The Army has served the nation for over two centuries. Our Army is truly America's Army -- a seamless force composed of Active Duty, Reserve, and National Guard soldiers, civilian employees, and family members serving the nation at home and abroad. We have an obligation to give them the best leadership, weapons, technology, and quality of life possible.
Committing the Army commits the nation. No other single gesture so readily demonstrates U.S. resolve as placing American soldiers on the ground. The Army is evolving to satisfy increased demands and will remain vigilant in preserving those attributes that make it a uniquely American institution. As we prepare to enter a new century, the Army will continue to change, to grow, to preserve the best of its past, and to serve the nation.
THE WORLD TODAY
Ethnic, religious, territorial, and economic tensions, held in check by the pressures of bipolar global competition, erupted when Cold War constraints dissolved. The world has entered a period of radical and often violent change. American leadership is essential to assist a troubled world while capitalizing on its opportunities. Focusing on today's threats and opportunities, our National Security Strategy is one of engagement and enlargement. Its goals are to enhance our security, to bolster our economy, and to promote democracy. Our engagement is selective, focusing on U.S. interests and our ability to make a difference. The nation's military capabilities are essential to executing this strategy. The National Military Strategy, in supporting the National Security Strategy, calls for flexible and selective engagement. Its objectives are to promote stability and thwart aggression. As the nation's land force and the strategic core of joint military operations, the Army is a critical player in the National Military Strategy.
THE ARMY'S ROLES: SERVICE TO NATION
America's Army serves the nation every day in numerous ways, with high quality soldiers and civilian employees working effectively at home and abroad. The Army's fundamental purpose is to fight and win the nation's wars. The Army also executes a variety of dangerous missions around the world and assists on the homefront. These endeavors require the same well trained, disciplined soldiers that the nation relies upon for combat. When the nation calls -- and it has more and more frequently -- the Army is ready.
The Army is the ultimate symbol of American will. It is an indispensable component of the National Security Strategy, and it is essential to deterring or defeating any adversary. An American soldier on the ground demonstrates our nation's determination to prevail in any situation.
Wars are won on the ground. Only the Army has the assets and staying power to operate over an entire battlefield and bring a conflict to a successful conclusion, against any opponent in any region of the world. Successful military operations require control of the air, sea, and land, but America's ability to impose its will ultimately depends on its ability to control the land through prompt and sustained land-combat operations. The application of military force on land is an action no opponent can ignore. The Army, with its ability to provide long-term presence, effects lasting change.
The Army also plays an essential role in joint warfighting while readily acknowledging the contributions of our sister Services. As the joint force provider of land combat and sustainment forces, the Army is dedicated to enhancing its capabilities to operate in a joint environment. Future success will undoubtedly require the complementary capabilities of all the Services. Our training and doctrine reflect this reality. America's Army, fully integrated with the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, will dominate any enemy in war and successfully execute other military operations.
The Army is designed to compel, deter, reassure, and support. When all else fails, the Army compels adversaries to yield to our nation's will, as evidenced by recent operations in Panama and Kuwait. The Army deters others from actions inimical to our interests by maintaining a trained and ready force, as demonstrated by our long-standing presence in Europe and Korea. The Army reassures friends and allies: we are a visible symbol of U.S. commitment to stand firm against any external threat to their sovereignty, as demonstrated in Kuwait, the Sinai, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and many other places around the world.
Finally, the Army supports communities within the United States. For decades, the Army has provided military support to civil authorities during natural disasters and civil disturbances. In the recent past, American soldiers have assisted local authorities in fighting fires in the Pacific Northwest; aided flood victims in the South and Midwest; provided relief supplies, logistical support, a hospital, and other equipment in the aftermath of Hurricane Marilyn; contributed substantially to the counterdrug activities of federal, state, and local drug law enforcement agencies; and provided health care to underserved populations in the United States through the National Guard's Operation Guard Care.
The Army also contributes substantially to international conflict prevention by controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, strengthening military relationships with other nations, and maintaining a forward presence overseas. For example, as part of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will assist in the design and construction of a fissile material storage facility in Russia.
The Army strengthens military relationships with other nations by building security ties with new friends and by strengthening relations with long-standing allies. Our military-to-military contact programs with new partners in Europe, the former Soviet republics, and nations in our own hemisphere are important pieces of this effort. For example, the National Guard, through its State Partnership Program, recently participated in the first ever combined engineering exercise in Eastern Europe.
Finally, the Army is committed to maintaining an overseas presence. We maintain 113,000 soldiers forward-stationed in Europe and the Pacific. At the same time, on any given day, over 21,500 soldiers are deployed from their home stations to countries around the world. In the last year, American soldiers have upheld democracy in Haiti; responded to another threat to regional stability in Southwest Asia; delivered relief supplies to Rwandan refugees; reinforced peace in the Sinai Peninsula; supported refugees in the Caribbean, Panama, and the Pacific; treated wounded in Croatia; demonstrated resolve in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; deterred aggression in Korea; helped keep the peace between Peru and Ecuador; and began keeping the peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
THE ARMY TODAY
While the National Military Strategy evolves with the changing international security environment, the responsibility to provide the nation with a ready Army remains constant. To maintain readiness, we must ensure the force is recruited, trained, equipped, and sustained.
Recruit the Force
The Army continues to have great success in attracting and retaining high quality recruits. We are meeting our recruiting goals, in terms of both quantity and quality. One of our goals is to have at least 95 percent of enlistees possess high school diplomas. Last year, we met or exceeded that mark in both the active Army and the Army Reserve.
We must continue to provide adequate resources for both the Active and Reserve Component recruiting missions because, although the Army achieved its enlistment goals in 1995, problems may arise. Surveys show a 39 percent drop from 1989 to 1994 in young people's propensity to enlist in the armed forces; and, beginning in FY 1997, the Army must again replace losses on a one-for-one basis, having completed the drawdown. We have already added 350 active Army recruiters to the force and are adding another 250. We also will maintain bonuses and educational benefits. These initiatives, coupled with a professional recruiting organization, continue to ensure that the Army of today, as well as the Army of the future, is manned with high quality personnel.
Train the Force
Training binds the Army into a force capable of success in any endeavor. Training ensures soldiers, leaders, and units are prepared to fight and win. Well trained and led, high quality soldiers have proven capable of adapting to any situation, against any opponent, anywhere in the world. Only by remaining well trained can America's Army expect to deliver decisive victory. The Army has one standard: tough, realistic, mission-focused training which prepares soldiers and units for a wide variety of operations. This training will remain our top priority.
The Army's system of individual training and professional development remains a model for other nations' armies. Our system for training units is equally strong, with an emphasis on deployments to the combat training centers and major joint and combined exercises.
Our training system is key to redesigning the Army's operational forces for the 21st century. Through the battle labs program and advanced warfighting experiments, we are testing and refining the components of success on the battlefield: doctrine, training, leader development, organization, materiel, and soldier systems. The Army of the 21st century will be designed and built based on lessons learned from the battle labs and warfighting experiments.
Equip the Force
American soldiers are the best equipped in the world. The Army's challenge is to maintain that status. Modernization is essential as America's Army prepares to enter a new century. Today's smaller Army requires increased lethality, and obsolete equipment must be replaced. The Army's modernization plan, science and technology master plan, strategic logistics plan, and enterprise strategy describe the future force's overall characteristics and define its parameters, critical capabilities, key technologies, and advanced operational concepts. The Army's modernization objectives -- project and sustain the force, protect the force, win the information war, conduct precision strikes, and dominate the maneuver battle -- serve to focus modernization efforts.
The Army must fundamentally change its modernization strategy. Although the Army's operational pace is greater than at any time since World War II, the dollars on which the Army depends have steadily decreased in real terms. From FY 1989 to FY 1995, the Army's total obligation authority declined over 31 percent. This decline in Army resources is one of our toughest challenges. We will continue to search for ways to overcome our modernization shortfalls.
Scarce modernization dollars require the Army to buy a limited number of new weapons -- such as the Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter and the Crusader field artillery system -- while we extend the lives and improve the capabilities of our existing systems. Limited modernization resources preclude large investments at this time. Upgrading proven weapons by adding information technology will increase capabilities and utilization, but the Army will eventually reach the point where additional technological improvements of today's systems will provide only marginal benefits. We have begun -- in the outyears of the Future Years Defense Program -- to program the resources to support this modernization, which is necessary to maintain the technological edge for us to dominate the battlefield.
Sustain the Force
The Army sustains the force with the best logistics system in the world. Logistics cannot win a war, but its absence can certainly lose one. Logistics support, an overarching function, was extensive and crucial to recent operations in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Southwest Asia. Additionally, logisticians are continuing to redistribute excess equipment and repair parts generated from unit deactivations and base closures. The Army's strategic logistics plan synchronizes our logistics operations and defines the Army's future logistics system -- a technologically advanced, seamless system which will provide world-class support during peace or war.
The quality of life of our soldiers, civilian employees, and family members also is an integral part of sustaining the force. It is vitally important to their commitment and to Army readiness. In order to continue attracting and retaining high quality people, we must offer and provide a decent quality of life. We are committed to ensuring our soldiers receive adequate pay, retirement benefits, health care, housing, family support, commissaries, and the prospect of a full and rewarding career. Housing is an important example of our commitment to sustaining a decent quality of life: the Army has increased funding for family housing, and this year we will begin to tackle the backlog of maintenance and repair, with the revitalization or replacement of more than 350 family units and the modernization of 3,000 barracks spaces. We also are working to remedy those issues unique to Reserve Component soldiers and Army civilians employees who we call on to deploy with the force.
THE FUTURE: INTO THE 21ST CENTURY
The next century holds unprecedented challenges and opportunities for the United States and its military forces. As the world leaves behind the industrial age and enters the information age, warfare will change. In the past five years, the Army has accomplished much towards building a 21st century force, and challenges remain. The Army fully intends to be the world's most formidable land force in the next century: we will integrate emerging information technologies with sound doctrine, reinvented organizations, and high quality people to make the smaller force more lethal, more survivable, and more powerful.
The Army is reviewing its organization to ensure it fully integrates talented soldiers with state-of-the-art technology. The design, organization, and capabilities of battalions, brigades, divisions, and corps may be changed fundamentally as their capabilities are enhanced. The future force also will be ideally suited for joint operations. Its technology will be fully compatible with the systems of other services and it will be designed to allow the generation, projection, and sustainment of force packages tailored to the specific needs of a joint force commander.
Decisive victory in the 21st century will be achieved by dominating the enemy in speed, space and time. Competitive advantage will derive from the quantity, quality and use of information. Emerging information and digital technologies will create a synergistic effect among weapons, organizations and components, significantly enhancing the Army's capabilities. The future Army will maximize its use of modern computer technology, the integration of doctrine and organization, and the skills of the Army's high quality people. The goal is to create new formations that operate at even greater performance levels. To ensure decisive victory, America's Army must experiment with innovative concepts and new technologies.
Equally important to forging the 21st century force is the fundamental redesign of our institutional Army. We will reduce the number of Major Army Commands, divest the Army of those functions which are not absolutely essential, and reallocate resources to support our core capabilities. We are conducting comprehensive reviews of all our headquarters field operating and staff support agencies. We expect to reduce significantly the number of headquarters agencies, and we will explore every opportunity to privatize or outsource a number of administrative support functions. In support of the redesign effort, we have initiated some ancillary reviews to identify cost-saving initiatives across the Army. In particular, our acquisition and modernization initiatives will increase efficiency and effectiveness as the Army prepares to enter the 21st century.
CONCLUSION
America's Army has changed significantly in the past five years -- in the way it thinks, the way it operates, and the way it conducts business. Although smaller, our Army is more capable and remains the world's premier land combat force. It is a technologically enhanced force composed of outstanding soldiers and civilian employees, ready to meet the challenges of an uncertain world. The Army proudly serves the nation at home and abroad, forms the strategic core of joint operations, and is at the forefront of building a 21st century force. As it has for over two centuries, the Army stands ready to answer the nation's call.
/s/
Togo D. West, Jr.
Secretary of the Army
