Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley credits leadership focus, logistics improvements and modestly increasing the size of the force for gains in combat readiness, but he also says it isn’t time to relax.

“Readiness has certainly improved, but I caution everybody we are not there yet,” Milley said in an interview published in the April­­–June issue of Army Sustainment, a quarterly publication from Army Logistics University.

“We need 66% of the Regular Army and 33% of the National Guard and Army Reserve at the highest levels of readiness. Right now, we are around the range of the 40%,” he said in the interview. “If we keep going at the rates we're going, I estimate that we will be at the objective levels sometime in the 2022 to 2023 timeframe.”

Sustainment is critically important to the Army’s ability to fight and win in future wars, he said. “You can do short-duration raids and operations without significant consideration of logistics and sustainment. You can’t fight a war.”

Click to read the full interview