One of the biggest themes from the 2019 AUSA Annual Meeting was the Army’s focus on modernization. Building out their portfolio of six new warfighting technologies takes a lot of changes, and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, says that this is one of the biggest transformations the branch has seen. These developments require a lot of funding, and McCarthy told Government Matters that the Army is no stranger to tough budgetary decisions.
“The Army leadership had to sit up front and make hard, hard choices. About how do we invest in our future and divest legacy platforms. All investment programs have divestures. That was north of 30 billion for the 2020-24.” McCarthy said. “As we look at the 21-25 effort, we probably need to realign additional dollars because a lot of prototypes are landing and they’re performing. How do you make choices now to scale them across all of our formations. We’re a large organization and it is going to take time.”
McCarthy said that at AUSA, he wanted to send out a message to the soldiers of the force, letting warfighters know that he had their families’ best interest in mind.
“This is a stressful, difficult profession under any circumstances. With the complexity we face in the world, with 60 percent of combatant commanders’ requirements, we are going to keep getting called on, because they know we’re going to deliver, McCarthy said. “That’s an enormous stress on soldiers and their families. We have to do certain things, investments into family programs to help them get better quality housing. I point the thumb on that, I have to do better. We are going to do that. We are going to be in this fight together.”
