Retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is among the eight people who will serve on the Commission on National Defense Strategy, a group established by Congress to make recommendations on military force structure, operational concepts and national security risks.
“Business as usual at the Department is not acceptable,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin writes in his introduction to the 2022 National Defense Strategy. “We live in turbulent times."
The U.S. needs to pursue a “clear-eyed” strategy that recognizes the world is unsafe today and will be similarly unsafe in the future, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former Army chief of staff, told a Senate committee.
The U.S. faces many challenges in a growing strategic competition with Russia and China, but making the situation even more complicated are signs of increasing cooperation between the two top U.S. competitors, according to experts who spoke Oct. 30 at a one-day conference hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare.
This was the first AUSA professional forum solely focused on competition with China and Russia.
The Army’s modernization efforts are a “tremendous opportunity” for companies that are willing to work with the service, the Army’s top civilian leader said.
Since the Army revealed an extensive effort to cancel, reduce or delay nearly 200 programs to funnel more than $30 billion into its six modernization priorities, the service has gotten pushback from some who believe the Army’s priorities are “misguided,” Army Secretary Mark T. Esper said.
The “deep dive” cuts made to dozens of programs in the Army’s march toward modernization have resulted in funding for priority air and missile defense capabilities to be fielded over the next five years.
Lt. Gen. James F. Pasquarette, deputy chief of staff, G-8, who heads Army resources and planning, said the Army’s reprioritization of funds is in line with the National Defense Strategy, and is aimed at re-establishing “overmatch against China and Russia in areas where we lost it or will soon lose it if we don’t get after it now.”
The Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy represents a “fundamental shift” in defense and deterrence policy for the U.S., one of its authors told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The 2018 National Defense Strategy calls for more emphasis on “cultivating” the military and civilian workforce and continued reforms to cut defense costs while improving performance.
Talent management efforts would apply to uniformed and civilian personnel.
For civilian workers, the document says the military “requires a motivated, diverse and highly skilled civilian workforce.” To get that, DoD “will emphasize new skills” with information experts, data scientists, computer programmers and basic science researchers and engineers. They’ll be expected to “use information, not simply manage it,” the document says.
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