ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

Retired Gen. Mark Milley, former Joint Chiefs chairman and the 39th Army chief of staff, will speak Feb. 13 at an Association of the U.S. Army Noon Report webinar.

Milley, who retired in September, will discuss the Army’s role in the joint force, look ahead to the future operating environment and talk about the challenges the Army is facing and what the service is doing to meet them.

He also will offer leadership lessons and reflections from his more than 40 years of service to the Army and the nation.

America’s military faces an increasingly complex environment marked by a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape, the nation’s top military officer said.

Speaking to the graduating ROTC cadets at Princeton University, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, a 1980 graduate of the university and a former Army chief of staff, said the U.S. military is entering a new era of warfare.

“We, right now, are in what I would call a fundamental change in the character of war,” he said during the May 30 ROTC commissioning ceremony. “It only changes fundamentally once in a while, … and it's being driven, yet again, by technology.” 

In the face of growing threats around the world, the U.S. military must remain ready for a range of challenges, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said.

“We’re going to have to deal with a rising China, we have to deal with Russia, we will have North Korea, we have Iran, we have terrorists, we have climate change, we have COVID, we have wildfires, we have a lot of challenges,” Milley said. “As a great power, we have to be able to do all of those simultaneously.”

The lessons of D-Day and World War II ring true 75 years later as the Army marks its 244th birthday and prepares for a deadlier, more complex future battlefield, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said.

Speaking during an Army birthday celebration at the Pentagon—the service’s birthday is June 14—Milley talked about the deadly price paid by the Army during the Normandy campaign.

Nineteen U.S. Army divisions participated in the campaign, six of them on D-Day, Milley said. During that six- to seven-week campaign, 37,000 American soldiers were killed in action.

The Army fell short of its fiscal 2018 recruiting goal because it was “unachievable” from the outset, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley told the House Armed Services Committee, explaining that while unit manning has improved, it will require a sustained effort.

Having missed last year’s recruiting goal by 6,500, the Army has implemented a plan that grows the service’s end strength by 2,000 soldiers a year over the next five years. The Regular Army would grow to 480,000 soldiers, while the Army National Guard would increase to 336,000 and the Army Reserve to 189,500.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley has submitted to Congress a list of $2.3 billion in unfunded priorities, with $1 billion for readiness, $564 million for infrastructure, $404 million for increased lethality and $243 million for modernization.

The single largest expense on the list is $379 million for pre-positioned stock in Europe.

The conditions have been set for the Army’s future, but the service will “have to continue to press on” with its initiatives if success is to be achieved, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley delivered an upbeat message Jan. 16 on the state of the force. “We have made tremendous progress in the last several years,” he said. “We have recovered from depleted levels of readiness brought about by sustained periods of conflict in the current wars and also by reduced levels of defense spending over a period of many, many years.”

A breakfast with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley and evening lectures with the current U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command commander and a retired four-star who led the Joint Special Operations Command are on tap in January at events hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare.

Online registration is open for all three events.