancing the financial management of army logistics (Romero, 2016). The GCSS-A is effective in terms of enabling the soldiers to get the support that they require on the ground at the right time, the right place, and the right resources required by having accurate information. The paper analyzes how the GCSS-A helps the United States Army fighting with the enemy.

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The Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS-Army) is divided into two waves after an evaluation, and the test did show that the GCSS-A was not effective working as one single system. The first wave was deployed in 2013, and it replaced the SARSS (Deaton, 2016). The first wave was implemented to facilitate resource management by converting SSF-MW and FCM to GCSS-Army (Deaton, 2016). The second wave began to be deployed after the first wave was implemented successfully. More stakeholders were affected by the second wave when compared to the first wave and were deployed in 2015. The second wave involved the integration of various technologies used in the army. Adjustments of wave 1 were done to enable the deployment of wave 2. The deployment of wave 2 transformed the logistics of the army.

Both Wave 1 and wave 2 had a similar effect to the defense department when it comes to streamlining the logistics of the defense department. The implementation of the GCSS-A system was meant to handle the challenges that the previous systems faced challenges dealing with. The GCSS-A system ensured that all activities that the military is equipped with the resources that they require to do their work. Employees had to be trained on how to use the new system, including navigating through the system. Commanders were given more privileges in the system to authorize and monitor activities that happen within the system.

Logistics are very important when it comes to the army being ready to handle any kind of challenges that come up while the army is on the battlefield. The GCSS-A integrates various stakeholders that are responsible for ensuring that the army logistics are well resourced (Romero, 2016). The army cannot be effective when the logistics are not well managed, a challenge that the GCSS-A system seeks to resolve. The system facilitates the army to plan by facilitating the estimation of how the logistics available will serve the army to facilitate the organization on how the supplies will be done. The GCSS-A enables the army to be in operation all the time because the soldiers are equipped with all the resources that they require to do their work.

The GCSS-A provides a single source of analytics and business intelligence, which is a requirement by the army to have centralized management of data. The United States army has a huge number of personnel, making it challenging to manage them where the army does not have a centralized management system (Romero, 2016). The GCSS-A facilitates the management of the army in one central location, which is significant in facilitating quick decision making when there is a need to make an urgent decision. The army has various instances where urgent decisions need to be made to determine the best decision that needs to be made by the soldiers on the ground during the war.

The technology world is evolving, where more technologies that improve the work of the soldiers are invented daily. The technologies need to be managed centrally, where they are coordinated to make the work of the soldiers efficient (McDonough, 2016). The GCSS-A ensures that there are no wastage o resources when it comes to using the technologies to help the soldiers in the war (Romero, 2016). The GCSS-A helps the army leaders to make the right decision on the best technology to use in different situations. The system is capable of evaluating and quantifying the level of the risk to facilitate decision making. The technologies require supplies such as fuel and servicing; hence the system helps in managing the technologies. The system keeps track of how the technologies and managed, bearing in mind that there is a huge number of technologies used by the army.

The army of the United States is located in different parts of the world, and the activities of the army are coordinated by one central group. They GCSS-A makes the work of managers easy where the leaders are able to keep track of how different troops are progressing in different parts of the world. There are instances when it's challenging to make the right decision without having adequate information (Romero, 2016). The GCSS-A incorporates and integrates various sources of information, including intelligence, to facilitate decision making. The system also facilitates innovation because weak points within the military can be identified when their activities are coordinated and monitored. Data is very important in understanding the areas that the military is vulnerable.

The GCSS-A helps in saving of resources that the department of defense spends in its implementation of various projects that the department implements. The system facilitates the efficient use of resources by allowing the stakeholders to be accountable for how they spend their resources (Romero, 2016). The system facilitates an efficient audit of how the resources are spent. The system facilitates the budgeting of resources depending on the activities that the department of defense wants to implement. The system enables the department of defense to plan its activities to be able to allocate the resources that will be spent in each activity.

The GCSS-A system also improves the security of the army officers by tracking how the maintenance of the technologies that the soldier use in their work. During an emergency, the officials are able to determine will technologies have been services and are in good condition to be used in the war (Deaton, 2016). There was a challenge in the previous systems where they were not capable of tracking the maintenance performed to the technologies used for combat. There are instances where the technologies failed on duty, exposing the soldiers to attacks from the enemy (McDonough, 2016). The United States army has many technologies located in different parts of the world, and it's difficult to centrally track the maintenance done to all the technologies around the world without having a single system.

In conclusion, the Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS-Army) system helped the defense department of the United States streamline the operations of the army. The system integrates all operations of the department to one central management making the management easy. The implementation of the GCSS-A system was done in two wave's wave 1 and wave 2 where the previous systems were replaced with a new system.

References

Romero, C. (2016). Global Combat Support System-Army Increment 1 (GCSS-A Inc 1). US Army Petersburg United States.

Deaton, M. (2016). GCSS-Army: The future of Army logistics. Retrieved 5 March 2020, from https://www.army.mil/article/176893/gcss_army_the_future_of_army_logistics

McDonough, J. (2016). GCSS-Army: Wave 1 is done. Retrieved 5 March 2020, from https://www.army.mil/article/166174/gcss_army_wave_1_is_done