The US military plans to make a final decision within the next two years on the likely appearance and organizational structure of the 2040 US Army Ground Forces. US Armed Forces General James Rainey, who is responsible for the modernization of such armed forces, said this was expressed at the US Ground Forces Association forum as part of the Global Forces Symposium.
The head of the U.S. Army Futures Command (AFC) believes we have “18 to 24 months to use with a sense of urgency. During this time, we will need to figure out what the main differences will be between the battlefields of the future and the battlefields of today, and what the general operating environment will look like in the foreseeable future. We need to get this right. First of all, to make sure that we are not mistaken in our assumptions and predictions. Ultimately, we need to be in a better position than the people we’re going to fight.
According to the general, the AFC “has an obligation to define this future work environment and we need to start developing the concept. We hope to start developing a draft version of the concept possibly this fall.”
Recall that AFC was founded in 2018. The main task of the new structure was to modernize the US Ground Forces and prepare them for the wars of the future. General James Rainey is already vice president of the AFC.
For all future work, the US Army Advanced Development Command takes a benchmark for 2040. To begin with, the AFC plans to figure out how the US military will fight in the future and then determine appropriate organizational and personnel structures on that basis.
According to James Rainey, the US Army is on track to deploy more than 30 advanced weapon systems, military and special equipment by 2030; Denying US military access to key areas.
“We will buy armored fighting vehicles, other weapons, communications equipment, but we need to transform our formations, bring them to a qualitatively new level,” said James Rainey.
– We buy weapons and military equipment, but everything we do materially is organically “how does this fit into our promising formations?” And we will make the right decisions in this regard. And most importantly, we will put more combat-ready formations on the battlefield of the future.”
According to the commander, there are still many questions to be answered, as the Land Forces are rapidly developing combat and operational capabilities, and many of the problems that arise need to be resolved quite quickly.
“Let me talk about the sense of urgency of 2040,” said James Rainey. — When I speak of 2040, I mean the Ground Forces fully deployed by that date. But for this
By 2035 we will need to be fully aggressive in making new connections.”
“If by 2035 the Ground Forces need to build capacity for full-scale deployment of new formations by 2040, then the US Armed Forces will probably need to build prototypes of brigades and divisions, as they say, to start small-scale. production or something like that, by 2031,” said James Rainey.
He noted that the U.S. Army is currently working on a five-year defense spending plan covering fiscal year 2025 through 2029.
According to Rainey, concepts developed during this time will need to be “fully and aggressively” tested through experiments. Land Forces Project “convergence” – A large-scale campaign to develop the capabilities of the US military, which began in 2020 – is one of the platforms for such experiments.
According to James Rainey, priorities in science and technology should be set and approved by the Secretary of the Army and the command. “I think we need to start getting more clarity about our intentions this fall. Most likely, we won’t be working on funding plans until the next few five-year budget planning cycles,” he said.
Ground forces plan to complete the development of the first conceptual installations within the next six months. This is done so that the US Army Training and Research Command and the AFC Office of Capability Development and Integration can jointly develop new concepts for individual combat functions such as firing, reconnaissance and maneuvering with the US Army Air Force Command. fiscal year 2024.
According to James Rainey, promising formations of the Ground Forces must have the proper integration, a kind of hybrid of man and machine that could dramatically change the game on the battlefield. According to the commander, most of what has been done within the scope of modernization is very, very ambitious. For example, replacing a tank with a robot tank.
That is, the AFC plans to transfer a significant part of the work of the brute, and even more risky tasks, to machines and mechanisms instead of fighters.
General Mike Murray, the first chairman of the AFC, announced that there are no plans to “move the goalposts” in the Army.
“We need to outsmart the Chinese and act boldly and resolutely, always ahead of them. James Rainey, describing the continuing threat from the PRC’s PLA as outlined in the US National Defense Strategy, I think it is within our capabilities.
But it would probably be wrong to say that China will follow the modernization of the US Army indifferently.
As before Wrote At the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China, “Gazeta.ru”, Xi Jinping, Chairman of the Central Military Council of the People’s Republic of China, said Beijing will “work faster” on the modernization of military theory, personnel and weapons.
“We will strengthen strategic capability,” Xi promised.
Since the mid-1990s, China has gradually transformed its military from an obsolete institution into a sophisticated war machine, optimized to deal with “US assets in power projection,” as it is commonly said in the US.
In this context, the White House and Pentagon undertook to further strengthen the advantages of the American army and navy compared to the armed forces of other states.