Soldiers at Fort Hood are forced to work on their vehicles outside because doors at some facilities are not wide enough to move modern vehicles inside for maintenance, the secretary of the Army said on Monday.
That’s just one example given by Eric Fanning at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting in Washington to show how the service is hurting because badly needed maintenance and modernization has been delayed to pay for and support operations.
“Across our force, we have soldiers and civilians living and working in 52,000 buildings that are in poor or failing conditions because of the $7 billion in deferred maintenance,” Fanning said.
The Army isn’t the only service affected by tight budgets that force maintenance and future planning to take a hit. The Marine Corps has ripped spare parts off museum aircraft to keep its current fleet in the air.
While these issues need to be fixed, Gen. Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff, also stressed the need to invest in the future. He predicted a “fundamental change” in the character of ground warfare that’s about 10 years away and urged the U.S. Army to prioritize investments in science and technology to be prepared.
“Up until now we have essentially mortgaged future readiness or modernization for current readiness,” Milley said.
In an example of how he expected combat to change, Milley said he had “no doubt” that robotics will play a significant role in ground warfare by the late 2020s or early 2030s.
