Army Boosts Efforts to Strengthen Installations

Army Boosts Efforts to Strengthen Installations

Army leaders speak at AUSA 2024
Photo by: Jonathan Newton for AUSA

The Army is doubling down on the resilience and readiness of its installations, said Rachel Jacobson, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment. 

“Installations are essentially the backbone of what our Army does. Without strong installations that are resilient and that are ready, we can't do what we do. It's that simple,” Jacobson said Oct. 16 during a Warriors Corner presentation on Army installations at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2024 Annual Meeting and Exposition.

As the largest service, the Army is responsible for more than 500,000 buildings and structures across the U.S. and the world, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Building off the first installations strategy released four years ago, the service is introducing its Army Installation Strategy 2.0 by the end of the year.

“We're updating our installation strategy,” Jacobson said. “The first installation strategy document … was the first of its kind, but we felt like in the last several years, things changed. Things are changing rapidly with the way we need to manage our installations.”

The new strategy was developed with feedback from NCOs, she said. “We enlisted [feedback from] the noncommissioned officer community. For us, that was essential,” Jacobson said. “We wanted to make sure that those closest to soldiers … drove [this effort].”

Ensuring the resilience of the Army’s installations remains essential to warfighter readiness, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer said. “From Poland to … Korea, we have massive responsibility in our infrastructure,” Weimer said.

“How do we survive storms? How do we protect ourselves from an adversary that has access [to U.S. assets] now, because there is no more sanctuary?” Weimer said. “Those are all real things that we have to put into a single strategy to help keep us a little bit more on track.”

— Karli Goldenberg