Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley is taking charge of the service just as it is set to cut tens of thousands of troops and said he is prepared to call up reserve component troops and up their training to retain a force ready to fight whenever necessary.
In his first official address to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual exposition in Washington, D.C., Milley referenced the Army’s rapid expansion before past wars, including the ramp up to U.S. involvement in World War II. Those episodes and the Army’s relative unpreparedness before each conflict cost lives unnecessarily at the outset of each, he said, adding he promised not to repeat mistakes of the past.
“That level of expansion is probably unlikely, but there is no doubt in my mind that at some point in the future the United States Army will be required to expand again,” Milley said.
To that end, he declared his intention to “modify the calculation of speed of expansion” by calling up Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers to prop up the operational readiness of the active component.
Milley promised to add training days and to ask for money to increase troop rotations through the Army’s combat training centers (CTC) with ultimate goal of “putting teeth, real teeth into the words of our total-Army concept.”
Milley stressed in his speech and in a press conference Monday that the Army should not measure itself by the strength of its active force, but by including both the Guard and Reserve in its calculation of strength. The Army is nearly 1 million strong, rather than the 490,000 active duty troops, or the 450,000 it will be reduced to by 2017, he said. The Army has more than 60 brigades to call upon in a crisis rather than the 32 active units, he added.
Still, only about a third of those brigade combat teams–the fundamental deployable Army units–are available for overseas operations at a time. That rate should be at a constant 60 percent, outgoing Army Secretary Jon McHugh said on Monday.
“Even if we fully implement the initiatives I propose, they will not be sufficient to offset the need for a significant standing regular Army of considerable capability and considerable capacity,” he said.
As chief of staff of the Army, Milley admitted there were forces that could affect the Army’s endstrength, readiness and modernization, like the budget it is given by Congress. He also warned that regenerating a modern Army with skills to operate in combined maneuver with sophisticated weapons takes years.
“However, we will ensure that no matter what budget we get–no matter how big we are–that our Army is well trained, that we will execute realistic, tough, integrated combined arms joint training at home station at the CTCs,” Milley said. “This training without fail will include the Army Reserve, National Guard and our regular Army…No matter how many units we have, we must keep them at readiness to withstand the rigors of combat.”
Milley said the Army is not yet “hollow,” which his predecessor said would be the case if the service dropped below 420,000–the level at which the Army will be funded under sequestration cuts set to go into effect in January.
“We are not even close to being a hollow Army,” Milley said. “No enemy of this country, no enemy of the United States should ever think otherwise. We, the United States Army, may bend. But we, the United States Army, refuse to ever break. However, there is much to do. We can’t just say we are going to be strong. There is much to do to remain strong, remain capable of remain ready.”