NCOs Vital to Delivering Ready, Agile Force
NCOs play a key role in building a force that’s ready to sustain itself on a complex and dispersed battlefield, a panel of senior enlisted leaders said March 26.
Articles from ARMY Magazine, Headline News, and AUSA News on readiness of U.S. Army forces.
NCOs play a key role in building a force that’s ready to sustain itself on a complex and dispersed battlefield, a panel of senior enlisted leaders said March 26.
Recruiting challenges are creating unit manning shortages, but Army leaders are optimistic that initiatives to boost enlistments will soon pay off.
With a goal to recruit 55,000 new soldiers and enlist 5,000 more into the delayed entry pool by the end of fiscal year 2024, Army leaders aim to begin relieving the strain on operational units.
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth acknowledged that many soldiers she’s spoken with “have very full plates and are doing the work of one-and-a-half to two soldiers.”
The Army’s ability to deliver combat-ready formations depends on ensuring that soldiers and their families are taken care of, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer said Feb. 20 at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army.
In a wide-ranging conversation about his top initiatives, Weimer discussed the progress being made on family housing, barracks improvements and dining facilities.
Without safe home environments and cohesive teams where soldiers take care of one another, he said, the Army cannot deliver formations that are ready for combat.
Readiness must be “at the forefront of all we do” if the Army is to stay ahead of complex global threats and win in any domain, a senior leader said.
Describing the world as a “much more uncertain environment” today than it was during 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gen. Andrew Poppas, commander of Army Forces Command, said this means that “our readiness must increase exponentially.”
As they travel across the force, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer are reinforcing the importance of an Army that’s focused on warfighting and able to respond to any contingency anywhere in the world.
“Our Army exists to fight and win our nation’s wars. That’s why we exist, that’s why we’re in this uniform,” George said. “We are a global Army. We’ve got to be ready to go anywhere on short notice.”
America’s Army must be ready to fight anywhere and anytime it’s called, and it must do so as a total force, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George said.
“People will talk about Europe, and they’ll talk about the Pacific and all those threats that are out there, but our Army is a global Army,” George said. “We’re going to have to be ready to go wherever we’re going to go, and wherever we go, it’s going to be a multicomponent solution. It’s always been that way, and it will continue to be.”
As the Army undergoes its biggest transformation in decades and prepares for large-scale combat operations against near-peer adversaries, soldiers must always “have the best equipment to fight and win our nation’s wars,” a senior Army leader said.
Maj. Gen. Thomas O’Connor, commander of the Army Aviation and Missile Command, stressed the importance of honoring the past while transitioning to the future. “Those that have come before us—the impact they’ve had, the conditions they set, their innovative and creative ways to solve problems—we use that as a starting point,” he 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.”
Faced with changing adversaries and an increasingly complex operating environment, the Army must make sure soldiers are ready to fight, win and not just survive, but thrive, a senior Army leader said.
Speaking during the 2023 Holistic Health and Fitness Symposium at Fort Eustis, Virginia, Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of I Corps, said the Army’s transformation for 2030 and beyond doesn’t just involve equipment and new technology.
Facing one of the most challenging recruiting environments in decades, the Army continues to operate at a high pace, with no relief in sight, the service’s top enlisted soldier said.
“We have an enormous strain on soldiers,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston said. “We’re busier now than we ever have been.”
Speaking at the recent Fires Symposium in Lawton, Oklahoma, Grinston said the Army’s operations tempo is a “huge concern.”