Although the service has maintained for years that embracing multidomain operations will require it to “transform” its force structure into one leaders believe is suited to tomorrow’s battlefield, back-to-back recruiting shortfalls led top officials to admit by mid-to-late 2023 that some pending cuts are influenced by a deepening numbers shortfall. The Army finished fiscal year 2023 with only 452,000 active duty soldiers, its smallest force since 1940.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told Army Times in June that the service will see reductions to “close-combat forces” that were purpose-built for the War on Terror, in addition to other organizations based on their purpose or other factors like deployment rates.

Controversy erupted in October following a Wall Street Journal report suggesting that 3,000 Army special operations troops could be cut. According to other media reports, the special operations community and Army leadership disagreed about the potential reductions, ultimately requiring mediation from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Although details on the cuts are scarce, service and special operations officials briefed Congress on the matter in October. The briefing included “Army structure changes, to include [special operations forces],” according to a congressional staffer, who spoke on condition their name not be used in order to discuss the private briefing. A significant portion of the special operations cuts are expected to fall on hard-to-fill empty billets, a defense official told Army Times in October.

The cuts are intended to ensure the Army doesn’t become “hollow,” says Wormuth, deploying a term coined during the post-Vietnam era when some units existed on paper rather than in real life.

Military Times Deputy Editor Leo Shane III contributed to this report.

Brig. Gen. Lawrence ”Gil” Ferguson, who spoke with Army Times, is a firm believer in an oft-repeated special operations truism: people are more important than hardware.

“Technology is not going to win the next fight,” he said. “The side that applies new technology with the most creativity and audacity is going to win.”

The one-star — who is currently impacted by Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s blanket hold on general officer promotions — knows what outside-the-box thinking and experience look like, because he embodies it.

Ferguson, who attended the Air Force Academy, departed the active duty Army after a brief tour as an infantry officer in the early 1990s, according to his hometown newspaper. He earned a graduate degree and taught at a Jackson, Mississippi prep school before earning his Special Forces tab as a National Guard officer assigned to the 20th Special Forces Group. He then returned to active duty with 7th Special Forces Group in late 2001.

“Creativity is a major component of what we’re looking for in the people that we recruit,” Ferguson said when asked about how to foster technological innovation at the small unit level. But in order to reap the benefits, he added, “We encourage a culture of creativity and innovation within the command.”

Ferguson eschews the traditional delineations between the Army special ops community’s three components — Special Forces, psychological operations and civil affairs — in favor of a synchronized approach that lets the talents of each group reinforce the others on the battlefield or when working with friendly nations before the next war begins.

As an example, he pointed at the success that Ukraine’s government has had combining effective irregular warfare operations with inspiring public messaging and stable governance in communities just behind the front lines. Although American and other NATO forces have played a role in preparing Ukraine for resistance (which Army Times detailed in the invasion’s first weeks), Ferguson noted that the willpower of the embattled country’s leaders and citizens has validated many key special operations concepts.

Amid arguments on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon over possible troop reductions to Army special operations (about which the one-star general declined to speak), Ferguson said that force structure may come to align with his integrated capabilities philosophy in the years ahead, too.

“We’re taking a hard look right now at our force structure and whether or not we need to make some changes, [though] we haven’t decided anything,” Ferguson said. “We’re continuing to test a variety of different ways to make sure we’re integrated to the best extent possible.”

He suggested that some of the changes under consideration may be tailored to specific regions of the globe.

“In some places, just based off the context of the environment, it’s easier to integrate than others,” Ferguson said, adding that the changes will come “as the operating environment’s going to require into the future.”

The Army Reserve’s top general, whose “readiness over metrics” mantra aims to make part-time service more soldier-focused and less administratively burdensome, claimed “good progress” in some areas of her initiative in an exclusive Oct. 11 interview with Army Times. But she freely conceded that some problems facing the Army’s smallest component still keep her up at night.

Daniels, who holds a doctorate in computer science, said she ordered the Reserve’s inspector general to investigate whether the components’ headquarters — from her staff all the way down to the company level — are putting out too many short-notice tasks that overburden leaders. The inspection began after a Feb. 17 Army Times feature that detailed the burden of part-time command for Reserve officers, and Daniels said its results should arrive in the next 30 to 45 days.

She says she is concerned that taskers may be overwhelmingly falling to the company level for execution, where thinly spread full-time staff members known as Army Reserve administrators are “trying their darnedest” to keep up in the face of relatively low wages. And when part-time leaders are evaluated based on their unit’s administrative wherewithal, excess work often ends up on their plates — and often without pay, officers who spoke with Army Times in February said.

“How many taskers are coming out from the different staffs that the leaders may not know about?” Daniels asked. “Myself included. My staff is probably putting out stuff that I don’t realize that they’re putting out, and they’re tasking subordinates to do things that I may not realize they’re tasking.”

Daniels noted that the IG is also evaluating whether headquarters are giving sufficient time and reasonable prioritization guidance along with the work, as well as “not putting them out at [5 p.m.] on a Friday afternoon.”

The Reserve chief celebrated improvement in the amount of drill weekend time spent actually training. She emphasized pushing units toward “tough, realistic training done safely” in the wake of a 2022 inspector general inspection that found many Reserve units barely spent any time training due to administrative requirements.

In her eyes, “giving soldiers something interesting, relevant, meaningful, cool, fascinating, [or] exciting to go do” will increase enlisted retention and boost recruiting numbers that have lagged for several years. The component “had the highest retention we’ve had in quite some time” in fiscal year 2023, she said.

One of Daniels’ new focuses is speeding up and streamlining promotion processes. She said the component has successfully sped up captain promotions by reducing the required time-in-grade for first lieutenants to advance.

Mid-grade noncommissioned officer promotions have posed another challenge.

“We found that over the last three years, the Army Reserve has gotten slower in promoting specialists to sergeant by one month each year,” she explained. Setting a quantitative goal for sergeant promotions didn’t fix the problem. Now her tagline is “E5 in five…by the time you get to five years, you should be a sergeant.”

Daniels emphasized that her units need to do a better job of holding regular promotion boards and sending their eligible specialists to required military education courses based on their leadership potential rather than whether that soldier is ready to be an NCO immediately.

“I want to reward potential,” she said. “Every other board that meets out at [Human Resources Command] or wherever, it’s about potential. Why are we not doing that for our specialists?”

The “Army Blue Book and Digital Library,” as the program is tentatively named, is under development with the Army Software Factory and Training and Doctrine Command, Weimer added. He said their goal is to begin beta testing the platform in fall 2024.

According to Weimer, the blue book app will be a one-stop shop for Army enlisted leaders who want to know “what right looks like.” It will include Army and unit history information, philosophical references like values and creeds, up-to-date information on standards and discipline, clearly defined leader responsibilities, and a digital library containing the service’s most commonly referenced regulations and other publications.

In an interview after the announcement, Weimer explained that he intends for the app to clearly communicate authoritative standards, which he argued will in turn empower noncommissioned officers to raise the community’s baseline level of discipline.

Where things currently stand, “there’s fear to enforce the standards,” for junior noncommissioned officers sometimes, Weimer acknowledged.

Training and Doctrine Command officials said that the blue book is intended to supplement existing programs like the MySquad application developed during now-retired Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston’s tenure.

The Army also plans to include a feedback mechanism in the application that will allow soldiers to suggest ideas to service senior leaders. The feature will not be anonymous, however.

Weimer’s blue book announcement wasn’t the only application announced at the conference. Installation Management Command is developing a My Army Post application — also in conjunction with the Army Software Factory — that will offer real-time information about installation resources like gate hours, gym facilities, chow halls and more.

A shocking September report from the watchdog Government Accountability Office detailed rampant problems in the barracks — mold, squatters, safety concerns, sewage overflows, lack of space, inadequate climate control and more.

On-base privatized housing for troops with families also suffers from oversight shortcomings that have proved difficult to overcome. The Army’s internal auditors concluded that 2020 housing policy reforms intended to make homes safer from lead-based paint and asbestos fell short due to ineffective oversight and confusion between housing officials and the companies administering the properties, according to a report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference, Army Times spoke with two of the service’s top quality of life officials — Installation Management Command’s Lt. Gen. Omar Jones and Army G-9 Lt. Gen. Kevin Vereen — about the Army’s plans to address those issues, as well as their progress on improving access to childcare.

Vereen, who led the Army’s Recruiting Command from 2020 through September 2022, emphasized the importance of quality of life measures for securing the Army’s future amid falling end strength numbers. “Supporting our soldiers and families where they live, work and train…that is a fundamental reason why we are going to be able to recruit and to retain our soldiers and families.”

Barracks boost coming?

In a Sept. 27 House Armed Services Committee quality of life hearing following the GAO barracks report, the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for installations, housing and partnerships, Carla Coulson, told lawmakers that “the report, frankly, was not news to the Army.” According to Jones, nearly one-in-five of the Army’s permanent party barracks buildings — meaning those reserved for soldiers stationed at the base — are currently rated as poor or unacceptable under the service’s four-tier rating system.

Lawmakers appear to have noticed the challenges the Army has faced with funding such work, too. Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo., pressed Coulson for a price tag on fixing all of the barracks.

But Coulson — along with Jones and Vereen — seemed optimistic that a proposed $4 billion barracks resourcing strategy would increase sustainment funding to keep good barracks in top shape and bolster the service’s work to renovate and replace poor and failing condition facilities. The money would be in addition to the $1 billion per year that the service has already committed to barracks improvement projects.

“We can see that we have 300 permanent party barracks buildings that are in poor and failing shape,” Coulson told lawmakers. “Across our…[current pre-strategy budget plan] we can address 113 of those barracks buildings. But at the same time, if we don’t fully sustain, we’ll have 110 existing barracks buildings that will move from good or adequate into the poor and failing category.”

The barracks resourcing strategy recommends that the Army fund 100% of barracks’ sustainment needs in addition to ensuring the multi-billion dollar “generational investment in our barracks,” as Vereen described it, is put to good use. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, who drives the service’s budget requests, will make the final call, and Congress will decide whether to approve the funds.

Jones said the increase in sustainment funding, if approved, will help installation public works officials eliminate any deferred maintenance, be more responsive to new requests, and get ahead of the curve on stopping issues before they start.

“You will see increased effort and effectiveness and accomplishment of preventative maintenance because of that,” Jones added.

Privatized housing next?

But once the Army revitalizes its barracks, Coulson said, the next problem on the horizon is doing the same with “our privatized [housing] inventory that we struggle with.” Around 90,000 of the Army’s approximately 100,000 on-base homes around the world are administered by a private company as part of a public-private venture partnership at the installation level, Jones said.

The service faces a greater challenge to ensure the sustainment of existing homes, too, because it does not directly control their maintenance plans — the Army has an oversight role. The complexity of the decades-old agreements between the Army and the housing partners has increased the difficulty of updating oversight rules.

The Army Audit Agency found that 2020 oversight reforms intended to address environmental hazards in privatized homes have fallen short thus far. Army officials in garrison housing offices lacked standardized training to carry out their responsibilities, and the program couldn’t apply to the housing partners without consensual updates to legal agreements.

“In some cases, probably the cart got before the horse,” Vereen explained. “When you look at where most of our housing partners [and] management offices were, and how they were manned, I don’t think that we looked at their ability to be able to adhere to some of…the policy changes.”

In Vereen’s eyes, having trained personnel on both sides of the equation — larger company management offices and more soldiers in Army housing offices — will help both parties implement effective inspection regimes with proper oversight.

Jones, who interacts with the housing partners regularly as the general with overall responsibility for the service’s housing, said the recently implemented resident bill of rights is meant to “make sure that no soldier or family…[feels] unheard by the Army.” He highlighted the dispute resolution process, for which he serves as the final decision authority on formal complaints.

Securing childcare

Both Jones and Vereen pointed to the childcare front as one where the Army has received significant assistance from lawmakers, but also as one where there is still a lot of work to complete.

In late 2022, Congress surged funding to build childcare centers for the Army and other services, putting them on track to meet many of their facilities’ needs. That included a desperately needed child development center at Camp Bull Simons, Florida, where 7th Special Forces Group families have struggled for years with inadequate access to the service.

But the enduring problem is one felt in the civilian sector as well: staffing.

Jones said the service’s daycare centers — often lauded for their low-cost, high-quality service — have come a long way from their pandemic-era employment nadir.

“Right now, our employment rate is approximately 80%…we were, in some cases, just over 50% coming out of the pandemic,” he said. But he wants to exceed the Army goal of 90% and reach full childcare staffing.

He and Vereen are focused on using (and advertising) expanded incentives for child center employees, which includes commissary benefits for those not already military-affiliated, as well as bonuses, free or discounted care for their own kids and more.

Vereen explained that staffing problems have led the Army to place enrollment caps on some facilities. “We have some larger CDCs that we just can’t fill to full capacity with children because we just don’t have the workforce and that’s a limiting factor for us,” he said.

Both generals highlighted a pair of resurgent or new initiatives that are improving childcare center access and spouse employment.

As part of a recent push to improve portability of spouse employment opportunities, the Army now allows child development center employees who are military dependents to transfer employment to another installation if their spouse has a PCS. Previously they would have to resign and reapply at the new base.

Jones said the Family Child Care program, which allows the Army to pay bonuses to and train qualified on-base residents who provide certified in-home child care to their neighbors, is also bouncing back after the pandemic.

Vereen hopes the efforts, in addition to a subsidy that helps families seek off-base childcare if necessary, will combine to take pressure off Army families and give spouses with children the freedom to pursue career opportunities. And they may not stop there — the general said his team is “looking at other ways” to address “the capacity problem.”

“We are seeing progress, but I think there’s still some work to be done,” he said.

Lt. Gen. Omar Jones, who leads the command, explained that garrisons need to provide a “common experience” for services like childcare while simultaneously providing “tailored” solutions in other quality-of-life areas that fit each unique installation.

As examples, Jones discussed public transit and privatized barracks — two areas where the service is weighing improvements or expansions in order to address shortcomings that are impacting junior troops’ Army experience.

At Fort Cavazos, Texas, he said, the service recently approved an intergovernmental agreement with the neighboring city of Killeen that will establish city-administered public transit on the Texas installation. But not every post will need internal public transit, Jones said, emphasizing the need “to tailor that to the local environment.”

In his previous role leading the Military District of Washington, Jones oversaw one of the service’s five privatized barracks facilities at Fort Meade, Maryland. He argued that the project, which consists of apartments for mid-grade and senior noncommissioned officers, works because it was tailored to Meade’s “unique” community.

“You have a combatant command there with [Cyber Command], you have…a higher population of mid- and senior-grade people to support the other organizations that are at Fort Meade than maybe some other organizations in the Army,” he said. Jones also cited the area’s high cost of living as a key factor.

So when it comes to establishing more privatized barracks, he said, service policy officials will ask questions like, “Does this model make sense for this installation, given the local community, the on-post community [and] the units?”

Jones’ philosophy contrasts with some historical projects, such as the construction of VOLAR-style barracks across several installations in the 1970s, that imposed identical programs without regard to factors like geography.

The general said the shift in thinking — which he noted has also been pushed by Gen. Randy George, the service’s new chief of staff — is emblematic of a broader sea change in how the Army perceives quality of life concerns compared to when he first entered the military.

“Taking care of people improves the Army; it improves readiness and what the Army does for the country,” he said. “That’s a conversation that I’m not sure was happening 30-plus years ago — at least that Lt. Jones was aware of.”

Every Monday morning, many units descend on their vehicles for “motor pool Monday” — a preventive maintenance blitz where soldiers do routine checks and services on their unit’s transportation assets.

And, according to the Army’s chief of staff, it might not be the best use of time.

“We’re servicing our vehicles too much, is the bottom line,” Gen. Randy George said during a Monday news conference at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting. “We got all the [chief warrant officer] fives together — maintenance warrants — and by making some simple commonsense changes, it’s going to reduce the workload by 632 man years. That’s a lot of man years.”

George linked the changes to other moves he hopes will help units clear up their motor pools and be able to spend more time on training rather than turning wrenches on unused equipment. The chief said he recently tasked a study group to review property books and equipment authorization documents to determine what excess materiel the Army can dump.

“All the things we’ve had through the years that has slowly been added to property books that we … wouldn’t need in a fight moving forward, we’re taking that off the plate,” George said.

He noted that different types of units will have differing dividends, but anticipates the returns for the Army will be “fairly substantial.”

A pilot equipment review program is underway at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and Fort Liberty, North Carolina, the chief added.

Overall, George said he believes the move to reduce excess maintenance and derelict equipment will “reduce the complexity for our company commanders in our communities.” That would enable them to focus more on training management practices that take care of their soldiers, he argued.

As for the equipment deemed to be in excess, George said the Army is still “figuring it out,” but the first move will be warehousing the gear while experts weigh different disposal options that range from destruction to stripping parts to refurbishment for storage as war reserve equipment.

A series of deadly helicopter crashes killed 14 soldiers between February and April, interrupting one of the safest periods in the Army’s flying history.

That led the service’s leaders to order an Army-wide safety stand down in May — the rare move grounded all non-deployed flying units until they completed a mandatory safety training program led by their commanding generals. The sessions, leaders said, also allowed junior troops and other community members to provide feedback on safety practices and challenges in the community.

Ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting, Army Times spoke with aviation branch chief Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, who commands the aviation schoolhouse and Fort Novosel, Alabama, about the stand down’s findings and ongoing initiatives in Army aviation. McCurry had not yet briefed senior leaders on the findings as of the Sept. 21 interview, so senior leaders have not finalized corresponding policy initiatives.

McCurry says he is optimistic that the service will learn the right lessons from the stand down as it shifts its focus to a potential large-scale war with a foe like China.

“I think Army aviation is at an inflection point — we’ve been here before; we have the right leadership in place,” he said.

The Army’s top aviator said the stand down confirmed some commonly understood or long-suspected phenomena in the community that are affecting safety and readiness.

McCurry highlighted the high op tempo that combat aviation brigades face.

“We knew that the units in our combat aviation brigades were running hard…and so that was confirmed,” he said.

Many of the tasks that take aviation troops from home include training and rotations overseas, which isn’t too different from the era of the Global War on Terror.

But because today’s preparations are focused on “training to employ [flight] platoons, companies and battalions,” the build-up is more intense and less predictable for planners, maintainers and others, he said.

During the counterinsurgency-focused years, Army aircraft mainly operated in two-ship teams, the general explained. That meant maintenance personnel could work in staggered teams and maintain 24-hour operations. But when you’re training to fight a high-intensity war, that requires having more helicopters in the sky — and more planning and last-minute work.

Maintainers also grew accustomed to having contractor support when deployed, McCurry added, so “in many cases…we deployed all the crew members but not all the maintainers.” That means a generation of mid-career maintenance personnel don’t have “the sets and reps” of experience that they could’ve gotten.

He’s optimistic that a revamped maintenance training program — which formally ties career badges to proficiency testing — can ensure units are able to accurately assess and enhance their maintainers’ skills.

McCurry also said the stand down highlighted how today’s younger pilots largely don’t have the War on Terror-style combat deployments that would allow them to accrue hundreds of operational flying hours.

“We’ve seen a pretty significant drop in the flight hour level of any given warrant officer cohort,” he said. That’s increased the importance of risk management and “tailored” mission design and briefing.

Other findings from the stand down were less intuitive, according to McCurry.

The general noted that today’s troops are very aware of the service’s strategic priorities, thanks to modern communications, which has units anxious to do complex training to prepare for high-intensity conflict. But some units, because of the experience gap and the heightened learning curve for such work, “were jumping to some collective things before we had focused on the fundamentals.”

“We saw some units were out-training their level of experience,” he added. To address that gap, McCurry said, the branch is trying to improve individual tactical and technical training courses, recruit more instructor pilots, and standardize crew certification on training progressions.

In addition to harnessing the lessons learned from the stand down, McCurry shared that the aviation branch is leaning into its heritage in an effort to build cohesiveness across the community.

The effort, dubbed “Operation 83″ after the year when aviation became a standalone career branch, uses historical lessons to impart pilots “with the sacred trust Army aviation enjoys with the soldier on the ground.”

Overall, McCurry is pleased with the progress the Army has made in preventing more deadly aviation mishaps after this spring’s accidents, and he expressed his “heartfelt condolences and care to the families of those we lost.”

“Since that time, we’ve flown over 213,000 hours,” while experiencing only one Class A mishap, he said. But McCurry added that he is “not satisfied.” And he won’t be until Army aviation has another year without losing any soldiers.

Gen. Randy George, who was confirmed as the service’s chief of staff on Sept. 21, suggested during a press conference that expanding on-base public transit could help improve the quality of life for junior soldiers.

“Public transportation — I think we’ve got to get after that,” George said, suggesting that expanding bus routes and other means of transportation could improve access to food for service members residing on-post who may not have a vehicle of their own or other means of easily getting around base or off-post.

George and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said that transport was one of many factors that left several bases without adequate dining options for troops over the summer.

At some installations like Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, and Fort Cavazos, Texas, deployed units were unable to staff their dining facilities and keep them open for soldiers who didn’t go overseas. According to an August Military.com investigation, some soldiers at the Texas post were forced to drive an hour’s round trip in order to eat.

Officials at Fort Knox, Kentucky, temporarily struggled to keep food flowing during Cadet Summer Training when contract employees at its dining facilities went on strike due to unpaid wages.

Wormuth praised how leaders responded to the Fort Knox strike — Cadet Command and the garrison rapidly sourced uniformed cooks to restore food services after a few days of MRE rations — but said that commanders need to learn a lesson about planning for culinary contingencies.

“In some cases, we’ve had cooks deployed to the field or go to exercises and not be available to run the [dining facilities],” the secretary said. “That is foreseeable — we have to do a better job of planning for that…[and] make sure that our garrison commanders are working together with senior commanders and trying…to plan ahead.”

George cautioned, however, that “every installation is going to be a little bit different.” Solving food access problems will come down to getting local commanders the resources they need to address them, he said.

A recruiting crisis made it harder to fill the ranks — and project what future forces the service needs and how it can fill those units. A new Army-wide human resources system debuted after multiple delays. And Russia invaded Ukraine.

According to Lt. Gen. Douglas Stitt, the Army’s top personnel officer and leader of its G-1 directorate, these events combine to create a “growth industry” where the service’s personnel pros can apply new technology and tricks to the “lost arts.” Stitt and his senior enlisted adviser, Sgt. Maj. Christopher “Smoke” Stevens, spoke with Army Times at the Pentagon on Sept. 25 ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

The war in Europe has resulted in massive casualties on both sides, and the pair of U.S. officials took note of lessons learned from the fight that can be applied to human resources professionals. Rebuilding a shattered unit is a daunting task, as can the process of sending a large number of troops overseas for battle.

“Sgt. Maj. Stevens and I, when we first came in as HR professionals, we … spent a lot of time in division Warfighters and [training rotations] talking about casualties, replacements [and unit] reconstitution,” Stitt said. But those ideas fell out of vogue in recent decades — out of necessity — amid America’s focus on counterterrorism.

“Let’s bring in the next generation and make sure they’re trained and prepared to take on these tasks,” Stitt added.

The career field’s schoolhouse at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, has integrated Ukraine’s “real-world examples” of large-scale combat personnel doctrine concepts that the U.S. Army hasn’t employed en masse since the Korean or Vietnam wars, he said.

In Stitt’s eyes, those new HR soldiers are also entering the field “on the ground floor of some emerging technology.”

The service’s leaders hyped the potential of its new personnel platform — the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army, or IPPS-A — for years before its release in December 2022.

While many emphasized IPPS-A’s potential to improve HR customer service, the Army’s personnel pros were quietly excited for its business analytics tools that allow for powerful custom manpower reports. Now in a mater of minutes, personnel troops can create detailed reports that once required pulls from multiple databases and complex compilation techniques.

Stitt noted there is an increased focus on training data analytics in the Fort Jackson schoolhouse, too.

Now that IPPS-A and its reporting tools are here and personnel pros are improving their data proficiency, Stitt explained, it’s time to “really look at strength management [and] get into the weeds of looking out for strength forecasts and projections.”

Those capabilities and the revamped training couldn’t come at a better time for the service; a recruiting crisis has made it increasingly difficult for the Army to keep units filled and ready for missions around the world. The Army’s success at retaining soldiers has also raised the risk of some career fields being overstaffed in their mid-career ranks unless their career development needs are adequately tracked and managed.

Stitt confirmed the Army has issued new “manning guidance” to ensure priority units receive an adequate percentage of the troops they’re authorized to have. He noted it can be challenging or even disappointing for some units to learn they won’t receive full manning, but the recruiting crisis has forced the Army’s hand.

The three-star general said communicating the broader manpower situation is necessary to “ensure … commanders understand where their units are” in a training or deployment cycle, because “everybody’s important, [but] not everybody’s a priority.”

Another communication challenge Stitt’s team faces, he said, is making sure commanders and division- or installation-level assignment teams are harnessing IPPS-A’s potential to “really understand who you have in your formation. How are we integrating the business analytics so we can get after projections?”

Ultimately, as Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told Army Times in June, the service will make unspecified force structure changes — cutting some units and creating others — to ensure its manpower requirements align with its mission requirements.

Wormuth and Stitt declined to elaborate on the cuts and what new units will emerge, the details of which aren’t finalized until the service completes its so-called Total Army Analysis force management recommendations for fiscal 2025 through fiscal 2029.

In the meantime, Stitt asked the force “to have trust and confidence in us that we care about them. This isn’t just a bunch of faceless individuals behind the curtain trying to conspire against them.”

“We are soldiers, too, and we understand the importance of our jobs so that soldiers can do their jobs,” he said.