Why The U.S. Army Must Modernize Now Rather Than Later

The Chief of Staff of the Army, General Mark Milley, is on a mission to quickly restore his service’s capability to conduct a high-end fight in order to deter a real war with rising powers. If the Army wants to be ready for the hard fight in the near-term it has no choice but to upgrade existing platforms and systems and buy more of what is currently in production. Army modernization needs to leverage open production lines and existing programs. General Milley’s chief challenger in his quest to rebuild the Army’s ability to wage war is not the White House, Congress, the Office of the Secretary of Defense or even the other services. It is his own acquisition bureaucracy. I have written more about this for The National Interest here.