Technologies that will fundamentally change the nature of war are already under development and finding application in the commercial world, but the Army is stuck fighting with the equipment it has for at least another decade, according to the service’s top officer.
Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has made readiness a top priority of his tenure as the Army’s most senior uniformed official. An essential part of building a ready ground force is manning units to their optimal strength and equipping them with technologically relevant weapons and gear that is in working order, he said.
The Army will be limited largely to its existing capabilities and the bounds of its current equipment for at least the next decade, although technology will allow significant upgrades in the out years, Milley said during a Jan. 21 breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army outside Washington, D.C. Beyond 2025, technologies like advanced robotics and alternative fuels will provide a revolution on par with the advent of the stirrup or rifled musket, he said.
“Radical change inside of 24-26 months in one of the largest organizations in the world, with equipment that was budgeted for five years ago…is unlikely to happen,” he said. “From now until 2020, more or less, what you see is what you got. That’s the equipment you’ve got, marginal changes in organizations, some tactical and concept changes but, again, marginal, not radical.”
Milley compartmentalizes the Army’s modernization schedule into near-, middle- and long-term periods, each with unique requirements based on the Army’s size, structure and mission. During the next five years, the Army will focus on resetting existing equipment that will be deployed in current organizational structures in any potential conflict, he said.
After 10 years, the Army will be capable of “significant spiraling” of existing concepts and equipment, Milley said. At that point the Army can begin introducing new weapons and system components to its current platforms. Still, the service will not depart significantly from the status quo.
“You’re not going to see going from a bareback horse to riding with a stirrup,” Milley said of the Army’s potential technological progress over the next decade. Neither will the service experience a change as radical as “going from a smoothbore musket to a rifled musket, going from semaphore and signal flags to radios.”
Milley foresees technology resulting in another foundational leap ahead beyond 2025, when robotics, nanotechnology, advanced cyber and communication capabilities and alternative fuels will fundamentally change the way the Army fights.
“That kind of leap ahead, however, is very likely from 2025 to 2050,” he said. “The challenge of readiness is also in the future, the deeper future. This is an area where we, the Army, need to significantly pick up our game, because there are technologies, emerging technologies–some of which are receiving practical application in the commercial world that clearly are going to change not the nature of war, but will probably deeply change the character of war.”
“There is a wide, wide array of technologies out there that are emerging today that have some limited application in the commercial world. There is no doubt in my mind that by 2025-2050 those are going to have military application and they are likely to change the fundamental character of war.”
Establishing a force capable of fighting and winning wars with relevant equipment and sufficient institutional knowledge and training is a time-consuming process, Milley said.
“It takes time to build readiness. There’s a myth out there that readiness is a quick process. It is not. It takes many, many years…It takes a long time to build ready ground forces. Not just the acquisition process itself, but the actual deployment of those forces and their capabilities…Once it is built, it doesn’t last very long. Readiness is relatively short lived, so it has to remain an enduring focus.”