WASHINGTON — A declining budget is not the only challenge for the US Army as it works to build and sustain readiness, a panel of military and civilian leaders said Wednesday during the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting.
"Most people will say the most critical resource is money," Gen. Robert "Abe" Abrams, commanding general of Forces Command, said. "But our most precious resource when it comes to training is actually time available to units to build and sustain readiness. That's the crunch point at every echelon, for all of our formations."
The time to train is critical as the Army works to rebuild its core competencies, Abrams said.
"We have an incredibly combat-seasoned force, probably the most combat-seasoned force we've ever had since World War II," Abram said.
Soldiers today have "incredible skills," they are "comfortable with ambiguity," they are able to work with host nation forces and counterinsurgency operations, Abrams said.
"But what we don't have is we don't have mastery of our core war-fighting skills," he said. "We are rusty."
The demands on the Army only continue to grow, even as the force shrinks its active-duty end strength from a wartime high of 570,000 to 490,000. Another 40,000 soldiers will be cut from the active Army over the next three years.
"We've come down in numbers in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but our requirements across the globe have not decreased at the same slope as our manning," Abrams said.
Commanders "will tell you they're as busy as they were in 2007 or 2008, it's just different," Abrams said. There are brigade combat teams rotating into South Korea, Europe and Kuwait. There are ongoing series of theater security cooperation exercises in support of Africa Command and Pacific Command. Thousands of soldiers still serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Readiness takes a long time to create, and if something goes wrong, it can take even longer to mitigate," Laura Junor, former principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said.
The manning, training and equipping status of a unit today is the product of years of investment by the personnel in the unit, the acquisition and maintenance of that unit's equipment, and the graduated training of the personnel, Junor said.
"Once you create a readiness problem, you can't simply cut a check [to fix it]," she said. "And readiness for one mission doesn't guarantee readiness for all missions."
The military has "sizable bubbles already" in its readiness because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is "very expensive to mitigate that damage," Junor said, adding that readiness accounts generally are "the first casualty" in budget cuts.
"We made a vow, based on our mission as a department, not to send anybody into harm's way unready," she said. "The budget environment doesn't allow us right now the space and planning factors to be able to budget effectively."
To get at some of the readiness gaps, the Army is working on the new Sustainable Readiness Model, which is The Sustainable Readiness Model is meant to replace the Army Force Generation Model, or ARFORGEN, which was developed during the wars to prepare units for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
ARFORGEN, which Abrams likened to an assembly line, prepared units for a specific mission at a specific time.
"With a forward presence, surge-ready but rotational-focused force, we have to be ready all the time, not for specific points of time," Abrams said.
The Sustainable Readiness Model calls for units to maintain some level of readiness at all times.
"We've got to change our mindset," Abrams said. "As we get smaller, we're going to have to maintain and sustain readiness over time. That is a huge mindset change for our force, [but] that is what we need based on our requirements."
At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home to about 60 percent of the Army's portion of the global response force, "readiness is our culture," said Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps.
To maintain that culture, training on the fundamentals — shoot, move and communicate; first aid; battle drills; gunnery — is "so essential to what we have to do," he said.
"We have to unburden our young company commanders so they can focus on those fundamentals," Townsend said. "It gives them real focus, and I also think it's something they can do when budgets get tight."
Another cornerstone to maintaining readiness is high-quality collective home station training, Townsend said.
"The volatility and uncertainty around the world means that if an emergency arises, the Army likely won't have time to rotate every brigade combat team through the combat training centers," he said. "Challenging exercises have to remain part of our training kit bag, especially short-notice, no-notice training exercises."
Forces Command FORSCOM also will focus on gunnery and live-fire training, as well as training on the Army’s mission command systems, Abrams said.
"Where we are focused is on developing mastery level of our core competencies," he said.
Also critical is personal readiness.
"You cannot wave a wand, you can't throw money on it and build personal readiness overnight," Abrams said. "Personal readiness takes time. It takes operational experience. It requires institutional experience. It requires us to invest in their professional military education. It requires us to ensure we carve out enough time for them to maintain their personal fitness, both physically and mentally. That's why I say time is our biggest resource challenge when it comes to building and sustaining readiness."
Email: mtan@militarytimes.com
Michelle Tan is the editor of Army Times and Air Force Times. She has covered the military for Military Times since 2005, and has embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Haiti, Gabon and the Horn of Africa.
