tributions that our young men and women make to the United States of America,” Roger Thompson, AUSA’s vice president of membership and meetings and a retired Army lieutenant gen- eral, said in an interview the week before AUSA 2011. “Every year, that event is shaped by whatever is going on in the Army. And over the last 10 years, it has been shaped by these wars.”
Shock and Awe The AUSA Annual Meeting felt the imprint of the country’s 21st-century wars almost immediately. The 2001 show was scheduled about a month after Sept. 11, and was canceled, Thompson said, “because the Army was in the midst of begin- ning initial deployment to Afghanistan.” It returned the follow- ing year, and since 2003, when the United States went to war in Iraq, attendance has more than doubled. AUSA 2011 drew about 38,000 people — 16 to 20 percent of them active-duty or reserve military personnel, according to Thompson — and for the first time, filled all five exhibit halls at Walter E. Washington, more than 700,000 square feet of space. “It grows every year,” James Smith, senior event manager
for Events DC, which runs Walter E. Washington, said a week after AUSA 2011. And every year, “there are many things we do for that show that we could not do for other shows” — such as moving in more than a half-billion tons of freight, in- cluding three Bradley armored vehicles, each weighing about 70,000 pounds. “There is stuff you learn about your building at the show,” Smith said. “It is funny when your exhibitor walks in and says, ‘I want to place 140,000 pounds. Can you do it?’ ‘Hmmm. Let me ask.’” The exhibit hall was where you’d find the most visible signs
Wandering around the expo space, you saw uniforms and irrigation and com- munications systems, along with displays for veterans’ benefits, mental-health services, and professional development. But what registered most strongly were the weapons and heavy equipment.
of the show’s evolution — beginning with the color palette on display throughout the more than 600 booths occupied by de- fense contractors, suppliers, support groups, and Army agencies. Long gone is the olive drab of the classic uniform, replaced by a thousand shades of khaki, for an army that for the foreseeable future seems like it will be doing most of its fighting in the desert. Wandering around the expo space, you saw uniforms, sun-
glasses, irrigation and communications systems, and other ma- teriel, along with displays for veterans’ benefits, mental-health services, and professional development. But what registered most strongly were the weapons and heavy equipment. The three Bradley vehicles — squat, sand-colored tanks — greeted you as soon as you entered Halls D and E upstairs at Walter E. Washington, part of BAE Systems’ block-sized exhibition space, which also included a Silver Fox unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV),