With potentially draconian budget cuts on the horizon and the uncertainty of operating on a stopgap funding measure that could expire by year’s end, the Army is operating on the “ragged edge” of its capability, the service’s outgoing civilian chief said Oct. 12.
In the six years Jon McHugh has served as the secretary of the Army–the second longest tenure in the service’s history–he has not received a budget on time and for much of the time the Army has been on a postwar downward trajectory in manpower and resources.
The Army is set to shrink to 450,000 active duty soldiers by fiscal year 2017 and the prospect looms in December that the current continuing resolution funding the government could lapse, followed by the even more drastic cuts that could snap into effect if Congress does not repeal sequestration before January.
“We are on the ragged edge,” McHugh said at the Association of the United States Army’s annual exposition in Washington, D.C. “We are in the extraordinarily rare position in American history where our budgets are coming down but our missions are going up. The problem we have been most befuddled by is not the challenges we saw, not the ones we planned for, that we budgeted for. It’s the ones we didn’t see, we didn’t budget for, we didn’t plan for.”
While the Army was winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, budget hawks and a weary public began looking for peace dividends. Almost as soon as the service was no longer significantly engaged in combat operations in those conflicts, the Islamic State emerged and Russia began its adventurism in Eastern Europe, McHugh said.
“Anything less than the president’s proposed budget, or another unforeseen challenge, let alone the combination of the two, will put this Army and this nation in a very dangerous place,” McHugh said.
During his first AUSA appearance as the 39th Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, shared McHugh’s vision that the Army will continue to be globally deployed and responsible for responding to a range of threats from the continuing war on international terrorism to the potential of engaging a near-peer state like Russia.
“As I look around the world today, there is no doubt in my mind that the United States is safe,” Milley said. “We have an excellent military. We have excellent police forces. We have excellent intelligence agencies and an excellent FBI. But having said that, the world outside the United States the velocity of instability is increasing as we sit here…There are a lot of things going on in the world today that present very real threats to the security of the United States.”
The Army will remain the core of the U.S. military’s ability to fight and win wars despite a continued emphasis in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill to produce technologies that allow the military to fight from afar at sea and from the air, McHugh said.
“If the last 18 to 20 months haven’t proven the necessity of a viable land force, I don’t know what will,” McHugh said, referencing the yearlong air campaign against Islamic State militants. Military officials and civilian Defense Department leadership recognize the limited effects an air campaign will have and have said that a ground force–at the present without U.S. combat troops–offensive will be necessary to roll up the terrorist group in territory it already controls.
Milley doubled down on that notion, saying that precision weapons and technologically advance ships and aircraft are effective military tools, but that wars are fought and won by land forces.
“Americans have always had a heavy reliance on and a love for technology,” Milley said. “War is a very violent act and rather than expend human life–especially our own soldiers’ lives–we want to and we should, use the highest and most advanced technologies that we can in order to achieve our goals. The problem is history has told us a different story about the ability to prevail in war with only a reliance on weapon systems that deliver effects from great distances…The first and opening shots of any conflict are likely fired from the sea or from the air, but the final shots are usually delivered on the ground.”
It is essential that the Army maintain its current capabilities and internalize the lessons of the past 14 years of war while preparing for a range of threats, Milley said. As the chief of staff, he has promised to focus first on increasing the readiness of the total force. A close second priority will be shaping the structure, equipment strategy and training of the Army out to the 2040s, he said. That will require refocusing the Army’s training regimen from counterterrorism to a broader spectrum of possible contingencies.
“We do not have the luxury of a single particular place or opponent,” Milley said. “We are a global power. If we wish to remain a global power…we are going to have to operate across the entire range of military operations…and we have to be able to do that anywhere in the world.”
After nearly 15 years of ground combat, the Army is highly skilled in counterterrorism and counter insurgency operations. The Army must sustain those skills, Milley said. What the service needs is to reenergize the atrophied skill of combined-arms maneuver warfare that would be necessary in a near-peer fight, he added. The Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) has already issued a plan that soldiers deploying to a named operation, like Iraq or Afghanistan, will train specifically for that contingency.
“Opposite a named operation, we are expecting our formations to go ahead and train against a hybrid threat,” Milley said.
Those troops need more and better equipment with which to face threats, as well, he said. The Army needs advancements in lethality, mobility, command and control, mission command systems and troop protection.