New budget calls for balance and modernization

WASHINGTON –- The new Brigade Combat Team Modernization plan and the Army’s goal to “achieve balance” by 2011 are among top priorities in the service’s budget request for next year.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Secretary of the Army John McHugh testified Tuesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee about the Army’s budget for Fiscal Year 2011.

The Army’s BCT Modernization plan was released Feb. 19. It calls for fielding “Spin-Out” technologies such as sensors and robotics from the former Future Combat Systems program to all BCTs. It cancels the FCS Manned Ground Vehicle variants and calls for developing a new “Ground Combat Vehicle” that the Army can begin fielding within seven years.

“This budget, as you can see, contains a significant adjustment to our modernization strategy,” Casey explained to the senators. “Together the rebalancing and the modular conversions represent the largest organizational transformation of the Army since World War II … and we will have done this while fighting two wars.”

Casey outlined four imperatives that need to be met in order to reach the 2011 goal for getting back in ‘balance’: Sustaining Soldiers and their families, continuing to prepare Soldiers for the current conflict, resetting them when they return and taking care of Soldiers and their families suffering from the stress of ongoing operations.

“Our Soldiers today, through nearly eight years of war, have more expertise, more education, more training, and more lethal capabilities than ever before … but in spite of those significant gains, the stress on our personnel and their families remains all too real … for all our efforts, we remain out of balance,” agreed Secretary McHugh.