Pittsburgh — Secretary of the Army Dr. Mark T. Esper was standing on the sidelines of Heinz Field waiting to administer the oath of enlistment to over 120 service members and new enlistees when a towering left tackle named Alejandro Villanueva stepped off of the practice field to shake his hand.
“He asked for a 4187 form and joked about getting his orders to go back there to help fight and serve the country,” Esper said of his conversation. VIllanueva, you see, is a former Army ranger who served in Afghanistan and earned a Bronze Star for valor.
Villanueva found himself in the spotlight last year when he became separated from his Steeler teammates ahead of the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He stood with his hand on his heart, his teammates remained under cover inside the stadium. This day, he towered over Esper ahead of the Army secretary’s big moment on the field of his hometown football team.
Esper grew up in nearby Uniontown, attended Laurel Highlands High School, then spent over 20 years in the Army. He graduated from West Point in 1986 and then spent a decade in the Army including the Gulf War with the 101st Airborne Division.
Following active duty, he served in the Army Reserve before retiring in 2007 and entering the private sector.
Esper was sworn in just under a year ago at a time of great transition: two wars winding down in Afghanistan and Iraq, a recruitment challenge as less people are physically and mentally fit for service, and the shifting posture of the military amid shifting threats.
One of his biggest challenges he said is increasing recruitment, “That is harder to do when the economy is doing so well. The other challenge is who is fit to serve in the Army,” he said from a recruitment tent outside of the Steeler’s game.
“It is a tough climate for all of the services, and that’s because these numbers are startling; only 29 percent or less of Americans are qualified to serve, for one reason or another, physical, mental, medical. I mean most, the biggest reason why is because of obesity,” he said.
Think about that: 71 percent of young people eligible to serve are not qualified because of obesity, he stresses. “A sedentary lifestyle,” he said flatly.
The tent attracted hundreds of young men and women who lined up to take a selfie with a soldier and talk with a variety of recruitment officers and soldiers. Visitors could also handle a plethora of gadgets and guns lined up on display beside the tent.
Esper said he sees his role as largely modernizing the Army to adjust to new threats.
“Cyber is one of them, but the bigger thing is we are coming off of 17 plus years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re still there, but 17 years when we were focused on insurgencies and low intensity conflict and now the national defense strategy tells us we go back and start thinking about strategic competitors such as Russia and China,” he explained.
“That means I have to change how we train the Army, how we equip it and everything. How we organize it, all that stuff. We’re in the middle of this renaissance right now where we are trying to move back to that,” he said.
This renaissance will require a constant check on morale.
“You have to give the soldiers, the Army, a clear vision,” he said. “The Army Chief and I did that in June. We sent out a vision statement where we want the Army to be in 10 years. The Army of 2028 and it spoke to all these things: How are we going to man the Army? How are we going to organize, train, equip, and lead it? And set out some clear paths. What we have done here in the short months I have been on board also is we’ve raised the standards on recruiting. We are extending basic training. It’ll be the longest and toughest in the world. We have a plan to completely modernize the Army and at the same time, we’re taking off these unnecessary training and mandatory training requirements off of the soldier’s backs,” he said.
Esper said he travels around to the different Army bases a lot. Listening to what his soldiers have to say, he said, gives him a better idea of how the Army is doing, compared to sitting at a desk in Washington.
Esper pushed back on the notion that Congress is too divided by partisan squabbles to govern. His experience has been that members on both sides of the aisle work together diligently when it comes to the military.
Generally he said there is a consensus about supporting our military and supporting where Secretary Jim Mattis and the service secretaries have taken the military.
Esper said there is a lot about military culture that people who have never served don’t understand: how diverse service members, for instance, are and how you have to adapt to that immediately upon the day you show up for boot camp.
“When I went to West Point, I was there with cadets from 50 other states and territories. Cadets from other countries, and you learn all of these things about our country, about our culture, our heritage, our ethnicity. At the end of the day, you come back, we all wear green, and we all consider ourselves an Army. We don’t look at each other as black or white. As gay or straight. As Catholic or Protestant or Muslim. It is one Army, And you know what? I went to combat with 101st Airborne division, I shared a foxhole literally with a fellow officer who was from Guam,” he said.
“The Army is a big mixing bowl and we know that we wear one uniform. We identify with one set of Army values. We serve one Constitution and we see ourselves as one team.”
Currently the U.S. Army has 180,000 soldiers deployed in over 140 countries right now as well as soldiers from the regular Army guard and reserve that have been helping in the Carolinas and all over the southeastern United States in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.
Esper said while he likes to tell his soldiers that they are the elite 1 percent serving the other 99 percent defending them, he says of the tiny percentage of people who serve and protect the rest of the country.
“What concerns me is, it’s becoming a family business. It’s military kids serving and they’re having kids who are serving. If I look at my general officers, they all have children who are serving. And so that’s something that we all need be concerned about as a country when you start having a separation between the military and the broader civilian community,” he said.
A group of young people came to the table for information and Esper smiled.
“We’re here about recruiting, trying to spread the message because if we don’t get out to where America is, where America’s youth are, particularly in the big cities, we are not going to be able to tell our broader story,” he said.
“That’s what we are about,” he said, “All these soldiers know that,” he said, pointing to the scores of them talking to the young people as they take selfies with them and take brochures about joining the Army.
Esper hopes that the massive swear-in he did at Heinz Field, that brought the sold-out stadium to its feet twirling their Terrible Towels as the recruits took their oath, can be repeated across the NFL this year.
“We want to do more, but I wanted to start with my hometown team the Steelers.”
