Sheila Vemmer / Defense News Media Group Brig Gen. R. Mark Brown is deputy commanding general for systems integration at the Army’s Research, Development & Engineering Command. He has just been named commanding general of the Natick Soldier Center and Program Executive Office Soldier.

Defeating improvised explosive devices is the Army’s most important research and development effort, one of the service’s top technology officials said April 28.

“It is job one,” Brig Gen. R. Mark Brown said during a speech to the Defense News Media Group Cruise Missile & IED Defense Conference in Arlington, Va.

Brown is deputy commanding general for system of systems integration at the Army’s Research, Development & Engineering Command. He has just been named commanding general of the Natick Soldier Center an Program Executive Office Soldier.

He said the focus on IEDs — not only for the current fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for the Army’s future force — comes amid a backdrop of increasing pressure on research and development budgets. A host of pressures on the federal budget means that increased spending on research is unlikely.

“We gotta be better with what we got,” he said.

Among the biggest areas in need of research, he said, are technology solutions to aid the need for human intelligence.

“We have our soldiers deployed in an area where there’s a wide cultural difference,” he said. “It’s hard to get real-time, actionable intelligence.” Among the technologies already in use, he said, is the Phrasalator — a PDA-sized device that stores a series of Arabic phrases it can play to aid communication between English-speaking troops and Arabic-speaking Iraqis.

He also said the Army is seeking technology to boost the persistence of surveillance platforms over the battlefield, improving their ability to detect IEDs and the insurgents who use them.

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