“The deployments are one-for-one unit replacements, which will leave our overall force posture in the region — approximately 100,000 — unchanged,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday afternoon. “The units being replaced will return to their home station following an appropriate turnover of responsibilities.”

The turnovers are expected to continue through the summer months. Of note, the 101st Airborne Division headquarters, out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, will replace the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has ignited debate over how many U.S. troops should be permanently stationed in Europe and even whether new bases should be established. But Kirby had no update Friday on whether any of the additional troops dispatched to countries like Poland, Romania and Germany in recent months foreshadowed a permanent presence.

“The security environment has now changed based on what Mr. Putin has done,” Kirby said. “So, we expect that we’re going to have to take a look at the permanent footprint in Europe and make an assessment about that in the future, but there’s nothing in the offing right now.”

Prior to the Ukraine war, about 80,000 U.S. troops were in Europe, either on permanent bases or rotating through to train with NATO allies. Some countries, like Lithuania, have sought a more concrete U.S. military presence to beef up security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“My advice would be to create permanent bases, but don’t permanently station,” Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee in early April. “So, you get the effect of permanence by rotational forces cycling through permanent bases.”

“And I believe that a lot of our European allies … they are very, very willing to establish permanent bases,” Milley added. “They’ll build them, they’ll pay for them, etc.”

Although no decisions have been made on that front, the Pentagon appears prepared to continue maintaining the elevated troop presence that began when Fort Bragg-based paratroopers were flexed to Poland in February.

But, for now, those paratroopers will get to go home.

Kirby said the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Infantry Brigade will replace the 3rd Infantry Brigade from the 82nd Airborne Division. That turnover alone will involve about 4,200 soldiers.

Another 4,200 soldiers from 3rd Armored Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, out of Fort Hood, Texas, will replace the 1st Armored Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, which is returning home to Fort Stewart, Georgia.

Finally, the 1st Armored Division Combat Aviation Brigade, which is stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, will replace the 1st Air Cavalry Brigade to support the U.S. force commitment to Atlantic Resolve, a rotational presence that has been ongoing since fighting began in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014.

But the changes are expected to be cost-neutral in the immediate future and even the manpower added to the upgraded headquarters would come out of the cannibalized Stryker brigade, should that plan move forward, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday.

“We will be looking at basically having that division headquarters have sort of the same types of capabilities that you see in the 173rd in Italy, for example,” Wormuth said.

The 173rd Airborne Brigade is a strategic response force for U.S. European Command, hinting at the kind of roles Alaska-based soldiers could eventually play in their own region.

Army officials said last week that they’re planning to reflag U.S. Army Alaska as the 11th Airborne Division, a storied unit that fought in New Guinea and the Philippines during World War II before it was deactivated in 1965.

The change could breathe new life into two brigade combat teams currently based in Alaska, one of which is an airborne unit and the other a mechanized unit manning the eight-wheeled Stryker armored vehicles.

“We are looking at potentially taking the Strykers out of Alaska,” Wormuth said. “We have not made a final decision about that, but if we do that, we will basically take them and look at the ones that we can reuse elsewhere or basically use for parts.”

Because a Stryker brigade has more personnel assigned to it than a typical brigade, the extra billets could be added to the new operational headquarters, according to Wormuth. The headquarters is currently set up for administrative tasks.

“There won’t be cost immediately associated with that particular step,” she added. “We won’t need to do new military construction, for example, to house people at this time. So, I don’t think that these changes are going to have large price tags, but we will be continuing to put money in the budget for things like the CATV [Cold-Weather, All-Terrain Vehicles].”

CATV prototypes underwent testing in Alaska late last year and are intended to replace the Small Unit Support Vehicle, which is 1960s-era technology that was purchased by the Army in the 1980s. New vehicles are part of a slew of changes being made to Army units in Alaska after the service rolled out its Arctic strategy in 2021.

Like many Arctic strategy documents produced by government agencies in recent years, the Army’s plans warn of a region where climate change is expected to open new shipping lanes and offer access to energy and mineral resources.

China, which considers itself a “near-Arctic nation,” has interest in the region. But Russia is the country with the largest amount of land above the Arctic Circle and, like the United States, it is protective of that territory.

The Army’s Arctic strategy suggested establishing a two-star general-led operational headquarters in Alaska to manage Arctic-focused combat brigades outfitted with tracked vehicles, tents, sleds and other equipment to help soldiers navigate deep snow and rugged terrain.

The strategy also discussed plans to put a multidomain task force in Alaska that combines intelligence, cyber, space and electronic warfare to deny access to enemy forces — potentially valuable in a region where remote sea lanes and flight routes are needed to traverse great distances.

Arctic warfare also requires different equipment. Most soldiering gear and vehicles are tested at about minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. But soldiers in the Arctic face much worse conditions, including temperatures that drop below minus 65 degrees Fahrenheit. That causes problems for even the rugged Stryker vehicle.

Roughly 4,700 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were dispatched to Poland last month to bolster NATO’s deterrence posture as Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Poland’s border has been a conduit through which man-portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons have traveled to Ukrainians fending off the Russian military.

The Patriot systems, which will come from the Rhine Ordnance Barracks in Germany, can track and intercept ballistic missiles launched at U.S. forces in the event of an attack. Russia has fired more than 600 missiles into Ukraine, and the Patriot system could also guard against a stray shot if the war creeps closer to Polish borders.

“This is a prudent force protection measure that underpins our commitment to Article Five and will in no way support any offensive operations,” U.S. European Command spokesman Scott Ghiringhelli said in a statement. “Every step we take is intended to deter aggression and reassure our allies.”

Article Five is the NATO’s collective defense principle. It requires all member states to treat an attack on one as an attack on the entire alliance.

The deployment of the two Patriot batteries will likely reassure Polish allies after a faux pas early this week involving the attempted transfer of Polish aircraft to Ukraine.

In statements Tuesday, Poland suggested it was “immediately” sending all of its MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets to Ramstein Air Base in Germany so that U.S. officials could give them to Ukraine.

The Pentagon rebuked the offer Tuesday evening. Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the move was not “tenable,”

“The prospect of fighter jets ‘at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America’ departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance,” Kirby said in a statement. “It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it.”

The airspace over Ukraine remains contested, to the shock of many observers of the Russian Air Force. During a call with U.S. senators over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy requested the U.S. send more Russian-made planes that his pilots already know how to fly, and drones, to help Ukrainians battle for the skies there.

President Joe Biden and other top officials have ruled out Zelenskyy’s requests for a no-fly zone. Such a measure would require that the U.S. Air Force shoot down violators, including Russian airmen, which could raise the specter of nuclear war.

The Army’s end-strength growth, once expected to top 500,000 active-duty soldiers, has slowed to a crawl in recent years and currently sits at roughly 485,000 troops.

“This is the same size Army that we had on 9/11, and when I take a look at what the requirements are, when I take a look at what historically we needed, and now that we’re in a time of great power competition, I’m very, very concerned about the size of the Army,” Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville said during a Tuesday discussion at the Center for a New American Security.

Much of the strain on the Army’s size comes from the combatant commands, where soldiers make up the bulk of military personnel deployed across the world. But the impending withdrawal from Afghanistan, in U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility, won’t make much of a difference.

“The number of troops in Afghanistan is really not a significant amount,” McConville said when asked how the withdrawal would factor into end-strength woes.

Growing the Army also doesn’t appear to be happening in the current fiscal environment, unless the service cuts into readiness and modernization funding.

“The [Army] secretary and I both agree that we can’t do the things, as far as readiness and when it comes to modernization, if we were to grow the Army to the level that we think would reduce the stress of deployments for our troops,” McConville said. “What we’re trying to do is produce the best Army we can with the resources that we’re going to get.”

President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2022 budget request asks for $715 billion for the Defense Department. The Army’s top line has not yet been revealed, but defense officials have said they’re bracing for a possible budget cut.

Even flat budgets have required Army leaders to fund their key modernization initiatives, like long-range fires, by culling lower priority programs and shifting around billions of dollars.

The Army has carried that process out for the past few years, but leaders have run out of fat to trim, according to acting Secretary of the Army John Whitley.

“We’ve rebuilt readiness. We’re in a good state with readiness, but that is fragile, and it could be reversed,” said Whitley. “We’re in a good place moving out on modernization, but that requires consistent, sustained funding to see through and deliver products to our soldiers.”

If the budget declines, Whitley noted, the current operations tempo would have to give.

“There’s a tremendous amount of risk in the Army’s budget today,” Whitley added. “The simple fact is, we took risk in the budget to get to where we are today, so there’s not a lot of excess that can be used.”

The Army accounts for about 25 percent of the Defense Department’s budget and about 35 percent of the active-duty end strength of the department.

“But we’re over 50 percent of the current operating tempo of the Department of Defense,” Whitley said. “We’re two-thirds of the readiness demands and the readiness priorities for warfighting of the Department of Defense.”

“The Army cannot sustain that level of commitment and operating tempo and readiness for such a wide range of things in a declining budget environment — and that’s the simple math,” Whitley said.

The Marine Corps is overhauling its force so it can quickly move expeditionary units between islands in the South and East China seas and within range of Chinese forces. The recipe calls for a lighter and more mobile Corps than what existed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Army is going through similar changes to prepare for any possible confrontation with a great power.

Both services are developing long-range fires and anti-ship missiles, but Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville believes the differences lie in mobility.

“The systems we’re developing are more along the lines of a campaign rather than a quick expeditionary-type,” McConville said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies discussion Tuesday.

“I don’t see us as in competition with the Marine Corps,” he added. “They have roles and missions that are extremely important, as does the United States Army.”

The Corps is ditching its tanks and cutting down on the number of tube artillery batteries it owns. In return, Marines are creating a new littoral regiment, building more mobile rocket batteries and putting ship-killer missiles on Joint Light Tactical Vehicles.

Similarly, long-range fires is the Army’s top modernization priority, and the service is expecting some of those investments to start coming to the force in 2023, including the first hypersonic weapon, precision strike missiles and a prototype mid-range missile.

Army Pacific commander Gen. Paul LaCamera, who was also present during the CSIS discussion, said the difference also lies in the “mass” that the Army can bring to war.

If the Marines are “there first and we come in behind them, that allows them to continue to move on,” LaCamera said. “It’s really based on, ‘how do we work well within the concept of design that the commander of INDOPACOM” is using during a war.

LaCamera noted that he meets regularly with his Marine counterpart in the region and his soldiers often train alongside Marines during exercises like Balikatan and Cobra Gold. Those exercises are also experiments to see what mix of soldiers and Marines makes sense during a campaign.

Experimentation will become more important for both services as new equipment, still in development, rolls out to units, according to LaCamera, who noted that a modern war in the Indo-Pacific could require a different mix of forces than World War II-era strategies.

“We can use the past as being instructive, but it’s not a blueprint,” LaCamera added. “As they bring on capabilities, as we bring on capabilities, we’re experimenting together to make sure that we can not just compete, but in a crisis respond if we got to fight.”

The loss of two separate three-person National Guard Black Hawk crews in a matter of weeks sparked concern at the Senate Armed Services Committee that a larger pattern of malfunction could be the culprit.

When the active duty force is included, data shows that there have been five Black Hawk crashes between December 2019 and February 2021, claiming the lives of 16 service members in total.

But so far, nothing from those investigations hints at a material issue with the airframe, according to the Army Combat Readiness Center, which looks into catastrophic mishaps.

“At this point, even with those investigations just now finishing up, we have not found anything that warrants grounding of the Black Hawk fleet,” Hilmes said. “Each of those mishaps occurred under unique circumstances and we are looking at different causal factors in each.”

Over the past four decades, about 86 percent of Army aviation mishaps have been attributed to human error, which can encompass a wide range of issues, from overreaction during an emergency to complacency on routine flights.

“We’re always analyzing each and every mishap for trends,” Hilmes added. “In those five mishaps that we’re talking about, each involving UH-60s, we haven’t seen specific linkages or commonalities.”

Preliminary results from the most recent crash — an Idaho Guard Black Hawk that went down near Boise — stated that rapidly deteriorating weather was a significant factor in the incident. But the primary cause was the crew’s inability to complete an emergency shift to instrument flight before impact.

“They only had 14 seconds from the time the crew initiated [instrument] procedures to the time the aircraft impacted the ground,” Col. Chris Burt, the Idaho Army National Guard’s state aviation officer, said during a recent press conference.

“The most effective way to survive [such] an emergency is simply to not enter that environment in the first place,” Burt added. “However, this is not always possible.”

The Idaho mishap took place mere weeks after a New York Guard Black Hawk crashed Jan. 20 in a farmer’s field south of Rochester, killing three experienced pilots.

New York Guard spokesman Col. Richard Goldenberg declined to provide any details about the results of that investigation, as the Idaho Guard had done.

Sometimes, mechanical failures are paired with human error, as was the case when a Minnesota Guard Black Hawk crashed near St. Cloud in December 2019.

An investigation determined that the Minnesota mishap, which also killed three crewmembers, was caused by an improperly installed hydro-mechanical unit. The investigation summary stated that the maintenance test pilot failed to respond to the situation, and the pilot at the controls failed to execute an autorotative descent and landing.

“The Black Hawk is a dual-engine aircraft, so it’s got redundancy, and if one of the engines were to go out, then there are procedures in place so you can fly that aircraft rather well on one engine,” Hilmes said. “While there might be a material failure that occurs in flight, there are procedures in place to overcome that failure.”

Emergency procedures have been in the Army’s sights recently.

“We did see a trend in the latter half of 2019, where we had several mishaps where the crew performance of emergency procedures was inadequate,” Hilmes noted.

Last year, the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence released revised emergency procedure methodology to reduce pilots’ reaction time during emergencies.

“There’s less memorization required in terms of rattling off a checklist,” Hilmes explained. “Less focus on rote memorization and more attention paid to flying the aircraft. Then troubleshooting once you ensure you can continue to fly.”

Class A aviation mishaps, the Army’s most catastrophic category, fell from 12 in fiscal 2019 to just six in 2020, according to data sets provided to Army Times. And although coronavirus restrictions limited some training last year, the force still hit 90 percent of the flying hours that were cataloged in 2019.

Still, seven soldiers were killed in aviation mishaps during fiscal 2020, compared to just two the year prior. That’s because more of 2020′s Class A mishaps involved variations of the UH-60 Black Hawk.

“It’s a troop-carrying aircraft. Sometimes there’s greater potential that you might have more more soldiers on board,” Hilmes said.

Black Hawks make up about two-thirds of the total Army aviation fleet. That means they fly in greater numbers and work more total hours than the AH-64 Apache or CH-47 Chinook fleets.

“From fiscal year ’16 to fiscal year ’20, the Black Hawk flew 1 million more hours than the rest of the fleet combined,” Hilmes added. “So, it’s out there a lot more than the other aircraft.”

Despite the higher number of flight hours, Hilmes noted, the Black Hawk still has a lower mishap rate than the Chinook and Apache. The Guard also has a lower Class A mishap rate than both the Reserve and active duty Army, data sheets provided to Army Times showed.

“The Army National Guard is not seeing an increased number of mishaps. Tragically, these two events were just close together in time,” Hilmes said of the New York and Idaho losses.

Black Hawk crashes haven’t been confined to the Guard, either.

Two soldiers from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment were killed in late August when their aircraft went down near San Clemente Island, California. Then in November, five soldiers were killed during a peacekeeping mission in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula when their Black Hawk went down because of an apparent “technical failure,” officials said at the time.

Both of those investigations are still finishing up, and though Hilmes declined to detail the specifics of those incidents, he maintained that there was nothing found by investigators that warrants the grounding of the Black Hawk fleet.

The consolidation is also an acknowledgment that the security situation between the two continents is “inextricably linked,” said U.S. Army Europe and Africa commander Gen. Christopher Cavoli.

“The close geography and economic ties between the two continents means that regional security issues, left unchecked, quickly spread from one area to another,” Cavoli said during a telephone call with reporters Tuesday.

“This consolidation enables greater synchronization of operations in Africa with our NATO allies here in Europe, many of whom have very important security concerns and security interests in Africa,” Cavoli added. “So this is a very big advance, both north of the Mediterranean and south of the Mediterranean.”

That security situation includes violent extremist groups in the Sahel region, like al-Shabaab and Boko Haram. The impact of climate change on the Sahel’s grasslands also poses resource challenges and could increase insecurity among people there.

French forces have been running a counter-terrorism mission in the Sahel since 2014. The French have suffered dozens of casualties in Mali, and a few in Burkina Faso and Chad. U.S. forces, meanwhile, provide aerial intelligence gathering, mid-air refueling and logistical support to the French mission.

Cavoli and Maj. Gen. Andrew Rohling, who helms the newly minted Southern European Task Force, held a press conference to discuss the merger, as well as African Lion in June — a military exercise in Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia, involving about about 10,000 troops and 20 partner nations.

“It’s a pretty scalable exercise,” Rohling said. “So if between now and the execution in June we continue to have challenges with COVID, we’ll scale the exercise up or down to fit accordingly. But in the end, we’re going to have a good training opportunity and it’ll be good for all the allies that are involved.”

African Lion is the largest U.S. Army exercise on the continent and will stress the interoperability between forces from a range of different nations. It’s also an opportunity for the newly merged U.S. command to test out moving troops and equipment between Europe and Africa.

“All of these will help us to increase the capabilities of our partners in counter-terrorism efforts and help them be pivotal players that confront the issues across Africa today,” Rohling said.

Italian forces were brought into a command-and-control role during the U.S.-led African Lion exercise for the first time. The merger has also helped Cavoli complement European efforts in Africa, such as a new initiative the French are starting in Senegal called the Partner Armies in West Africa Coordination Center.

“I was talking with the chief of the French Army about this just the other day,” Cavoli said. “They’re setting up this center where … willing nations will come in and coordinate our security assistance activities to make sure that we’re as efficient and as effective as possible.”

The U.S. Army Europe and Africa merger will hopefully help whisk units in and out of Africa during crises, which have included deadly attacks against U.S. patrols and outposts in Niger and Kenya in recent years.

Paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based out of Vicenza, Italy, traveled in January to Somalia as part of a security exercise that flexed troops to Mogadishu International Airport.

The six-week mission was the brigade’s first significant deployment to Africa since it was reactivated in 2000, and is part of what brigade officials expect to be a growing role on the continent, Stars and Stripes reported at the time.

“When an emergency situation arises and the U.S. Army is asked to assist, we can look at and access assets already on this side of the world, both in Africa and in Europe, to decide how best to support the mission,” Rohling said.

Flynn, who currently serves as deputy chief of staff for Army operations, plans and training at the Pentagon, was key in crafting a new Army force generation model that was introduced this fall.

The new model is designed to regionally align Army units in roughly one year, Flynn previously told Army Times, giving soldiers expertise in the parts of the world to which they would deploy during an actual conflict and allowing them to stockpile the right equipment to win those clashes.

That type of preparation will help Flynn as he takes control of U.S. Army Pacific, a region where the Pentagon’s attention has increasingly shifted to confront a rising China.

Of note, Flynn is the younger brother of former Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served as Trump’s first national security adviser before resigning within one month for lying about his contacts with Russian officials. Michael Flynn has remained a controversial public figure due to his support for the QAnon conspiracy and for proposing President Donald Trump impose martial law and deploy the military to re-run the 2020 election.

The familial ties drew scrutiny last week when the Army falsely denied that Charles Flynn was present during a phone call between the Pentagon and D.C. officials as the Jan. 6 Capitol riot unfolded, according to the Washington Post. The Army ultimately confirmed to the Post that Flynn participated in the phone call, during which the Capitol Police pleaded for National Guard troops to assist in securing Capitol grounds.

There’s no indication Flynn shares his brother’s extreme views, and Flynn’s own career trajectory appears uninhibited by the relationship. His nomination for a fourth star was sent to the U.S. Senate in November and confirmed by a voice vote on Dec. 20.

Fourteen other general officers’ assignments were announced along with Flynn’s Monday:

• Lt. Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, senior military assistant to the secretary of defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington, D.C., to commander, Joint Special Operations Command; and commander, Joint Special Operations Command Forward, U.S. Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

• Maj. Gen. Steven W. Gilland, commanding general, 2d Infantry Division (Combined), Eighth Army, Republic of Korea, to deputy commanding general, III Corps, Fort Hood, Texas.

• Maj. Gen. Omar J. Jones, commanding general, Military District of Washington; and commander, Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region, Washington, D.C., to deputy commanding general, Installation Management Command, Joint Base San Antonio, Texas.

• Brig. Gen. Edmond M. Brown, deputy director/chief of staff, Futures and Concepts Center, U.S. Army Futures Command, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, to commanding general, Combat Capabilities Development Command, U.S. Army Futures Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

• Brig. Gen. Thomas R. Drew, military deputy, Talent Management Task Force, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-1, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C., to director, Talent Management Task Force, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-1, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C.

• Brig. Gen. Brett T. Funck, deputy commanding general (Operations), 10th Mountain Division (Light); and acting senior commander-Fort Drum, Fort Drum, New York, to deputy commanding general, U.S. Army Cadet Command, Fort Knox, Kentucky.

• Brig. Gen. Clair A. Gill, deputy commanding general (Support), 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to director, Army Aviation, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C.

• Brig. Gen. Guy M. Jones, deputy commanding general (Maneuver), 2d Infantry Division (Combined), Eighth Army, Republic of Korea, to deputy director/chief of staff, Futures and Concepts Center, U.S. Army Futures Command, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia.

• Brig. Gen. Michael C. McCurry II, director, Army Aviation, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C., to director, Force Development, G-8, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C.

• Brig. Gen. Mark C. Quander, commandant, U.S. Army Engineer School, U.S. Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, to commandant of cadets, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York.

• Brig. Gen. Jeth B. Rey, director, J-6, U.S. Central Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, to director, Network Cross Functional Team, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

• Brig. Gen. William A. Ryan III, senior advisor to the Ministry of Defense, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, Afghanistan, to chief of staff, U.S. Army Central, Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina.

• Brig. Gen. Curtis D. Taylor, commander, 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, to commanding general, National Training Center and Fort Irwin, Fort Irwin, California.

• Brig. Gen. Joel B. Vowell, deputy director, Strategic Planning and Policy, J-5, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Camp H. M. Smith, Hawaii, to commanding general, U.S. Army Japan and I Corps (Forward), Japan.

McCarthy’s tenure was marked by ambitious modernization initiatives as the Army orients away from nearly two decades of counter-insurgency conflict and toward competition with other global powers. But domestic issues, including civil unrest and the Army’s handling of missing soldiers and sexual assaults, have drawn increased scrutiny in recent months.

Assistant Secretary of the Army John Whitley, the service’s comptroller, will serve as acting secretary until President Joe Biden selects nominees to lead each of the services and they are confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

McCarthy, a veteran of the 75th Ranger Regiment, said in an interview this week that he hasn’t yet sketched out his next career plans. His unique role in helping manage the National Guard in Washington, D.C., has required his focus to remain on the inauguration, he said.

Security for the presidential transition has been a top priority in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters. In recent days, the FBI worked to vet 25,000 Guard troops who came to D.C. to help ensure a peaceful inauguration. Twelve troops were ultimately flagged and sent home, though few details have been offered as to what raised suspicions about them.

“It’s always a broad concern that soldiers are thoroughly vetted for any type of extremist threats,” McCarthy said Monday. “[On] Jan. 6, there were a handful of service members across the department that had participated in the riot. So, for all the hosts of those reasons, we’re running all the names through the FBI database.”

In a statement Wednesday, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville bid farewell to his civilian counterpart. He emphasized McCarthy’s efforts to field new equipment to formations, while acknowledging the pandemic and protests this spring and summer that frequently tapped National Guard soldiers.

“His inspirational leadership and unwavering integrity have spearheaded the most ambitious Army modernization efforts since the 1970s,” McConville said in his farewell message. “He instituted reforms that put the Army’s People First, and guided the Army through some of the most challenging times affecting the Nation and our society in recent memory.”

When McCarthy was sworn in as secretary in late September 2019, many of his priorities carried over from his previous two years as the Army undersecretary.

“The agenda has been consistent for over three-and-a-half years that I’ve been here,” he said, noting the focus on combat training center rotations and increasing unit readiness. “Over four years ago we had about two Brigade Combat Teams ready, [and] today we have north of 27 at the highest levels of readiness.”

The Army has also stood up a new four-star Futures Command and made it a priority to develop long range precision fires, next generation combat vehicles and a future vertical lift platform, among other initiatives. The service is on its fifth budget in a row that’s investing in those programs, McCarthy noted.

“You’ll see many of [those technologies] entering the formation, literally in soldier’s hands, this fiscal year and next,” McCarthy added. “The next two to three fiscal years, you’ll see tranches of these capabilities landing, enhancing our long range precision fires, our networks, missile defense and soldier lethality in particular.”

The Army also introduced a new force generation scheme this fall, dubbed the “Regionally Aligned Readiness and Modernization Model,” that will allocate Army units to different regions of the world in roughly one year.

The new model will give units expertise in the specific theaters where they would deploy during an actual conflict and allow them to stockpile new equipment for those clashes. It will also offer far more predictability so soldiers can, for instance, receive the new Next Generation Squad Automatic Weapon and IVAS goggles, according to McCarthy and other senior leaders.

“If you have predictability of where the units are going to be in the cycle, whether they’re deploying or home on re-fit, that’s when you will know what units will be able to equip or absorb new equipment,” McCarthy said. “Nineteen years of sustained combat operations have made it hard for us to have predictability and stability” necessary to receive that new equipment.

The modernization and readiness priorities were focused outwardly, with the goal to be able to fight and win against near-peer adversaries like Russia and China in the coming decades. But the past year in particular has been mired in domestic trouble.

This spring, the global coronavirus pandemic required the activation of thousands of Guardsmen and stymied Army training rotations and deployments, including a division-sized exercise in Europe. Trouble continued this summer, when the murder of Spc. Vanessa Guillen spotlighted the failings of leadership at Fort Hood, in Texas.

An independent committee determined there was an environment at the post that allowed sexual assault and harassment to proliferate, and that Army CID agents assigned there were under-experienced and overworked — a problem that agents say exists across the force.

“Using independent panels is an extraordinary step, quite frankly,” McCarthy said of the decision to tap five experts from outside the Army to review Fort Hood’s command climate. That independent committee was “objective” and provided “a holistic view from the outside, [with] fresh eyes,” he added.

Fourteen leaders at Fort Hood, from the deputy commander down to the squad level, were relieved or suspended in the wake of that independent committee’s review. Other investigations related to Fort Hood remain pending.

Army Futures Command boss Gen. John Murray was tasked with carrying out an in-depth investigation into the actions taken by the post’s chain of command following the disappearance of Guillen. The 6th Military Police Group, which oversees CID agents at Fort Hood, is also the subject of an investigation.

Also this summer, the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black suspect, by Minneapolis police sparked nationwide protests, including within the nation’s capital. The deployment of Guard troops to D..C. during protests and riots was met with criticism, especially after two D.C. Guard helicopters flew low over protesters on the night of June 1 in an apparent effort to intimidate and scatter them.

McCarthy, who was technically in the chain of command for those Guard pilots, could not comment on the investigation into the incident. DefenseOne reported this fall that the D.C. Guard and the Defense Department Inspector General’s Office remain at odds over who should take responsibility.

Guard mobilizations were far more welcomed by the media and citizens of the district early in 2021 — after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The Associated Press reported that at least 22 current or former members of the U.S. military and law enforcement have been identified as being at or near the Capitol building during the riot.

The presence of veterans and active troops has caused some to urge the military to clamp down on extremism in the ranks, an amorphous problem that can be difficult to identify in practice.

“We don’t really have a thorough understanding of just how many people were there,” McCarthy said of the Capitol riot. “We’re looking at this very hard and working with federal law enforcement to find out if there were others, over and above the ones that have been reported to us.”

Identifying any more soldiers who participated in the riot has been made a priority for Provost Marshal Maj. Gen. Donna Martin, according to McCarthy. The provost marshal relies on the FBI and other agencies that monitor extremist groups, often through their online footprints, to flag soldiers engaged in extremist activities.

“If this does truly exist, we have to go after it,” McCarthy said when asked whether the Army needed to change how it is pursuing extremism in the ranks. “We turn to our experts to help us look at this type of problem set, how to understand it and where to look for it. And if necessary, we’ll put the appropriate resources in place to canvass the institution.”

The intention is to better balance demands across the world with the transformational changes the service needs to prepare for a future fight against a peer adversary, Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn, the deputy chief of staff for Army operations, plans and training, has said.

Dubbed the “Regionally Aligned Readiness and Modernization Model,” the plan is to allocate Army units to different theaters in roughly one year, giving them expertise in the parts of the world to which they would deploy during an actual conflict and allowing them to stockpile the right equipment for those clashes.

The new model was introduced in October, alongside an announcement that the service will be working to reduce the demands of rotational deployments and decreasing requirements for brigade- and battalion-level training.

Events over the past year have taxed the force, including a rapid deployment of paratroopers and air defense artillery to the Middle East amid tensions with Iran, an unprecedented global pandemic and nationwide racial justice protests that led to the mobilization of thousands of Army National Guardsmen.

“I am concerned about the Army’s ops tempo as a whole,” Army Chief of Staff James McConville said in an October interview. “For the last 19 years, the Army has been heavily, heavily deployed. And even more recently, with our air defense units, our requirements around the world and particularly in the Middle East have really upped their ops tempo.”

That being said, there’s no intent to reduce combat training center rotations for units, McConville explained.

“That’s not what we’re discussing,” McConville added. “What we’re discussing is what the prerequisites are to actually go to a combat training center and how they fit into the rotational model.”