Gen. Andrew Poppas, commanding general of U.S. Army Forces Command, will speak June 5 as part of the Strategic Landpower Dialogue co-hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The event will take place from 2–3:15 p.m. Eastern June 5 at CSIS headquarters, 1616 Rhode Island Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. It also will be livestreamed on the CSIS YouTube channel.

To attend in-person or online, you must register here.

Launched in September 2023, the Strategic Landpower Dialogue is a quarterly on-the-record speaker series on land power security issues. It serves as a unique source of insight into the current thinking of and future challenges facing the U.S. Army and land-based forces. This is the seventh event in the series.

A former commander of the 101st Airborne Division, Poppas has led Forces Command since July 2022. As the head of the Army’s largest organization, he commands 212,000 Regular Army soldiers and 174,000 Army Reserve soldiers while also providing training and readiness oversight to the Army National Guard.

A 1988 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, Poppas has served multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the event, Poppas will discuss topics such as Army force readiness, emerging threats and transformation in warfighting.

Speaking at the 2024 Maneuver Warfighter Conference last fall, Poppas told young Army leaders that soldiers will not have the luxury of clarity when the next global conflict breaks out. “We’ve got to be ready for the unknown,” he said at the time. “You’ve got to look at those emerging threats in very unfamiliar territory.”

To face these emerging threats, the Army must transform its structure, equipment and training. “We’re modernizing our formations, and … we’re giving latitude [to] commanders out there with bottom-up requirements from the company commanders, bottom-up requirements from the battalion commanders, and identifying what structure works, what equipment works, and how much we need of each,” Poppas said at the time. “Then, as we progress from removing that structure, we continue to push additional equipment into the formation and [test] out that new equipment.”

To win the next fight, the Army will need to approach it as a “total, balanced Army,” Poppas said.

“We’ve got to be able to work together,” he said. “We’ve got to be ready to fight anywhere against a multitude of threats. It could be as soon as tonight, but … it can’t be at the cost of tomorrow.”