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Milley: Larger Army must come with training dollars

By C. Todd Lopez January 12, 2017

WASHINGTON (Army News Service) -- The Army's chief of staff has made it clear he thinks the Army needs to be bigger -- that is, more Soldiers in the force. But Gen. Mark A. Milley has also said it's imperative that growth in the end strength be paired with funding to ensure those additional Solders are trained and equipped.

"We do want to be bigger," Milley said Thursday at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army. "We the Army think that our capacity needs to increase. We think our capability, the technical capability of our systems and formations needs to increase, and we think our readiness needs to increase. And we fully understand that's an expensive proposition for the U.S. Army."

The recent National Defense Authorization Act of 2017 puts the Army at an end strength of 476,000 Soldiers by Sept. 30, 2017. Milley said it's imperative that money also be provided to ensure those Soldiers are trained and equipped.

"It's important we get the money with the people. If we just get additional people or additional end strength, but we don't have the money, then that leads you down the road to a hollow force," Milley said. "If you increase the end strength, you have to increase the money to go with the end strength to pay for the readiness."

More people would likely be put into operational units, he said, if the Army could obtain the money to keep them ready to fight. Some, he said can go to the institutional Army, but right now combat units are undermanned.

"Units going to training sometimes are down around 80 percent or in some cases even lower," Milley said. "Which is not good."

Milley said he has a list of priorities for the next presidential budget. While he declined to say exactly what's on that list, he offered hints. Air defense and ground mobility, for instance, are top priorities for the Army, he said.

We want to give increased ground mobility capabilities to our light units Milley said. And aviation, he said, is "very vulnerable" against a near-peer threat.

"It's one thing to fight guerrillas and terrorists where you have almost exclusive freedom of the air, freedom of action of the air, but it's another thing to fight some near-peer ... threats. So protection of our aviation is a big deal."

There are a variety of initiatives underway to protect rotary wing aviation and extend their range, he said.

Also a priority is electronic warfare and non-traditional kinetic weapons, like rail guns and lasers, he said, though he admitted that's "years from now."

Extending the range for a variety of our firing platforms, "specifically artillery, both rocket and tube artillery" is also under consideration.

Milley has in the past publically discussed what he sees as the inevitable future character of warfare that the Army must be prepared to fight. That includes degraded communications environments where units may be out of contact with their leadership for days or weeks at a time, and must be able to operate on their own -- trusted to know what the mission is, what the goals are, and how to achieve them. He said development of command and control systems are also a priority.

"The probability of us having the freedom of action in the electromagnetic spectrum that we have enjoyed for the last 15 years of war, for example, against terrorists, the probability of that happening against a near-peer is zero. You're just not going to have that kind of freedom of action," he said.

Included in systems that might be under threat as a result of near-peer competition in the electromagnetic spectrum are radios, GPS and other position, navigation, and timing systems.

"All that stuff is dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum, and the electromagnetic spectrum will come under significant stress," he said.

The Army, he said, is moving out on ways to protect PNT systems and developing mission-command systems that are mobile, Milley said.

"We're not going to be static against a near-peer competitor like we've been for the last 15 years," he said. The Army is looking for "systems that can move, that are hardened and protected and are resilient and reliable in high-paced, fast maneuver combat operations."