Harnessing powerful technologies, constantly innovating and making the force more lethal are some of the top focus areas for the U.S. Army’s new Chief of Staff, Gen. Randy George. At the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2023 Annual Meeting and Exposition in October, George outlined his main priorities.
If you’re interested in the Army’s priorities, you won’t want to miss these two Executive Mosaic events — the Potomac Officers Club’s Annual Army Summit in June 2024 (register here) gathers top Army officials to discuss the state of the service branch, and the Army Acquisition Priorities: Balancing Readiness and Modernization Forum hosted by ExecutiveBiz next week on Nov. 8 features Young Bang as keynote speaker (register here).
Building Cohesive Teams
George explained that building cohesive teams will ensure lethality across the force and prepare warfighters to carry out Army missions.
“We have to ruthlessly prioritize how we use time and resources. Our days, dollars and decisions must be spent on building lethality and cohesive teams,” Gen. George said at AUSA.
Delivering Ready Combat Formations
Building up magazine depth is a major factor in realizing George’s second priority of delivering ready combat formations. George noted that magazine depth will require investing in the industrial base.
In line with this priority, the Army is also working to reduce its maintenance backlog through “common-sense changes” and by potentially servicing its vehicles less frequently.
Continuous Transformation
“The world and warfare are changing rapidly,” warned George. “We will stay ahead of our adversaries. And so, continuous transformation means iteratively adapting and evolving how we fight, how we organize, how we train and how we equip.”
For George, part of this continuous transformation involves using more affordable and less complex technology, like video game simulations, to train soldiers. He also said that the Army should use artificial intelligence to create realistic battlefield scenarios without needing as many extra soldiers. The Army chief of staff also suggested the Army should find ways to improve its ability to access and process data using machine learning and autonomy.
Beyond the tech aspect, George highlighted education and acquisition processes as equally important to continuous transformation.
“It’s about making sure that your education is changed to make sure you’re training people for the new environments that they’re in, both at units in the professional military education and what we need to do to adapt our acquisition processes to make sure that we’re doing things quicker,” he said.
Strengthening the Army Profession
Gen. George said strengthening the Army profession is the foundation to everything. He highlighted the importance of maintaining discipline standards and announced a new initiative called the Harding Project to renew the Army’s professional publications.
