By Ann Roosevelt
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said yesterday the way the service sees the future will require a force that is versatile, tailorable and networked.
This future balanced Army must be a “versatile mix of tailorable and networked organizations that are operating on a rotational cycle,” Casey said in his annual luncheon keynote speech at the Association of the United States Army annual conference in Washington, D.C.
Casey said last year the Army needed to think in terms of a long-term ideological struggle, where trends in globalization technology, demographics, weapons of mass destruction only exacerbated long-term ideological struggle that makes it more likely to face a future of persistent conflict against states, non-states and individual actors.
However, that’s not enough, he said. “The nature of war doesn’t change, the character of war changes.”
Trying to get a better sense of what war would look like in the latter part of the 21st century, Casey said wars and Army operations would be fundamentally different than the wars he trained to fight.
The Army has to be adaptive and reflect six characteristics, he said. In this future the Army must first of all be versatile.
“This has to be the central organizing principle of the Army,” Casey said. Versatility built into formations and leaders allows them to adapt to a given situation.
The future Army also must be expeditionary, agile, lethal and sustainable.
Finally, this Army must be skilled at operating with other government agencies.
As land forces operate as part of the joint and coalition environment, the Army must be able to prevail in conflict, engage and help others build their own capacity and support civil authorities at home and abroad, and when necessary deter or defeat hybrid threats and hostile state actors.
All this is “consistent with the goals and objectives of the of the [Defense] Department coming out of the QDR (Quadrennial Defense Review).”
The Army continues to adjust its mix of light, Stryker, heavy and special operations forces, and the variety of enablers as lessons are learned from conflict, he said.
Tailoring forces is “hugely successful,” he said. For example, a division headquarters rarely has more than one of its own brigades with it, but has brigades that could come from active, National Guard or Reserve forces.
Another key element for the future balanced force is to have the 1.1 million soldiers in the active, reserves and National Guard operate on a predictable Army Force Generation Cycle. This would be one year deployed and two years at home for active forces, one year out and four years at home for the National Guard and Reserves.
Since the termination of the manned ground vehicle portion of Future Combat Systems in April, Casey said the service has been working to restructure its modernization plans.
“We’ve built a BCT Modernization Strategy with four key elements,” he said. The first element is to incrementally field one Army network. “We want to take advantage of the rapid progress of information technology and field it in progressive increments,” he said.
Capability packages, are another effort, “if you think [FCS] spin-outs plus, that’s where you are,” he said. Systems from the FCS program plus high pay-off items from the current fight, like biometrics, will be fielded to units in sets, complete with the doctrine, tactics and other items needed.
Additionally, the service has plans to incorporate the $30 million investment in Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles into the force.
Finally, modernization has a focus on building in “five to seven years” an Infantry Fighting Vehicle “designed from the ground up to fight in an IED environment,” Casey said. This would replace the canceled FCS manned ground vehicle.
Put all this together and the nation will have a force prepared to meet the challenges of the future, Casey said, in “a period of fundamental and continuous change.”