“Your Army has not taken a knee” in combat operations, base realignment and closure, modernization and transformation since the fall of the Berlin Wall almost 20 years ago, the Army’s vice chief of staff told attendees at the Association of the United States Army’s Symposium and Exposition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Gen. Richard Cody, speaking Feb. 29, said, “We’re going to be in this type of fight” for decades.
But, he added, “We can’t go into the next fight with a decline in resources … and end strength. We’re going to have to make the case” for continued support from the public, the Congress and future administrations. “If we don’t get our Army modernized, we’ll go into the next fight with the same issues” of readiness facing it as it did in the early days of World I, World War II and Korea. “It takes money.”
He said the Army has led the way from its Force XXI experiments in the mid-1990s through the experimental task force at Fort Bliss, Texas, that will lead to the Future Brigade Combat Team.
“The people are the center” of all this activity to ensure that “lessons learned” become “lessons applied.”
He said soldiers today in Afghanistan and Iraq are already applying concepts embodied in the Army’s new operations manual that links stability operations, offensive and defensive operations.
Cody said that since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the Army has conducted more than 40 operations that tied together all those elements of operations.
“To say they are an impressive group doesn’t do [company and battalion commanders] justice,” Cody said. “There’s no lack of confidence and competence in our young leaders.”
As examples of this, Cody cited a battalion’s distribution of radios to Afghanis in rural areas to help spread information from the central government as an example of moving back and forth between stability operations, while defending a mountainous section along the Pakistan border, raiding Taliban safe houses and working with local officials on their problems and concerns.
Cody, who will retire in the fall, said he asks himself and invited his audience to do the same: “Am I doing everything I can for these young soldiers?”