The virus affected Army recruiting efforts in 2020, but in the end, the Army achieved its desired overall end strength, albeit by relying more on reenlistments. The Army has largely surmounted the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
All of this reinforces the reality that America has a long-term need for modernized, sufficiently sized land power.Ī Difficult Year. Many also seem to overlook the fact that great-power competition with China and Russia is a global contest, which means that we face the enduring need to counter aggression wherever it may occur, not just within the territory or waters of China or Russia. We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more-we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged. As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates famously said: When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. America has a horrible record of predicting where it will fight its next war. Arguments that America no longer needs a strong modern Army because, for example, China is largely a maritime threat ignore history and ignore what it means to be engaged in global competition with a near peer. The FY 2022 proposed Army budget sharply reduces training programs and exercises and drastically curtails many equipment programs. If this requested amount is approved, the Army may not be able to achieve its vision of modernizing and regaining its technological advantage while preserving readiness and sufficient end strength. Since fiscal year (FY) 2019, the Army’s budget has decreased, and the Administration’s FY 2022 budget request for the Army takes a sharp downward drop from $177 billion in FY 2021 to $173 billion requested for FY 2022. However, whether the necessary resources will be available to enable such change is open to question.
ARMY COMMAND POST PLATFORM APU HOW TO
Autonomy is changing the character of warfare, and the Army has bold ideas about how to take advantage of this technology.
Information-age warfare requires new levels of speed and precision in Army sensor-to-shooter chains. Advances in firepower like ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones fielded by adversaries like China have outpaced the U.S. That it needs to evolve and transform is unquestioned. The Army, like the other military services, finds itself at a strategic inflection point. We remain dedicated to our counterterrorism and train, advise, assist missions, providing over 21,000 Soldiers in support of the U.S. Over 30,000 Soldiers are in Europe supporting NATO and the European Deterrence Initiative, including the forward command post of our newly reactivated V Corps.
1 On May 5, 2021, the Acting Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff testified that: Over 69,000 Soldiers are in the Indo-Pacific, including over 25,000 forward deployed on the Korean peninsula. Operationally, as of May 20, 2021, the Army had 167,370 soldiers forward located in 142 countries. The Army is engaged throughout the world in protecting and advancing U.S. Although it is capable of all types of operations across the range of military operations and support to civil authorities, its chief value to the nation is its ability to defeat and destroy enemy land forces in battle. Army is America’s primary agent for the conduct of land warfare.