The Soldier: On Point for Change And the Point of Change

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ANNUAL MEETING AND EXPOSITION The Soldier: On Point for Change And the Point of Change One figure stands at the apex of an unfolding U.S. military era and at the vortex of changes that are fueling that new era the American soldier.

1 ANNUAL MEETING AND EXPOSITION The Soldier: On Point for Change And the Point of Change One figure stands at the apex of an unfolding U.S. military era and at the vortex of changes that are fueling that new era the American soldier. AUSA President GEN Gordon R. Sullivan, U.S. Army retired, speaks at the opening ceremony of the 2012 AUSA Annual Meeting and Exposition. Photographs by Dennis Steele It is not the first time that soldiers of the U.S. Army have occupied that place. Thus it was fitting that soldiers took the stage first at the opening ceremony of the 2012 AUSA Annual Meeting and Exposition to remind everyone about what is most important and who is most significant now and throughout American history. Outfitted in uniforms depicting important periods in U.S. history from the Revolutionary War to the war in Afghanistan, soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry (The Old Guard) showed the audience through narration and choreographed scenes that change is nothing new and that soldiers have always been the fulcrum and focus of change in addition to being the greatest weapon system ever fielded to defend the United States. Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh spoke about the American soldier during his opening ceremony address, using the words of former Army Chief of Staff GEN Creighton W. Abrams Jr. Abrams noted that people are the Army, Secretary McHugh said, continuing with a quotation from GEN Abrams: By people, I do not mean personnel. I do not mean end strength. I mean living, breathing, serving human beings. They have needs and interests and desires. They have spirit and will, and strength and abilities. They have weaknesses and faults; and they have names. They are the heart of our preparedness and this preparedness as a nation and as an Army depends upon the spirit of our soldiers. It is that spirit that gives the Army life. Secretary McHugh began his speech by relating the question that he is often asked by congressional committee members and the media: What keeps you up at night? It s not really that simple a question, and it really requires a pretty complicated, even comprehensive answer, Secretary McHugh observed. In the most basic terms [however], what keeps me up at night is our nation s econ- 30 ARMY December 2012

By Dennis Steele Senior Staff Writer omy and how it already has and will continue to impact our budget. For the Army, that means coming to terms with equal doses of reality and available resources.

2 By Dennis Steele Senior Staff Writer omy and how it already has and will continue to impact our budget. For the Army, that means coming to terms with equal doses of reality and available resources. He went on to say that the budget impact isn t something that was simply dropped on our doorstep, something put upon us by sudden fluctuations in the stock market; the truth is, we ve seen this day coming for some time. Most importantly, we ve been given the opportunity and the time to get it right to plan, to prioritize and adjust force structure, equipment and training and we re doing it, he said. We re also better [at] integrating our reserve forces into the operational force, he continued. Since America was first attacked in 2001, one of the most important things we ve learned is how critical an operational reserve is to our ability to meet mission requirements. How we ensure that the reserve component both the Army Reserve and the National Guard remains a trained and ready force is paramount to the Army s overall readiness and stability, and our nation s security. And we re going to make sure we do that, and we do it right. The Secretary announced that he had signed a directive establishing a Total Force policy for the U.S. Army. Under this directive, he explained, we will man, train, equip active and reserve components in an integrated operational force. The purpose of it all is to provide predictable, recurring and sustainable capabilities. To put it another way: Incorporating active and reserve components as a Total Force. This directive outlines a number of measures to make integration of those forces seamless: examining force structure options; establishing uniform processes and procedures for validating pre-deployment readiness; developing and implementing a unified personnel management and pay system; ensuring that our equipping strategy promotes procurement programs for a Total Force; facilitating opportunities for soldiers to move between active and reserve component assignments throughout their careers; and ensuring equal standards for professional development. Another thing that keeps me up at night, he said, is wondering whether we re doing enough to reduce the size and cost of bureaucracy, to ensure that we re not needlessly expending resources that could otherwise be used for training, be used for equipment, for properly sizing our force structure. The Secretary recalled that during last year s Annual Meeting he announced creation of the Institutional Army Task Force to apply proven, workable and creative solutions to help the Army do better with less, not to do more with less, and steps to streamline service contracts. We created a single focal point at each command and staff element, consolidated requirements generation, and aligned subject matter experts. Where we once had some 260,000 actions, awarded by 225 different offices, carried out by thousands of different people, we now have six portfolio management centers, consolidating nearly half of all service obligations. And this past year, that effort netted us more than $330 million in savings. Those efforts will continue this year, according to the Secretary, and with a continued top-to-bottom review that will make our entire Army smarter and more cost efficient. And these are critically important measures, measures that will streamline our structure, improve our effectiveness and make us organizationally better. But this is the Army, Secretary McHugh said. We don t succeed simply through bureaucracy, we don t prevail only through wise spending, as important as those things are. The heart and soul of America s Army is today what it was on the battlefields of the American Revolution: It is our people. And what keeps me up at night, too honestly, more than anything else are not the numbers on a ledger. Not by a long shot. What keeps me up is wondering whether the service and sacrifice of the American soldier is not only appreciated, but really understood and understood at its core. It keeps me awake knowing how many young lives we ve lost to suicide, and determining whether we re do- December 2012 ARMY 31

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5 In his opening ceremony remarks, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh addressed subjects such as the budget, integrating the reserve component into the organizational force, reducing bureaucracy, and whether the service and sacrifice of the American soldier is not only appreciated, but really understood. ing enough or can ever do enough to see the warning signs, to reach out, to help and intervene. We have to find solutions, we have to work together to make a difference. Yes, there are a lot of things that keep me awake at night, but there is something that always helps me sleep easier: It is the indomitable spirit, the selfless service, the remarkable courage of the American soldier the strength of the Army, the strength of our nation. And that s why it s important for all of us to be here. That s why these kinds of events are critical: because they bring together individuals and organizations who care about the American soldier, who deeply value and appreciate all they have achieved on our behalf and are willing to continue to fight for them in the future as they have fought and won for us. *** Army Chief of Staff GEN Raymond T. Odierno delivered the keynote address at the Annual Meeting s Eisenhower Luncheon, and in his conclusion addressed the relevance of the U.S. Army. There are some who have interpreted our new national strategy as questioning the relevance of land forces, GEN Odierno said. There are others who would wish away a decade s worth of hard-won sacrifice and expertise with false assumptions about the future. To them I say: Our Army was created 237 years ago to defend this great nation and to secure the interests of the United States abroad. That imperative has not changed. As I have watched the strategic environment evolve over nearly four decades in uniform, I have seen many of the characteristics of conflict change. Technology has advanced, new threats have emerged, and connections between people have increased exponentially. But through it all, the nature of conflict has remained constant. From countering terrorism to irregular warfare, from stability operations to humanitarian [response], when people are in trouble the United States responds. It is most frequently a U.S. Army soldier who arrives on their doorstep. Why? Because preventing conflict demands presence, shaping the environment demands presence, restoring the peace demands presence, and more often than not, that presence proudly wears the uniform of an American soldier. Earlier in his speech, GEN Odierno said, The strategic environment in which we operate is constantly evolving. Indeed, the character of conflict itself is changing, even as the nature of warfare remains the same. Around the globe, the balance of two superpowers has been replaced by an increasingly crowded international stage. Regional powers exert influence locally, often unconstrained by superpower influence. Strong social movements have successfully challenged long-entrenched regimes. Loosely affiliated groups, united often only by ideology, operate in ungoverned spaces on land and in cyberspace. Technological advances have revolutionized the way people and governments interact, he continued. A wide variety of non-state actors can combine primitive tactics with advanced weapons to create instability in free societies and failing states. These actors do not replace the more conventional threats posed by nations such as North Korea, but they require the military to maintain a much broader range of capabilities to respond. Yet the fundamental nature of war remains the same. War remains a struggle to influence key terrain, populations and governance. Preventing conflict is better than reacting to it, and to prevent it you must understand its causes. But understanding in a lot of ways can only be gained through presence. Although changes in the U.S. military are under way, the Chief of Staff spoke about the enduring missions that the U.S. Army will continue to undertake for the American people. Decisive defeat of any enemy on land remains our top priority, he said. The Army represents one of America s most credible deterrents against future hostility. We prevent miscalculations from erupting into war, and we defeat an adversary when it does. No other nation can match the U.S. Army s ability to rapidly deploy large numbers of troops over extended distances, sustain them, and deliver precise, discriminate results. We must be prepared to take decisive action ourselves if necessary, but we must also set the conditions for our allies and partners to do so as well. In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, 34 ARMY December 2012

6 he continued, the Army also plays a critical role in shaping the strategic environment. Our force has honed its tremendous skills not only in battle, but also quelling civil unrest, countering terror, demilitarizing former combat zones, protecting vulnerable populations and providing disaster relief. Finally, he said, the Army is an indispensable provider to the Joint Force. Army commanders lead joint task forces, plan operations, and command and control units across the range of military operations. Army units build and operate the networks connecting our own units, the joint community, interagency and multinational partners on austere battlefields. Soldiers deliver food, fuel, ammunition, and medical support necessary to sustain joint operations from combat to humanitarian assistance. The Army collects and analyzes the intelligence that informs our actions and measures our progress. It delivers vital supplies to communities, at home and abroad, impacted by natural disasters. And finally, the Army provides 75 percent of the operators in U.S. Special Operations Command, who are essential to our national counterterrorism and security force assistance operations. Looking to the future, GEN Odierno advised, We must develop adaptive leaders and employ regionally responsive, mission-tailored strategic landpower forces to ensure our strength for tomorrow. He added, The successful conclusion of operations in Iraq and our ongoing transition in Afghanistan, as well as the significant fiscal challenges this country faces, make it essential that our Army reorients itself toward a broader array of missions and regions around the globe. Our ability to deliver truly strategic landpower, however, requires an improved understanding of the convergence of the human, cyber and geographic terrain in which we will operate. Today s global connectivity and its impact on a changing operational environment reinforce that lasting strategic results can only be achieved by effectively influencing people. Success depends as much on understanding the social and political fabric of the surroundings as it does on the ability to physically dominate them, he said. Throughout this period of great change, the Army stands ready to fight and win our nation s wars. However, we must be capable of doing much more to prevent conflict and shape the environment. Therefore, we must organize and employ our forces to be more agile and responsive to the needs of our combatant commanders. In the future, our forces must be tailored to local requirements, rapidly deployable at the lower echelons, and scalable from squad to corps level. As we move towards the future, our Army begins from a position of strength, he continued. We have the most experienced and combat-ready force in our Army s history, and are considered by all [to be] the world s greatest landpower, which employs the most effective, discriminate weapon on the battlefield the American soldier. We must approach operational tasks by organizing our missions around highly trained squads and platoons that are the foundation for our company, battalion or brigade combat teams, organized for specific mission sets and regional conditions. No other service can provide the mix of forces, from heavy to medium to light, tailored to meet mission requirements. None can match the synergy that results from the close integration of our special purpose and conventional forces, particularly in the complex human dimension of modern conflict. And none can match the breadth and depth of experience provided by a balanced mix of active, National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve forces. We will leverage these strengths through the regional alignment of forces, providing the combatant commanders full access to the range of capabilities resident in the Army today. GEN Odierno continued, To truly become a force capable of engaging around the world also requires a modernization strategy that is centered on our soldiers and squad. We must empower them with unmatched lethality, protection and situational awareness to achieve tactical dominance. It entails an overarching network architecture that connects all echelons from squad to joint task force to ensure that leaders have the right information at the right time to make the best possible decisions, therefore enabling Mission Command. It includes network-ready combat and tactical wheeled vehicles designed to maneuver our formations with increased lethality and mobility, while optimizing survivability. In total, our modernization ef- Army Chief of Staff GEN Raymond T. Odierno delivers the keynote address at the Eisenhower Luncheon, speaking about the missions and future of the U.S. Army, as well as modernization and remaining a versatile force. December 2012 ARMY 35

AUSA s 2012 Annual Meeting and Exposition included 671 displays, welcomed more than 29,000 registered visitors, and offered numerous professional development programs for soldiers, their families,

7 AUSA s 2012 Annual Meeting and Exposition included 671 displays, welcomed more than 29,000 registered visitors, and offered numerous professional development programs for soldiers, their families, Army civilians and members of the defense industry. forts will prepare the entire force for the complex and uncertain battlefield by putting squads with precise information and overmatch capability at the decisive time and place to achieve dominance of the operational environment. At the same time, we must preserve the ability to reassemble our forces rapidly, building the mass necessary to decisively defeat a determined enemy. In pursuing these goals, we ensure that we remain an Army capable of many missions, at many speeds, under many conditions. *** Held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., over the course of three days in late October, the 2012 AUSA Annual Meeting and Exposition provided many programs for active and reserve component soldiers and their families and for Army civilian employees and members of the defense industry, in keeping with the meeting s mission as a professional development forum. Among the programs that presented the views of some of the Army s top leaders, the Institute of Land Warfare hosted contemporary military forums in subject areas that included A Versatile Force for the Nation with LTG John F. Campbell, the Army s G-3/5/7, as the lead speaker; Army Special Operations Forces and Conventional Forces: Partnering to Prevent, Shape and Win, led by LTG Charles T. Cleveland, commanding general of the Army Special Operations Command; Enhancing Mission Effectiveness Through Power and Energy Advancements, led by Assistant Secretary of the Army (Installations, Energy and Environment) Katherine Hammack; Thinking Past Tomorrow Where Is Army Modernization Going? led by Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) Heidi Shyu; Aligning Forces Regionally in Support of Combatant Commanders, also led by LTG Campbell; Ready, Resilient and Army Strong, led by Vice Chief of Staff of the Army GEN Lloyd J. Austin III; Defending the Homeland in Depth: America s Army Partners to Counter Transnational Criminal Organizations, led by LTG William B. Caldwell IV, commanding general of U.S. Army North/Fifth U.S. Army; and Developing Leaders: The Key to Readiness, Sustaining the Profession, and Ensuring our Legacy, led by LTG David G. Perkins, commanding general of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, Kan. More than 670 exhibits filled the convention center, and the meeting welcomed more than 29,000 registered visitors. The meeting was preceded by the annual Army Ten-Miler, which drew more than 30,000 registered participants. The Annual Meeting concluded with the George Catlett Marshall Memorial Dinner, during which AUSA s highest honor, the Marshall Medal, was awarded to former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Secretary Baker, a former U.S. Marine Corps captain whose father was in the Army during World War I and whose son was an Army Ranger and honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, said that whoever wins the 2012 presidential election can and should draw important lessons from the life and the legacy of George C. Marshall. Let me suggest three such lessons: First, we must keep the United States militarily strong. Our potential adversaries are decades, not years away from matching our global reach. Nonetheless, we cannot become complacent when it comes to national defense. We have paid and paid dearly for a lack of preparedness [and] we simply cannot let our military capabilities deteriorate. He continued, As challenges change, so must the way we address them. Given the shifting geopolitical landscape it makes good sense to shift some of our focus and our resources from Western Europe to the Far East. 36 ARMY December 2012

Moreover, the overall defense budget is not written in stone. Given our current dire fiscal straits, defense will have to be on the table in any discussion of a grand budgetary bargain.

8 Moreover, the overall defense budget is not written in stone. Given our current dire fiscal straits, defense will have to be on the table in any discussion of a grand budgetary bargain. This is not only a political reality; it will also be good for the long-term health of our military. Our ability to field the world s preeminent armed forces is dependent upon our economic strength, Secretary Baker noted. You cannot be strong militarily or diplomatically if you re not strong economically. He went on to say that the congressional impasse represents a severe and growing threat to our military strength, to our defensive strength, to our very security. While saying that given the present congressional crisis now is not the time to debate the wisdom of the invasion of Iraq or the ongoing operations in Afghanistan, Secretary Baker advised that those interventions do demonstrate the risk of overstretch. The next President, whoever he is, should be very wary of wars of choice. He continued, A second lesson we can learn from Marshall: That s the importance of alliances. Marshall spent much of his effort as Army Chief of Staff and Secretary of State in creating and sustaining grand coalitions. He understood that U.S. power though immense was still finite. He realized that alliances could play a crucial role in advancing our national interests. He added, Of course we must be prepared if need be to act alone if our vital interests are at stake. But we should, where possible, seek allies. Cooperation can not only reduce the cost of action to the United States by sharing the burden with other countries, it can also serve to bolster support for international engagement. The American people are the final arbiter of foreign and security policy in the United States. You must bring the American people along behind the policy. If you lose the American people, you will lose the policy. So we must continue to do what we can to generate support for American engagement abroad. The American people, quite rightly, have little taste these days for going it alone when plausible alternatives do exist. Secretary Baker said that, thanks to George C. Marshall, the United States enjoys formal alliances of durability and strength. But we should be prepared to turn to more informal coalitions when circumstances demand them, he added. We must be ready to form new coalitions to counter emerging geopolitical threats. He said the third lesson from GEN Marshall is the imperative of bipartisanship. We would be wise to recall that the two great accomplishments of his life winning World War II and protecting Western Europe from Soviet aggression were the products of bipartisan cooperation here in the United States, he said. Secretary Baker said that Marshall was more, much more than his achievements, as historic as they were. He was and is also a model for military officers and, indeed, all who seek a place of leadership in public life. Over 50 years after the end of his life, he remains the standard by which all Americans who claim to serve their country must be judged. Few, perhaps none of us, can meet that standard, Secretary Baker said. But it is imperative that we learn the lessons of George C. Marshall s historic legacy, and it is just as important that we let his life of duty, honor, country serve as a beacon as we navigate a period of uncertainty both abroad and here at home. Nicholas D. Chabraja, chairman of AUSA s Council of Trustees, and GEN Gordon R. Sullivan, AUSA President, present the 2012 George Catlett Marshall Medal to former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. The Marshall Medal is the highest honor that AUSA awards. December 2012 ARMY 37

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38 th Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

38 th Chief of Staff, U.S. Army CSA Strategic Priorities October, 2013 The Army s Strategic Vision The All Volunteer Army will remain the most highly trained and professional land force in the world. It