{"id":27392,"date":"2021-03-17T02:17:02","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T02:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2021\/03\/17\/army-chief-says-end-strength-numbers-to-stay-flat-in-upcoming-budgets\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:11:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:11:39","slug":"army-chief-says-end-strength-numbers-to-stay-flat-in-upcoming-budgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/digital-show-dailies\/global-force-symposium\/2021\/03\/17\/army-chief-says-end-strength-numbers-to-stay-flat-in-upcoming-budgets\/","title":{"rendered":"US Army chief says end strength will stay flat in upcoming budgets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Army chief of staff has said that if the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/smr\/federal-budget\/2020\/02\/10\/us-armys-178b-budget-request-for-fy21-shrinks-but-remains-focused-on-modernization\/\" target=_blank>budget top line in future years<\/a> either stays the same or decreases, he doesn\u2019t see the service\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/your-army\/2021\/03\/12\/chief-still-concerned-about-the-demands-on-soldiers\/\" target=_blank> end strength<\/a> dropping, but he also doesn\u2019t see it growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen it comes to what chiefs have to grapple with in a budget, it\u2019s end strength and structure, it\u2019s readiness, and it\u2019s modernization. Those are the three kind of big resource buckets we have,\u201d Gen. James McConville said at the Association of the U.S. Army\u2019s Global Force Next symposium, held virtually March 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOn the end strength and structure, I don\u2019t see us growing at the rate I would like to grow in the end strength. In fact, we are probably going to flatten out end strength where we are right now,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The troop count is about 486,000 in the active force and a little more than a million in the total force, which McConville noted is the same size force the Army had on 9\/11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe don\u2019t want to make it any smaller,\u201d he said. \u201cI would like to make it bigger, but what we have to do is prioritize, and I\u2019ve got to make sure the Army is ready to fight today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The service wants to grow the force to more than 500,000 active-duty soldiers by 2028, with a current plan of adding 1,000-1,500 soldiers per year. But it appears unlikely the flat budgets expected in the near future will be enough for the service to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/digital-show-dailies\/ausa\/2018\/10\/10\/inflection-point-army-wrestles-to-strike-balance-between-current-and-future-capability\/\" target=_blank>both grow the force and modernize it<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/land\/2020\/03\/04\/mccarthy-without-budget-growth-army-heads-toward-collision-course\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/McCarthy.jpg_99415e.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">McCarthy: Without budget growth, Army heads toward \u2018collision course\u2019<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">The Army may have to reconsider its end-strength and global presence in addition to cuts to current fleet procurement accounts if it doesn&#039;t get a bigger budget in the next few years, the service&#039;s secretary said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army is taking a hard look at readiness, McConville said, and that includes looking for ways to effectively train the forces using less money. One step the service has taken involves focusing on training smaller units, which is less expensive, he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSo if you get more readiness out of doing small unit-level training and then your combat training centers to get the higher level of training, we might be able to be more efficient with the money that we spend on readiness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Army leaders have been adamant they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/digital-show-dailies\/ausa\/2019\/10\/14\/tougher-decisions-are-coming-in-the-us-armys-night-court-budget-review\/\" target=_blank>will not use modernization as the bill payer<\/a> for readiness again, which it has historically done, because the need to transform the force has become too critical and many of the modernization efforts are already deep into development and prototyping efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI believe that we must modernize the Army,\u201d McConville said. \u201cEvery 40 years <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/digital-show-dailies\/ausa\/2020\/10\/13\/us-army-pegs-fy23-as-tipping-point-for-ending-old-weapons\/\" target=_blank>the Army needs to transform<\/a>. It did in 1940, it did in 1980 and we\u2019re in 2020 right now. I think I owe it to my successors that I have the Army on a good path to transformation, and we will see many of the systems we\u2019re talking about getting fielded in 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the Army takes deeper cuts, it could mean some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2019\/09\/18\/will-the-army-have-enough-to-pay-for-its-modernization\/\" target=_blank>modernization priorities<\/a> take a hit to save the most critical future capabilities in development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI believe we\u2019ll look at continuing to fully resource-selected, [cross-functional team] efforts that are deemed especially critical even under a significant top-line reduction,\u201d Lt. Gen. James Pasquarette, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2020\/11\/19\/army-preps-to-rework-modernization-priorities-if-future-budget-top-lines-drop\/\" target=_blank>Army\u2019s G-8 chief, said last fall.<\/a> Cross-functional teams manage each of the service\u2019s top modernization priorities under Army Futures Command, the four-star command set up a few years ago to modernize the force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pasquarette said he couldn\u2019t share what those critical programs would be, adding that at this point, Army leadership doesn\u2019t know. But Army Futures Command chief Gen. Mike Murray \u201cwill be intimately, personally involved\u201d in a review of priorities \u201cif it gets to that point with the Army leadership. I\u2019m the guy that has some thoughts and recommendations, who would adjust the resources in response to those decisions,\u201d Pasquarette said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army has already gone through two and a half years of deep budget scrubs through its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/digital-show-dailies\/ausa\/2019\/10\/14\/tougher-decisions-are-coming-in-the-us-armys-night-court-budget-review\/\" target=_blank>\u201cnight court\u201d process<\/a>, which seeks to find funding areas in the budget that don\u2019t align with the National Defense Strategy and the service\u2019s modernization efforts, and move those dollars into accounts that meet service priorities. In the Army\u2019s first night court, the chief, secretary, vice chief and undersecretary presided over decisions \u2014 big and small, easy and tough \u2014 for roughly 600 programs, shifting $33 billion from programs across the fiscal 2020 through fiscal 2024 five-year plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In FY20, the Army invested $8.6 billion in modernization efforts and, across the next five years, is investing a total of $57 billion, a 137 percent increase from the previous year\u2019s five-year plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army found another 80 programs or so to scale back or cancel to free up funding in FY21, but service leadership has admitted it\u2019s getting harder to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2020\/01\/15\/army-secretary-harder-decisions-to-come-in-budgets-beyond-fy21\/\" target=_blank>find low-hanging fruit in the process<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Army end strength will likely stay the same if budgets don&#8217;t grow, but the service will do what it can to make sure numbers don&#8217;t go down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":36065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":88,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,29,88,14,36],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3330],"class_list":["post-27392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-digital-show-dailies","category-global-force-symposium","category-land","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"MAQJWLAYYJE7FO4ADGGAONLS24","arc_canonical_url":"\/digital-show-dailies\/global-force-symposium\/2021\/03\/17\/army-chief-says-end-strength-numbers-to-stay-flat-in-upcoming-budgets\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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