The Army is trying to generate as much readiness as possible, modernize and man its units under a constrained budget, but has specific plans to invest an increase in funding anticipated under the incoming Trump administration, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Jan. 12.
“I developed a priorities list, which has not been publicly disseminated. When the time comes we will advise the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army and up on the Hill on what that priority list is,” Milley said at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army outside Washington, D.C. “We know specifically what we need to do and we are prepared to discuss that, when asked, with the new administration.”
Milley said the service is currently operating under President Obama’s budget for fiscal 2017 and doing the best it can with the budget it has. Meanwhile, he is prepared to advise the incoming Trump administration on how the Army should spend any new cash that may come its way.
“We are creating as much readiness and as much modernization as is humanly possible within the topline constraint of the budget,” he said.
Milley would not specify the priorities he lists, but air defense, electronic warfare capabilities and increased unit lethality are goals for the future, he said. Command and control is “one of the areas in the future is at very high risk because of adversaries’ electronic warfare and adversary cyber,” he said.
“The probability of us having the freedom of action in the electromagnetic spectrum that we have enjoyed in the last 15 years of war, for example, against terrorists – the probability of that happening against a near-peer is zero.”
The Army’s aviation component – mainly rotorcraft – are vulnerable to guided munitions that near-peer competitors have in their arsenals, Milley said. Countering those threats to helicopters in a future fight is another major line of effort that would be funded.
“It’s one thing to fight guerrillas and terrorists where you have almost exclusive freedom of action in the air, but it’s another thing to fight some near-peer high-end threat. So, protection of our aviation is a big deal and we have a variety of initiatives going on.”
The Army has made strides to rebuild its near-term readiness in the past year, yet units across the service are undermanned and are kept at their current strength and preparedness at the expense of future modernization, Milley said.
“We have made significant strides, but we are not there yet,” he said. “We are not at a level of readiness that we need to be to fully execute the national strategic plans to a level that I would be comfortable with as the chief.”
Milley has been uncompromising in his effort to rebuild readiness since he became chief a year and a half ago. He has prioritized preparation for a near-term fight at the expense of modernization, which took a hit in the fiscal 2017 budget. However, he said to expect in 2017 the pace of modernization to increase under a concerted effort to make up for lost time. The commitment to increasing readiness has not been for naught, as it is not an attribute the force can assume overnight, he said.
“In many of the ways we measure readiness, we have made some significant improvement and that’s good,” Milley said. “Our equipment statuses are better now than they were. Our training is better now. … We’re still significantly challenged on the manning front.”
“The current force at its current end strengths is under-resourced across the board in terms of its readiness, etc.,” Milley added. “We’ve testified to that. The secretary of the Army knows that. The secretary of defense knows that. Everybody knows that. … We are creating as much readiness and as much modernization as is humanly possible within the topline constraint of the budget.”
The Army set a target to staff units at 90 percent to 95 percent or more of their assigned troop strength. Units readying for deployments regularly enter training at 80 percent or lower strength, he said.
“Readiness is not something that is going to be produced overnight,” Milley added. “It’s something that requires steady, predictable funding over time and steady effort by the force. I am confident we are on the right track.”
That track may trend more sharply upward if the incoming Trump administration makes good on campaign promises to reverse the Army’s personnel reductions. Growth for growth’s sake is counter to the quest for readiness, he said. An increase in troop numbers must come with the necessary funding to train, equip and pay them, Milley and other senior Army officials have said.
“We do want to be bigger,” Milley said. “We in the Army think that our capacity needs to increase. I have numbers, but I’m not going to share them. … We think our capability – the technical capability of our systems and formations – needs to increase and we think our readiness needs to increase and we fully understand that’s an expensive proposition for the United States Army, but also for the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines.”
“If, for example, we did have additional people, it’s important that we get them money with the people,” he said. “If we just get additional people or additional end strength but we don’t have the money, then that leads down the road to a hollow force.”
Any additional personnel would be assigned to existing units that are manned at sub-optimal levels, Milley said. Generally, readiness for a near-term fight will remain Milley’s priority regardless of whether he receives a bigger slice of the defense budget.
“If there is some sort of significant increase in money, we will continue to prioritize readiness,” he said. “Having said that, we have got to get after modernization. So, there has got to be a balance between the two. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing.”