[Mil News] Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville has signaled for months that he would like to grow the force by as many as 70,000 additional soldiers, but that he expected he would have to make do with less. On Monday, the Army’s top general appeared to surrender, finally, to the idea that more limited defense spending levels are expected in President Joe Biden’s first Pentagon budget request.
"Right now what we’ve done—at least, the secretary and I have agreed to—is we’re not going to grow the Army above 485,000-ish with the resources that we’re anticipating now," Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said during a virtual discussion Monday with the Atlantic Council.
This appears to be the first time he and acting Army Secretary John Whitley have said they had reached an agreement on the total number of active-duty soldiers for the 2022 budget. The number marks no change from the Army’s current active-duty end strength, and is the same number of soldiers the service had before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, McConville said.
Monday’s comments mark a turning point for McConville, who just last week told the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense that he’d like to grow the force up to between 540,000 to 550,000 soldiers. But he added that he understood the Army could not afford that in the 2022 budget.
"But what we must do is keep that force we have ready," he said. |