WASHINGTON, Oct. 8, 2007 - Addressing the Association of the United States Army’s Corporate Member luncheon Monday, Gen. David McKiernan identified five “stressors” that the Army faces as it moves towards a future, reset, transformed state.
 
McKiernan, the commanding general of the U.S. Army, Europe and former commander of forces in Iraq, compared the current Army to a unit building a bridge across a river while also crossing it. “It’s the far side of the river that is very cloudy, uncertain,” he said. “We don’t know what’s on the other side, we don’t know what it looks like, but we have to build that bridge to get across the river to get to it.”
 
The first issue McKiernan identified was the ongoing “persistent conflict” in which the Army is occupied. Noting that Army tours in Iraq are currently at 15 months boots-on-the ground with 12 months back home, he borrowed a phrase from Army Chief of Staff George Casey, saying that the Army is “out of balance.” “We cannot sustain that too long,” he said of the deployment schedule. He noted that half of the U.S. Army troops stationed in Europe are currently deployed in Iraq.
 
The second stressor that McKiernan identified was ongoing threats from outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, specifically terrorist cells in Europe and other parts of the world. “Our fight is not just in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said. “Our fight is in … most Western countries and it is truly a fight against radical fundamentalism and that fight can occur anywhere.”
 
The third challenge that McKiernan discussed was the ongoing transformation of the force, changing the organization and structure of the force, as well as education of leaders, dealing with families and care for the wounded, while prosecuting the ongoing conflicts.
 
McKiernan’s fourth stressor was the issue of enlarging the size of the force, ensuring that it has the resources to deal with all of the problems and missions it faces. “A growing Army is not an Army problem, it’s a national problem,” he said. “It’s not an Army challenge, it’s a national challenge. And if we think we’re going to pursue our interests around the world and fight this 21^st century persistent conflict, we’ve got to have the Army and depth of the Army and capabilities of the Army to do that. One way to do that is to grow the size of the Army. So when we talk about the challenge of recruiting and retention, that’s a national challenge.”
 
The last stressor that McKiernan talked about was stress itself, specifically as relating to the non-combat aspects of their lives – housing, care for Army children, education and medical care. He noted that increasingly the “signature wound” in the current global conflict is post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, and that the Army is adjusting how to care for its wounded warriors.
 
He closed his presentation with a video tribute to the Army’s key constant – its troops.
 
POC:
John Grady
Director of Communications
Association of the United States Army
(703)-907-2613
jgrady@ausa.org