By some analyses, the U.S. Army has fared the worst in terms of diminished readiness. Fifteen years of operations in the Middle East and budget sequestration have limited opportunities and resources for training and modernization. The Cipher Brief spoke with retired Army Lieutenant General Guy Swan about the state of readiness and the challenges to maintaining readiness.
The Cipher Brief: What is the Army’s state of readiness right now, and what are the key challenges—be they bureaucratic, technical or structural—that will be the hardest to overcome?
Guy Swan: The United States Army is in a transitional period with respect to its state of readiness. Over the past 15 years, Army readiness was built as a model needed to sustain capable forces over a protracted period to accomplish primarily the kinds of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism missions encountered in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Now the Army is working to increase its readiness posture for operations against the high-end threats posed by nation states. There is no doubt about the importance of this in the minds of Army leaders and soldiers. From his first day as Army Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley has made it clear that “readiness is our number one priority. There is no other number one.”
Army leaders recognize the need to regain combined-arms capability in tactical formations while improving key aspects of overall strategic readiness in support of the National Military Strategy. In his September 2016 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Milley stated that “about a third of our Regular Army brigade combat teams are currently ready for high-end combat against a nation state . . . and our goal is to have Regular Army brigade combat teams achieve 60–66 percent full-spectrum readiness. . .. I estimate that it will take the Army approximately four years to achieve that, assuming no significant increase in demand and no sequestration levels of funding.”
The trade-off for retaining a reliable and predictable pool of units in support of counterinsurgency operations was the erosion of the Army’s ability to prosecute combat against a high-end, near-peer adversary. Over the past year, the Army – and by this I mean the Total Army of Regular Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve forces – has taken significant steps toward increasing its preparedness to fight such an enemy. The Army is making real progress in improving its current readiness, but much remains to be done. It has increased throughput –that is the cycling of brigade combat teams—at its world-class combat training centers by more than 25 percent, from 15 to 19 brigade combat team rotations a year (including National Guard units) and now includes brigade- and battalion-level combined-arms live fire drills employing tanks, infantry, artillery, aviation, and other enablers—a key high-end warfighting skill.
The Army has also developed a Regular Army/National Guard affiliation program, pairing units from active and reserve components to train together and be prepared to deploy as a team should the need arise. Readiness is steadily improving, and the Army is more prepared to face a near-peer adversary now than at any time since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The largest challenge to readiness, both in how the Army trains its units and how it equips them to fight, is the ongoing downward pressure on the defense budget and its associated lack of predictability. The repeated use of Continuing Resolutions at the beginning of each fiscal year is hugely disruptive and forces the Army to fit increasing costs into a carried-over budget, which prevents efficient reprogramming of funds as required and disrupts acquisition as costs increase, even if the budget does not. In addition, the threat of sequestration with its arbitrarily mandated budget caps impacts readiness by limiting acquisition programs and research and development funding for required modernization, because operation and maintenance funding must cover personnel costs and ensure that readiness goals are met.
TCB: What changes, in terms of force and personnel composition, will the Army have to undergo in order to face future threats and challenges?
GS: The U.S. Army, as part of joint military forces, is aggressively attempting to understand the implications of the increasingly dangerous strategic environment and the changing characteristics of war in the 21st century in order to best prepare to face future threats and challenges. Army leaders understand that accurate prediction of the future is not possible; rather, it is guided by historian Michael Howard’s warning that what is important is to not get the future so wrong that the Army cannot adapt faster than the enemy when encountering new realities and threats. As the character of war is about to undergo a fundamental change, both the operating force – the fighting Army and the institutional Army – schools, bases, R&D, and more are likely to look a lot different as new forms of maneuver, mass, and mutual support are developed.
In the near term, the Army will continue to evaluate its force mix, unit types, and stationing of units and will make changes as required based on projected threats and other requirements. Through a combination of its doctrine, organizational structure, training, materiel development, leader development and education, personnel policies, and training facilities it will craft a force that makes sense both operationally and fiscally.
Long-term force design and personnel requirements – including the right military and civilian occupational specialties – are currently under review. How the Army will look in 10 or 20 years is unknown, but by asking the right questions and remaining flexible and adaptive, Army leaders will get it as right as they possibly can.
But again, without the needed budgetary certainty and additional funding help from Congress, this task will be very difficult. According to General Milley, until that happens, "We are mortgaging future readiness for current readiness.”
The future will be here before we know it. In fact, the future may already be here, and we do not yet fully recognize it.
TCB: What are the roles and threats toward which the Army needs to pivot? Is it as simple as switching from non-state to state actors?
GS: I do not see the Army engaged in a “pivot” in its roles or in the threats with which it must deal. It is not facing an “either–or” type of decision. Simply stated, the Army, as part of the broader joint force, must enhance its readiness to deal with present and emerging challenges and threats posed by both state and non-state actors.
General Milley has emphasized that the Army must have credible military capabilities to deter, and if necessary defeat, a peer military power. While developing these capabilities, he emphasizes that “we must retain the competencies, capabilities, and capacity we built for the counterterrorism and counterinsurgency fights of the past 15 years. These missions are not going away."
But the most demanding challenge the Army increasingly faces is the ability to deter or defeat the threat posed by nation-states. This is the non-negotiable benchmark for measuring Army readiness.
As I mentioned, over the past 15 years the Army has focused on fighting non-state actors. It continually added new capabilities and made programming choices about its overall capabilities based on that threat and the conditions of that operational environment.
But going forward, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joe Dunford and other senior Defense Department leaders indicate the need for increased focus on state actors using the “Four plus One” construct. This means that DoD will focus on ensuring it is able to deter or defeat Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as to fight and ultimately defeat global terrorism. This is not predictive but does provides a benchmark of required capabilities for the Army and the other military services and defense agencies.
TCB: How did budget cuts and sequestration affect the Army, and how long will these effects be felt?
GS: Let me say unequivocally that sequestration has had a devastating impact on our military and especially on the United States Army. The most immediate impact has been on current readiness, although modernization and infrastructure readiness also were significantly affected. Despite downsizing troop strength over the past few years in response to these constraints, the budget caps hindered the Army’s ability to train and prepare for contingencies, and in some cases, units were unable to fully train prior to deployment.
Additionally, as the strategic situation has changed to become even more dangerous, the budget cuts and caps have limited the Army’s adaptation to new strategic realities.
Initially it was believed that these caps would force the Army to downsize to a level described as very high risk in addressing potential conflict. Recent relief from Congress has slowed the downsizing, but the risk remains high. As the Chief (Milley) says, “Deterrence is expensive, and the only thing more expensive than maintaining capable ready forces is actually fighting a war. And the only thing more expensive than fighting and winning a war is fighting and losing a war.” That really sums it up.
The adverse effects of the budget cuts and sequestration are likely to be long-term—and may even get worse. General Milley recently testified that “while the Army is reducing end strength, we made a deliberate decision to prioritize readiness, reduce infrastructure maintenance, and decrease funding for modernization. These choices devote resources to today’s fight but decrease investments in the future."
This clearly is not sustainable over the long term. The new geopolitical reality that has emerged since the Budget Control Act was passed in 2011 makes it imperative that sequestration be repealed – now. Without such relief, the Army will take longer to respond to crises, and the potential for unnecessarily high casualties is greater. America owes too much to its troops to ever let this happen again.
