Thank you, General Brown, for your leadership and that kind introduction.
Hello and good morning, AUSA!
Thank you for being here, and thanks to the hundreds of people who put this amazing event together each year.
GEN George, the SMA, and I, and all the senior Army leaders in the room this morning, are grateful for your support of the U.S. Army.
Before we turn to Army business, I’d like to acknowledge the tragic situation in the Southeast in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Our hearts go out to everyone who has been affected by these terrible storms.
Army National Guard, Corps of Engineers, and active-duty soldiers from the 18th Airborne Corps have been conducting rescue and recovery operations, clearing debris, and delivering essential assistance to communities across multiple states.
Please join me in recognizing them for their hard work.
Natural disasters reinforce the unpredictability of the world we live in, and everyone here knows the world is getting more dangerous and uncertain.
We read about it in the headlines every day.
Army leaders realized towards the end of the last decade that we needed to prepare for a more dangerous future.
So, the Army began an institutional shift away from a focus on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism to preparing for large-scale combat operations.
The Army established Futures Command, started updating our doctrine and training, and began the largest modernization effort in 40 years.
This institutional shift was underway long before Russian tanks rolled into Eastern Ukraine or Hamas invaded southern Israel.
The world continues to grow more volatile, but the Army’s transformation is now coming to fruition in three specific areas.
First, we are transforming our weapons systems.
For example, we are modernizing our high-demand air and missile defense units, replacing legacy Patriot radars with LTAMDS, and using the new Integrated Battle Command System to connect a wide range of sensors across platforms.
We validated this combination during testing in March, proving we can significantly increase the capacity of our Patriot air defenses.
We are also modernizing our helicopters to get our soldiers into the fight faster and from farther away.
Next year we will begin building prototypes of the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft, the Army’s tilt-rotor next-generation helicopter.
Just a few weeks ago, soldiers from the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade in Hawaii used augmented reality glasses to give us feedback on a mockup of the FLRAA cabin.
And in another 18 months or so, we plan to conduct FLRAA’s first flight.
We are also building our capability to strike targets from increasingly long ranges.
Take the Mid-Range Capability - our ground-launched system that can fire Tomahawks or SM-6 missiles and strike targets over 1,000 miles away.
This weapon was only a blueprint four years ago.
Today it is a reality.
The Army’s 1st Multi-Domain Task Force recently deployed an MRC 8,000 miles to the Philippines via C-17, establishing a long-range firing capability within 15 hours from start to finish.
You can be sure our adversaries took notice.
As we continue modernizing our weapons systems, we are also asking ourselves every step of the way, “Does this capability make our troops more lethal?
“Does this fit into how we will fight in the future?”
“Does this program still make sense?”
If the answer to any of those questions is “no” or even “maybe,” we are willing to make hard choices and adjust course.
Ending the FARA program and shifting most of the funding to our other aviation platforms was a hard decision, but it was the right one.
The same thinking informed our decision to end the Shadow and Raven programs so we could put additional funding into more advanced, survivable unmanned systems.
All the new technology we are bringing online – however quickly developed and procured – accomplishes little without the soldiers and formations that do the fighting.
That brings me to the second area of transformation – force structure.
We need Army force structure to be purpose-built for large-scale combat, so we are eliminating tens of thousands of unfilled spaces in units that were primarily focused on COIN and CT.
But we are also building new formations designed and equipped to provide capabilities in short supply relative to current and future demands, such as indirect fire protection battalions, counter small-UAS batteries, and M-SHORAD battalions.
Three of our five new multi-domain task forces are up and running, actively exercising in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.
One of these MDTFs recently participated in Exercise Valiant Shield 24 – held across Hawaii, Japan, Guam, and Palau.
During the exercise, the task force tested high-altitude balloons equipped with electromagnetic sensors as well as ultra-long-endurance unmanned systems.
In Palau, the MDTF and Tennessee National Guard artillery units conducted a joint live fire using an autonomous launcher and the Precision Strike Missile.
This exercise showed how the MDTF can use its intelligence, space, cyber, and targeting capabilities to enable long-range strikes against adversaries with considerable defensive capabilities – a must-do mission for the Army in the Indo-Pacific.
To fully realize our plans to redesign the Army’s force structure for large-scale combat, we have to ensure that it is fully manned.
As I mentioned earlier, none of this great new equipment works without skilled and dedicated soldiers.
Which brings me to a third area of transformation – recruiting.
It’s no secret that the Army – along with our sister services – has had some significant recruiting challenges.
And these challenges are not going away. Fewer than a quarter of Americans are eligible for military service, and fewer than ten percent of young people are interested in serving.
Unemployment is at a historic low: more than sixty percent of high school graduates are going straight to college, and many young people know very little about the Army or what we offer.
So we had no choice but to go on a full-court press to change how we recruit from top to bottom.
We updated our recruiting school curriculum and started selecting and training our recruiters differently.
We brought back “Be All You Can Be” and adapted the campaign to the realities of the 21st-century marketplace.
We challenged every trooper to help us recruit using the soldier referral program, resulting in over 4,000 new contracts just this year.
And for young Americans who had the desire to join the Army but not the test scores, we created the Future Soldier Prep Course to give them a path to meet our standards.
These efforts paid off in the fiscal year that just ended.
The Army not only surpassed our goal to recruit 55,000 new soldiers this year, we also far exceeded our goal to send 5,000 into the delayed entry program.
Our exceptional Army recruiters secured over 11,000 commitments into the DEP, setting us up for another strong recruiting year in FY25.
I believe that our success this year shows the promise of what is around the corner – complete transformation of our recruiting enterprise.
There is still work to do to finish this transformation, but the Army is moving out aggressively.
We have selected three cohorts of warrant officers to specialize in recruiting – the first time warrants have been used in this capacity.
The first group has finished training with industry and reported for duty, where they will help our recruiters with labor market research and data analytics.
And we are building the pipeline so that we can begin selecting our new career field of enlisted recruiters next spring.
To lead our innovation efforts, we hand-picked five recruiting companies around the country.
They will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify high-value leads from a broader pool of potential recruits, including more young people who have completed some college or had prior work experience.
And as they find new techniques that deliver results, we are going to scale them across our recruiting brigades.
Starting in January, we will pilot a new approach in Miami to let our recruiting professionals focus on doing what they do best: telling the Army story to young people.
These recruiters won’t be in the recruiting station doing time-consuming administrative tasks.
Instead, they will spend their time out in Miami, sharing their passion for the Army with potential new soldiers.
Looking ahead to fiscal year 2025, I am announcing today that General George and I have set a new goal to recruit 61 thousand new soldiers – six thousand more than this year.
The DEP target will be 10 thousand, twice that of this year.
This goal is ambitious, but we believe it is achievable.
You can tell I am excited about the results we have achieved – not only in our recruiting transformation, but in the transformation of our weapons systems and force structure that is so critical to maintaining our warfighting edge.
But for all of the progress we have made, more work lies ahead.
America’s adversaries are not going to sit back and let the United States set the pace.
Despite being the world’s best land fighting force, we need to start thinking and acting more like underdogs.
We need to push ourselves to build a stronger culture of innovation inside the Army.
We need to adopt a greater sense of urgency and accept greater risk.
General George and I feel that urgency, and we are prepared to underwrite prudent risk-taking.
We call upon leaders at every echelon to do the same.
As General George will discuss in depth tomorrow, that is what the Army’s Transforming in Contact initiative is all about.
There is risk in testing new systems in challenging environments and getting soldiers hands-on experience with new technology in the field, but we do not have the luxury of time to wait for perfection.
We must “field to learn.”
Recognizing the urgency of this challenge, the Army is already being more iterative and flexible in developing and acquiring new systems.
For example, by including modular open system architectures in the new systems we are building, we are avoiding vendor lock and will be able to upgrade those systems more quickly and affordably.
Our new software development policy and software contracting center of excellence at Aberdeen is eliminating bureaucracy and forcing us to use best practices already common in the commercial sector.
And we are working with Congress to see if, together, we can develop more agile funding mechanisms in the areas of unmanned aerial systems, counter UAS, and electronic warfare.
If this pilot approach helps us keep pace with rapidly improving technology without sacrificing Congressional oversight, it could help build the trust needed for greater spending flexibility in the future.
But there is even more we can and should do to innovate and scale new systems across the Army.
We should push ourselves to do more to improve our requirements process.
For example, we need requirements that are specific enough to help us solve a clear operational problem but not so prescriptive that it becomes difficult to adapt during the capability development process.
We need to be able to explore and iterate, and we need to put greater emphasis in our requirements on producibility and technology readiness where it makes sense.
We need to be able to produce more things we need – like drones and missiles – more quickly and in larger numbers.
We need to place smart S&T bets that may take some time to pay off, for example in energetics, but in other areas, it may make sense to go with technologies that are closer to being ready to field.
Our requirements need to reflect that.
As we’ve done already with some of our new and high-priority programs, we should regularly bring together requirements developers with operators, industry partners and end users for frequent and early collaboration.
Then there is the acquisition process itself – everyone’s favorite punching bag.
If the laws, regulations, and practices seem onerous, it’s because Congress put them in place to ensure programs are safe, combat-effective, and respectful of taxpayer dollars.
Though well intended, the layers of laws, rules, and processes, and the audits and investigations that often accompany them, contribute to a risk-averse environment.
They also add time to a process that needs to move faster given the threats we face, because time is the one thing we don’t have to spare.
And almost every year, we in the Defense Department or Congress, add more rules and limitations to what we can or cannot do.
We need to change that.
We need to clear obstacles to innovation and use creative acquisition approaches wherever possible.
We need to work with Congress to update laws so we can take prudent risks that enable us to go faster and pivot when needed in a rapidly changing environment.
And we should be upskilling our workforce to be more proficient in the latest technological developments so that they can engage effectively with our vendors, whether large defense primes or smaller start-up companies.
But as we build this culture of innovation within the Army and think more like underdogs, we can’t lose sight of the human dimension.
No amount of new technology is more important than the individual American soldier.
We have an obligation to every soldier – and their families.
We owe them the equipment and training they need to be able to win on the battlefield, but we also owe them the compensation, opportunities, and quality of life their service has earned.
That is why we’ve secured a 15 percent base pay increase cumulatively for our soldiers over the last three years.
That is why we’ve increased paid parental leave to 12 weeks, expanded childcare offerings, and increased compensation for childcare workers on Army installations.
And that is why we are investing over 2 billion dollars each year on quality barracks for active duty, Guard, and reserve soldiers.
These investments are substantial, but the question is whether they are enough, considering the changed expectations of young people today as they make career decisions.
I worry the answer to this question is no.
Many of the soldiers entering the force today weren’t even born when 9/11 happened.
Unless they had a close family member in uniform, what we called “the war on terror” was largely in the background as they grew up.
In many respects, their most formative influences have been the hardships caused by the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic – coupled with the omnipresence of smartphones, Snap Chat, and TikTok.
Like every generation, young people today have a different set of needs and expectations than their older peers and parents.
Data suggests they are prioritizing family life, genuine engagement with their bosses, and financial compensation over traditional job satisfaction.
And private sector employers are eager to offer these things because they want the very best talent they can find.
Meanwhile, the lifestyle the Army offers hasn’t changed significantly since before the Internet was invented.
We still expect our soldiers to move every two to three years, uprooting children from schools and friends, and upending aspirations of spouses who want careers of their own.
We continue to rely on spouses and partners as a de-facto unpaid Army labor force, available to organize PCS moves and lead soldier-family readiness groups but often at the expense of work outside the home and the earnings that come with it.
Our own Army career engagement survey shows that most officers leaving the service are seeking more stability, predictability, and a better family life.
Now, I am not suggesting we can telework to war.
Don’t misunderstand me.
Nor am I suggesting we move to the British model of a regimental Army, where a soldier stays with one unit for their entire career.
As Robert Gates said in his last address as Secretary of Defense to cadets at West Point, “This is the United States Army – it’s not Apple.”
“Taking that oath means doing what you are told and going where you are needed.”
What I am suggesting is that we need to take a hard look at what can be done to provide greater career flexibility, stability, and predictability for soldiers and families.
So, what might possible changes look like?
We don’t have to go far to gather ideas.
Blue ribbon panels, podcasts, and articles are full of recommendations.
Some of the best ideas come from our own soldiers.
Could we increase the options for MOS and branch transfers within the Army, making it easier to pursue a new career path without departing active military service?
Should we restructure the force to reduce PCS moves to every five years instead of every three?
Should we modify officer career timelines and promotion criteria to give more flexibility for broadening assignments, while ensuring that we still select the right officers for command?
Should we find ways to better match financial compensation with responsibilities, qualifications, and job performance instead of strictly basing it on rank and time-in-grade?
Standing here today, I don’t have the answers.
Many of these changes would be complex to implement and would require more resources and cooperation from Congress.
But if the Army does not seriously explore these questions soon, I worry that in ten to fifteen years we could see our recruiting challenges deepen and our historically high retention start dropping, placing the viability of the all-volunteer force under threat during a time when our nation can least afford it.
Finding answers and making institutional changes this complex will require foresight, leadership, and cooperation across the entire Army and beyond.
As I have observed over many years in the Pentagon, there are few incentives for leaders to take big risks in the present when the results may not bear dividends until sometime in the future.
But with the stakes this high, we need Army leaders at all levels to embrace the challenge, make data-driven decisions, and be willing to try new things.
We need to engage members of Congress and their staffs, include them in our thinking, and ask for their help where we need it.
We need to talk to the press and the public about what we are trying to do and why it is important.
If we do that, real change is possible.
Because I have confidence in the United States Army’s ability to solve problems and innovate.
This is the Army that went from riding horses to driving tanks.
This is the Army that embraced aircraft and birthed the Air Force.
This is the Army that sustained two decades of repeated deployments and heavy combat after 9/11 – a force straining and bending, but never breaking, never failing to rise to the challenge and accomplish the mission.
We are on the eve of celebrating 250 years as an Army.
For two and a half centuries, soldiers from across our country have represented the Army values and the principles of our Constitution.
They represent the hope that is fundamentally American and the eternal promise of freedom, liberty, and justice.
They are the ones who choose to serve.
And in return, we owe them an Army that can adapt and innovate faster than our enemies.
We owe them a life in the Army that doesn’t force them to choose year after year between “what the Army needs” and what their families need.
I know the Army can count on the vast network of people in this room and beyond - industry, Congress, uniformed and civilian leaders, families and communities across the country - to live up to these obligations and embrace the challenges that lie ahead.
Thank you very much.
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