John E. Whitley, James P. McConville

“ The Army is cultivating cohesive teams, maximizing talent, sustaining tactical and strategic readiness, progressing through our greatest transformation in over 40 years, and strengthening our alliances and partnerships. We are leading the way in developing and fielding high technology for the Joint Force. We are opening operational and strategic doors in the Indo-Pacific and Europe. We are succeeding through calibrating our force posture around the globe to assure our partners and deter would-be adversaries. And we need your continued support. ”

“ These challenges require an agile, ready, modern, and multi-domain Army that works alongside strong allies and partners. Strategic competitors and regional actors are testing American norms, institutions, and alliances. China, our pacing threat, increases its global assertiveness, while Russia increases its disruptive behavior. Threats from Iran, North Korea, and violent extremism and terrorism remain. While America’s Army maintains a tenuous overmatch, it is fleeting. ”

“ The Army continues to refine and implement its 21st Century Talent Management System in order to effectively acquire, develop, employ, and retain talent. We are maximizing the potential of each Soldier. We are evolving our marketing and recruiting with initiatives like Army Hiring Days and the “What’s Your Warrior?” campaign to bring in the best talent from across the country, including cities and communities with populations who may be unfamiliar with the opportunities military service affords. ”

“ However, readiness is fragile. We require continued support to maintain it, in order to reliably meet the needs of combatant commands without overstressing our people.
People are the Army’s most important weapon system. The Army represents 25 percent of the Defense budget, 35 percent of the active force, and 45 percent of the active and reserve forces, but meets over half of global demands. Today, the Total Army supports the Joint Force by supplying Soldiers to combatant commanders in more than 140 countries. ”

“ We must be able to address the risk of new and emerging cyber, information, and physical threats that can thwart our ability to project power by disrupting installation operational capabilities and the supply chains supporting our forces, whether from malign actors or nature. Our installations must be resilient to disruption and modernized in support of the modernized Army force. The Army is investing significant time and resources to mitigate the effects of climate change on our installations. ”

“ The foundation of Army readiness is our people. The Army is moving to a foundational readiness model that prioritizes the training of individuals and small units at the company level and below. The best combat units in the world ensure their individuals and small units are masters of their craft. To foster individual readiness, the Army is also investing in holistic health and fitness. We continue to study the impact of the Army Combat Fitness Test in accordance with Congressional guidance in order to better connect individual fitness with combat readiness. ”

“ Talent management starts with having the right Army leaders at the battalion and brigade-level. These are the Army’s most consequential leadership positions in terms of affecting retention and attrition. In the biggest change to the Army’s command selection process in fifty years, the Army now uses a Commander Assessment Program to select future battalion and brigade commanders, as well as command sergeants major. This intensive five-day program evaluates individuals for their temperament, cognitive fitness, physical health, and leadership skills. ”

“ The Army is working diligently to solidify a culture of cohesion and intervention to protect our Soldiers, not only from the deliberate fratricide of these behaviors, but from the invisible danger of mental and behavioral health issues, and other stressors that can increase the risk of suicide. ”

“ The battlefield is increasingly faster, more lethal, and more distributed. Overmatch will belong to the side that can make better decisions faster. To meet emerging challenges, the Army is transforming to provide the Joint Force with the speed, range, and convergence of cutting edge technologies that will generate the decision dominance and overmatch required to win the next fight. ”

“ Climate change impacts Army installations globally and opens the Arctic as a new geographic theater for competition. The Army must consider alternative energy sources, improved energy storage, fuel-efficient design, more robust power distribution, and new technologies, such as weather pattern and terrain stability modeling to better inform operations.
The Army must also contend with threats from within. The harmful behaviors of sexual assault, sexual harassment, racism, and extremism hurt Soldiers and break trust with the American people. ”

“ Regional alignment provides units deep wells of knowledge on the terrain, culture, and people where their units are most likely to operate. Joint force commanders also gain by leveraging habitual, trusted relationships between Army formations and Allies and partners. ”

“ After rebaselining the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) program last year, the Army issued the final request for proposal for the concept design phase on December 18, 2020. OMFV is an example of how our new acquisitions process enabled the Army to learn early and recover before programs become too big to fail. The Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) effort envisions an unmanned platform that provides decisive mobility, lethality, survivability, and increased situational awareness to formations. ”

“ Army Futures Command is providing unprecedented unity of effort across the modernization enterprise, having changed our business model and culture through public-private partnerships and a focus on Soldier-centered design. This allows us to gain immediate operator feedback, accelerating the development process and ensuring new systems are effective in operational environments. ”

“ We are establishing energy and water resilience, efficiency, and affordability across our installation enterprise. In the past five years, energy programs, partnerships and initiatives recognized a cost avoidance or savings of more than 14 percent, every installation has added a full-time energy manager position, and 16 of 26 Army OIB depots, arsenals and ammunition plants have transitioned from fossil fuels to clean energy alternatives. ”

“ The Army is not just modernizing concepts and materiel. We require continued budget support to modernize infrastructure and execute workload in our Organic Industrial Base (OIB) of depots, arsenals, and ammunition plants, along with our power projection and Mobilization Force Generation Installations to better project power from and into contested environments. ”

“ The Army is also investing in deep sensing and analysis to provide intelligence support to long range precision fires and commanders’ situational awareness during Joint All-Domain Operations. We will continue to drive intelligence modernization by acquiring capabilities and capacities across the Space, Aerial, Terrestrial, and Foundation Layers nested with and in support of the Army’s six modernization priorities. ”

“ Childcare professionals serve on the front line of the Army’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as they allow mission essential personnel to maintain Army readiness. The Army has a multi-pronged strategy to maintain, and in some cases, increase access to care. With continued Congressional support, we plan to build 21 additional Child Development Centers by FY30, adding approximately 4,000 spaces. We appreciate Congressional support for the three centers funded in FY21, two in Hawaii and one in Alaska. ”

“ Putting people first also means creating a duty and installation environment that allows Soldiers to thrive. The Army continues to prioritize the QoL focus areas identified in 2019. The COVID era only reinforced how essential each of those initiatives is to the well-being and readiness of our Soldiers and their families. ”

“ In addition to our six priorities, the Army understands the need for considerable investment in long-term research to deliver science and technology solutions. The Army is aligning its laboratories towards modernization and partnering with over 250 research institutions. ”

“ We held accountable those leaders deemed to have broken that trust. We have fundamentally transformed our command selection process in order to improve the way we choose future leaders to assume positions with the most influence over Soldiers. ”

“ We implemented mechanisms that hold privatized companies accountable to residents for proper maintenance and customer service, hired additional personnel to provide quality assurance oversight, and implemented 100 percent change of occupancy inspections and quality assurance checks. ”

“ We are grateful to Congress for increases in Health Professional Officer special pay caps. This necessary investment ensures Army Medicine can recruit and retain the best quality healthcare professionals for the sustainability of the force. ”

“ We are also partnering with private industry to implement energy and utility savings contracts that maximize the latest technology to drive efficiency and reduced costs, with 99 agreements currently in execution. ”

“ Over 69,000 Soldiers are in the Indo-Pacific, including over 25,000 forward deployed on the Korean peninsula. 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. ”