The Army must find ways to quickly evolve as it works to recruit new soldiers and grow the force, the service’s top personnel official said.
“Today, everyone is in a competition for talent,” Casey Wardynski, assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, said during the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Ala.
Building readiness after 18 years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan requires a balancing act between resources, time, ability and changing Army culture, says British Army Maj. Gen. Felix Gedney, III Corps deputy commanding general, who will be part of a March 27 panel discussion about combat readiness for multidomain operations as part of the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Ala.
The Army continues to build readiness across the total force—from the individual soldier to its brigade combat teams, the service’s top enlisted leader said.
“The Army has more units ready than at any time in recent history,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s personnel subcommittee.
Because of funding support from Congress, the Army had 28 brigade combat teams at their highest state of readiness at the end of 2018, compared to 19 BCTs the year before, he added.
The Army has made progress in rebuilding readiness lost during a period of declining end strength, but still faces challenges filling slots in cyber and electronic warfare units, maintenance depots and ballistic missile defense units, according to a new government report.
The February Government Accountability Office report also says unit manning shortages lead to longer periods away from home on official duties for soldiers, which negatively affects readiness.
In discussing the Army’s mission, Secretary of the Army Mark T.
In 1778, recognizing the need to quickly improve the capability and discipline of the Continental Army, Gen.
Critical to the materiel enterprise’s efforts to achieve materiel readiness is long-term strategic planning with the combatant command
Reshaping the military to tackle evolving threats should be a higher government priority, four national security analysts warned during testimony.
The Army is refining and aligning its strategy to counter the unmanned aerial systems threat that is looming ever larger.
A recent 13-page, unclassified “strategy extract” focuses on countermeasures for UAS groups 1 through 3 on DoD’s scale of five UAS groups, the smaller systems that can’t easily be countered by integrated air and missile defense systems.
“As UAS have become smaller, slower and operate at lower altitudes, they have become more challenging to detect, identify, and defeat,” the extract says. “Technological advances have exacerbated these challenges.”
The ability to dominate cyberspace operations is “inextricably linked to Army readiness,” says Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, the U.S. Army vice chief of staff. But the cyber domain, “the only man-made one that exists, creates a vexing set of challenges.”
Allyn was the keynote speaker at the Nov. 3 Hot Topics forum “Cyber and Future Readiness,” sponsored by the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare. The event was held at AUSA’s Conference and Event Center in Arlington, Va.
