The Army needs more mobility and less survivability in its future weapon systems as its current composition of mobility, survivability and lethality is out of balance, the service’s top officer said Friday.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said the Army is hoping new technologies will emerge that will allow the service 10 to 15 years from now to regain that proper mix of mobility, survivability and lethality.
“(We don’t) have any groundbreaking technologies that I see right now that would allow us to do that, so what we have to do is make the best use of the capabilities we have now,” Odierno said Friday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in downtown Washington.
Odierno said the Army will likely roll out in October a new operating concept that has been in the works for about eight or nine months. It will explain, Odierno said, the Army’s vision for the next 10, 20 and 30 years and will focus on being able to do multiple, small scale things as opposed to one big fight as in the Cold War days.
Odierno said an example was possibly operating with small capability on four different continents at the same time as he said that is how the world is developing. Odierno said how the Army uses robotics would likely play a role in the future, but that the service wasn’t exactly sure how. The new operating concept, Odierno said, will allow the Army a lot of experimentation.
“You (have) to be a bit more flexible, a bit more adaptable (and) you have to be able to get there quickly,” Odierno said. “You have to be able to develop new capabilities and understand the economic, political and cultural environments simultaneously.”
Fiscal year 2016, Odierno said, will be the breaking point for the Army if sequestration-related budget cuts aren’t rescinded. The Army’s budget is slated to decrease by $8 billion from what it is now, which he said will cause a “significant degradation” of readiness and modernization capabilities. Odierno said if this happens, the Army will have a three- or four-year window of a mismatch of readiness, modernization and end strength.
“I’ve already cut our modernization budget by 46 percent, so it’s going to come out of readiness and it’s going to come out of modernization, and, to me, this is not the time to be cutting readiness and modernization.”