Loren Thompson
It is now less than 60 days until General James McConville, the Army’s 40th Chief of Staff, ends his active military career by entering retirement. Like his childhood neighbor in Quincy, Massachusetts, Marine General Joe Dunford, McConville is one of the most important military leaders of his generation.
Under McConville and his predecessor, General Mark Milley—another Massachusetts boy—the U.S. Army has undergone a transformation of its culture and capabilities.
The Army has never been more professional, more progressive or more imaginative than it is today. Its people are well-trained and motivated, as reflected in high retention rates. Its readiness for combat is unsurpassed in recent history. And its emerging arsenal of weapons for distant sensing, precision strike and agile maneuver is without equal anywhere in the world.
This is a remarkable achievement for a service that consumes barely a fifth of the nation’s military budget, and yet always suffers the most casualties when that nation goes to war. Say what you will about air power or sea power, no form of combat is more demanding than land warfare.
General James McConville, 40th Chief of Staff of the Army. WIKIPEDIA
You might not think that from a chance encounter with General McConville. Unlike Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley, who has a personality akin to the tanks he once commanded, McConville is an engaging team player who seldom betrays strong feelings. He sticks to his agenda and defends his service without becoming excited.
Being a team player, McConville is predictably humble about the role he has played in transforming the Army. He typically gives credit to the soldiers beneath him, who frequently must face trials unknown to civilians. There aren’t many careers where potentially dying or being disabled at work is an accepted part of the job description.
McConville has seen that side of the Army as a master aviator who commanded in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Like his nominated successor, General Randy George, he has spent his adult life in an institution that has been continuously at war for decades.
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But being continuously at war doesn’t guarantee that a military service will be well-led, as President Lincoln learned to his dismay during the early years of the Civil War. What made General McConville’s generation of Army leaders different from many past ones was the emergence of a cohesive and collegial team at the top of the institution that shared a common vision of what the Army must become.
General Milley was a critical player on that team, selected as Army Chief of Staff by President Obama in 2015. Like his predecessors, Milley made readiness his top priority, but he also reorganized the service for a new era of fast-paced, digital warfare—including the creation of a Futures Command in 2018 to oversee the assimilation of new technology.
By that time Milley had been joined by McConville as Vice Chief of Staff, and by two former soldiers that President Trump selected to be Secretary and Under Secretary of the Army. Those two appointees, Mark Esper and Ryan McCarthy, worked with Milley and McConville to fashion a step-by-step modernization plan to revitalize Army technology.
Army modernization had not gone well in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, thanks to big budget cuts followed by a prolonged counter-insurgency campaign in Southeast Asia. As a result, the service had not seen a fundamental overhaul of its core warfighting systems since the Reagan years.
The new team set out to change that by focusing on six pillars of capability—long-range fires, new combat vehicles, advanced rotorcraft, digital networks, air defense and soldier lethality. The Army’s research agenda was reoriented to support those six pillars, and dozens of legacy efforts were scaled back or killed to provide the necessary funding.
Previous Army leadership teams might have argued over priorities, but during McConville’s time as Vice Chief and then Chief of Staff, the team was unified and forceful in support of its goals. Some of those priorities have been proven prescient, as the centrality of fires and threats from drones have demonstrated in Ukraine.
Because General McConville was present at the creation of this modernization vision, he was able to carry it forward in a new administration after Trump’s election defeat. Having a former Army armor officer, Douglas Bush, as head of acquisition in the Biden-era team has certainly helped.
However, it is McConville himself who as Chief of Staff has kept the Army’s modernization agenda on track, something that is often hard to do when political administrations change. McConville’s combat experience and communications skills have helped him to explain the rationale for critical investments, while beating back premature ideas like trying to field unmanned scout aircraft.
So as General McConville makes his final round of visits to Capitol Hill and think tanks as the Army’s top leader, he deserves a hearty round of applause for the role he has played in fostering a renaissance of the world’s premier land force.
McConville has seen his share of setbacks to Army plans over a 40-year career, from seemingly endless fights in Iraq and Afghanistan to the cancellation of previous modernization plans to budget sequestration year after year during the last decade. He knows that the institution is probably in better shape now than at any time since he was commissioned in 1981.
But Washington needs to know it too. James McConville has made a big difference in preparing his service and his nation to deter or defeat in future conflicts. If his successors are half as good as he has been, America’s soldiers will be the best the world has to offer for a long time to come.
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