Page:Aps 2021.pdf/3

 capabilities, and formations that will give the Joint Force asymmetric, all-domain advantages against near-peer potential adversaries. Our gains are real, but fragile. With Congressional support, we established a deliberate achievable path to deliver a ready and modernized Army by 2028 and a transformed multi-domain Army by 2035. However, sustaining today’s readiness and modernizing for tomorrow’s readiness is only possible through your timely, adequate, predictable, and sustained funding.

Strategic Environment

A dynamic global security landscape continues to challenge our nation. These challenges include: (1) borderless threats, like COVID, cyber, violent extremism, and climate change; (2) the global siege on democracy to include an increasingly contested information environment; and (3) the changing distribution of global power that draws new lines and value propositions for many of our allies and partners. These challenges require an agile, ready, modern, and multi-domain Army that works alongside strong allies and partners. Strategic competitors and regional actors are testing American norms, institutions, and alliances. China, our pacing threat, increases its global assertiveness, while Russia increases its disruptive behavior. Threats from Iran, North Korea, and violent extremism and terrorism remain. While America’s Army maintains a tenuous overmatch, it is fleeting. Future conflicts will manifest at longer range, across all domains, and at much greater speed, both physically and cognitively.

Climate change is altering the Army’s operational environment and adding new mission demands; mitigating these effects has been an ongoing priority for the Army for several years. Climate change impacts Army installations globally and opens the Arctic as a new geographic theater for competition. The Army must consider alternative energy sources, improved energy storage, fuel-efficient design, more robust power distribution, and new technologies, such as weather pattern and terrain stability modeling to better inform operations.

The Army must also contend with threats from within. The harmful behaviors of sexual assault, sexual harassment, racism, and extremism hurt Soldiers and break trust with the American people. The Army is working diligently to solidify a culture of cohesion and intervention to protect our Soldiers, not only from the deliberate fratricide of these