Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has set policy emphasizing the importance of relationships with veteran and military service organizations – VSOs and MSOs – as well as military support nonprofits, through initiatives to give the groups access to service members and their families.The defense secretary signed two policy memorandums in December 2014 directing Defense Department leaders to implement standardized procedures to allow veteran, military and military-support nonprofit organizations better access to provide support to troops and military families.Critical importance"National VSOs and...
The Association of the U.S. Army returns to Huntsville, Ala., on March 31 to April 2 for its late-winter meeting called the Global Force Symposium and Exposition."Win in a Complex World" is the theme of this AUSA professional development forum that will be held at Huntsville’s Von Braun Center.The symposium theme is also the title of the Army Operating Concept released in October that sets a path for the force of 2020 to 2040.Discussion of the path ahead for the Army is a major part of the three-day event.AUSA moved its winter meeting to Huntsville, Ala., last year after holding the event in...
Sitting on my rack, I unholstered my 9 mm, racked the slide, thumbed the safety and pressed the barrel against my forehead. I could feel the heft of the loaded weapon, the resistance of the trigger against my finger. I knew I needed help but could see no other way out. Tonight was the anniversary of the incident that left me beaten and bloodied, battered and broken.Fifteen years before, as a senior in college, I walked back to my apartment from a college party. Intoxicated, tired and cold, I took a shortcut behind a Food Lion, where an acquaintance who had followed me raped me, beat me and...
The U.S. Army has long been leery of cities. Too often, urban warfare has meant heavy casualties, mass destruction and an enormous commitment of time and resources. In cities, enemy forces have more places to hide, and superior U.S. technology becomes less effective.“Dense urban terrain favors the defender,” said Col. Kevin Felix, chief of the Future Warfare Division at the Army Capabilities Integration Center. That’s why “in the past, in the central plains of Europe, you would fix and bypass a city,” he said.The world is changing, though, and that doctrine is being re-examined. The Army has...
There is a good deal of energy and a fair amount of chaos in the Army’s approach to developing the resources needed for seizing the high ground in cyber warfare. That’s a good thing. What the military needs to succeed in this effort is even more energy and more chaos. That’s because it is currently operating within a very large void.In 2013, The Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C., began a unique research project: developing an independent, objective measure of U.S. military power that would enable analysts to assess the strength of the armed forces relative to threats and...
Ten Years of Company-Level Conversation
Ten years ago this month, the first “CompanyCommand: Building Combat-Ready Teams” article appeared in ARMY. In it, seven company commanders shared lessons learned from redeploying their units from Iraq and immediately preparing for their next deployments. At the time, the relentless pace of the Army’s wartime force-generation cycle (recover-reset-retrain-redeploy) was new and unprecedented. Leaders had to learn on the fly—through reflection, reading and conversation with each other—and...
The Army received more than 111,000 responses to an economic impact report warning that military communities could be hurt by deep cuts in the force. Focusing on 30 stateside locations, the report from the U.S. Army Environmental Command, entitled Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Assessment for Army 2020 Force Structure Realignment, alerted military communities of possible reductions of more than 16,000 soldiers and Army civilians at some installations by 2020 as a result of budget-driven force realignments.The report, first issued in April 2013, is part of the planning cycle as the...
In the early 1980s, our South Korea-based 8-inch howitzer battalion, the general support artillery battalion of the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, received a long-awaited consignment of new and improved ammunition, including so-called supercharges, propellant charges 8 and 9.At the time, the M110A2 howitzer was the Army’s most accurate and lethal cannon artillery weapon as well as one of its two nuclear-capable ones. It had one limitation, though: Compared with some of the artillery fielded by our putative North Korean adversaries, it lacked range. The new ammunition would help close that gap.T...
AUSA’s Institute of Land Warfare has recently released a new publication."Force 2025 and Beyond: The U.S. Army’s Holistic Modernization Strategy" (Torchbearer Issue Paper, January 2015) describes today’s security environment as complex and defined by unpredictability and the increasing momentum of human interaction. As technology proliferates, enemies will have greater access to weapons of mass destruction and sophisticated technical capabilities.To mitigate this risk, the Army has created a comprehensive, innovative modernization strategy called Force 2025 and Beyond. This strategy will...
AUSA’s Institute of Land Warfare (ILW) has recently released a new publication."Terrorists, Insurgents and the Lessons of History" (National Security Watch, December 22, 2014) examines how history can provide lessons for responding to terrorist and insurgent groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).After 13 years of war, the United States finds itself once again fighting a brutal terrorist group halfway around the world.The rise of nonstate actors, communal conflict and weak governance fuels the rise of the latest terrorist groups.The increasing accessibility of technologies...
The New York National Guard marked the 378th birthday of the National Guard with a traditional cake-cutting ceremony at New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs headquarters in Latham, N.Y., Dec. 15.New York National Guard Command Sgt. Major Louis Wilson, age 59 – the senior enlisted soldier present – joined 17-year-old New York Air National Guard Airman James McPartlin, who enlisted in September, in cutting the birthday cake.The event also featured an oath of enlistment reaffirmation of 10 Army and Air National Guard recruits, by Maj. Gen. Patrick Murphy, New York adjutant...
The recent changes to the pay and benefits rates, which became effective on Jan. 1, 2015, included a 1 percent increase in pay for service members and a 0.5 percent increase in Basic Allowance for Housing. Both of these increases are lower than in past years and can put a strain on family budgets.Add to that the possibility of further military personnel reductions, which can mean the separation of an additional 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers, and Army families begin to look closely at their financial health in anticipation of leaner times.Financial readiness starts with a good plan.But, you can’t...
The Army needs to make serious institutional changes in order to retain and develop the best soldiers, the Army’s under secretary said."We have a system in place that is archaic, that now works against us rather than helping us," Under Secretary of the Army Brad Carson told a panel at the Association of the United States Army’s Annual Meeting and Symposium.The topic of the forum was the human dimension.Other speakers included Lt. Gen. Robert B. Brown, commanding general, Army Combined Arms Center; Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, Army surgeon general and commanding general, Army Medical Command...
As anyone who has ever been unemployed knows, landing a new job can be a daunting task.But for recent veterans, especially those dealing with the added strains that accompany a forced retirement from active service, searching for a job in the private sector can be much more difficult.So difficult, in fact, that as of 2014, the unemployment rate for young veterans ages 18 to 24 was 13.5 percent. And, the ranks of job-seeking veterans are growing.Over the next 10 years, the armed forces are expected to shed more than 100,000 service members each year, as reported by Secretary of Labor Thomas...
Scientists at the Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, Md., have developed and are producing in small batches synthetic peptides they believe will serve as great replacements for animal-grown antibodies currently used to detect biological hazards.Today, natural antibodies are used as part of handheld ticket assays that can be used to detect the presence of biological hazards such as botulism, anthrax or ricin, for instance.But those antibodies are expensive to produce, take a long time to produce, and are also fragile – they are susceptible to temperature fluctuations and have a short shelf life...