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 Evolved Priorities America’s Army remains prepared to compete globally and fight and win the Nation’s wars as a member of the Joint Force. As demonstrated repeatedly over the past year, we also remain the Nation’s principal response force to protect our country and communities in the face of unexpected crises. We thank Congress for the consistent, predictable, and sustained funding you have provided. This funding enabled us to deliver a ready Army that responded promptly and superbly to a dynamic and unpredictable security environment, like the COVID-19 pandemic, Middle East tensions, civil unrest, cyberattacks, and south-west border mission. Our priorities are well aligned with the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance: investing in people, sustaining readiness, divesting of legacy systems to reinvest in cutting edge technologies and capabilities, mitigating the impact of climate change, and strengthening our alliances and partnerships.

Last October, the Army evolved its priorities to people, readiness, and modernization. This evolution reflects the achievements of a multi-year effort to rebuild readiness and accelerate modernization. Six years ago, we recognized that readiness had declined precipitously after years of reduced funding, uncertain budgets, and deferred modernization. We also recognized the need for new concepts, capabilities, and posture to compete aggressively in the Indo-Pacific and Europe. With your support, we rebuilt tactical readiness in our units and built strategic readiness in our power projection infrastructure. We deliberately executed internal reforms over the last four years by realigning over $35 billion within the Army budget to self-fund modernization priorities in support of joint all-domain operations.

Thanks to your continued support for Army modernization, we are successfully pivoting from the incremental improvements of the past to fulfilling the robust Army Modernization Strategy that Congress prescribed in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. Because of this strategy, and new Congressional authorities to streamline the acquisitions process, we are already beginning to field new systems in long-range precision fires, air and missile defense, and soldier lethality, with more on the way in next generation combat vehicles, future vertical lift, and the Army network. With these modernization capabilities, we are able to deliver multi-domain concepts,