The United States Army is reducing its size by about 5%, cutting roughly 24,000 jobs, as part of a restructuring plan that is ostensibly meant to better prepare for a possible war in the future.
As ABC News reports, the cuts will mostly affect posts that are already empty, such as counterinsurgency jobs that were previously needed in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan but no longer needed today, as well as about 3,000 jobs in the Army special operations forces.
On Tuesday, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth detailed the plan for reporters, saying that “we’re moving away from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. We want to be postured for large-scale combat operations.”
“So we looked at where there were pieces of force structure that were probably more associated with counterinsurgency, for example, that we don’t need anymore,” she added.
Army Chief General Randy George also noted that “the things that we want to not have in our formation are actually things that we don’t think are going to make us successful on the battlefield going forward.”
An internal document on the matter claims that the Army is “significantly over-structured,” with not enough soldiers to fill every post in certain units; thus, the cuts in question will affect “spaces” rather than “faces,” in the hopes that it will not lead to the discharging of too many soldiers.
Nevertheless, the announcement comes as the Army and most other branches of the armed forces face major recruitment crises, falling below annual expectations for the last several years. As of September 30th of 2023, which marked the end of the fiscal year, the Army, Navy, and Air Force all fell below recruitment expectations, with the Marine Corps and the Space Force ultimately meeting their goals. The Army, which aimed to recruit 65,000 new soldiers, ended up bringing in just over 50,000.