ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

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.

The Army is more capable today than it has been in decades, and it will need to remain at the highest level of readiness as the “faint clouds of a coming storm” creep over the horizon, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said in his keynote remarks at the Eisenhower luncheon at the AUSA Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C.

Machine learning and other artificial intelligence is likely to significantly expand military capabilities, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said June 21 during a Capitol Hill National Security Forum.

Thinking, data-chewing machines that may even be capable of emotion will be a major influence on the military, with the biggest question being how fast the new technology is available and how it is adapted to military uses, Milley said. “It will have fundamental impact,” he said.

By the end of next year, the Army will have built five of its six planned security force assistance brigades, new units designed to do away with the “ad hoc” method of advising foreign forces the Army has relied upon for 16 years.

It will be up to today’s junior leaders to lead the Army’s adaptation to information technology, and to ensure more rapid adaptability than our adversaries

“Combat readiness is our No. 1 priority,” Milley said. “The need has become more apparent.” And, he said, it may be accelerating.

Milley said the U.S. was formed on a “very powerful idea … that here in America we will have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”