Author: U. S. Army US Army Command and Staff College

Publisher:

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 55

ISBN-13:

With the publication of the 2019 Army Modernization Strategy: Investing in the Future, the US Army initiated another of its periodic modernization campaigns to meet the military requirements of a new era of competition. Considering the challenges associated with change in bureaucracies, it is critical to identify actions and conditions that can contribute to both success and effectiveness. This paper considers what internal conditions the army can influence and shape, and what external conditions it can monitor, to modernize successfully. It further attempts to identify specific modernization conditions, using case studies from the interwar period between World War I and II, on which army leaders should focus. The study draws its conditions, including commitment, leadership, consensus, doctrine, and resourcing, from theorists in the fields of modernization and change management. The results of this work indicate that each of these conditions influences modernization, but further finds that the selected conditions are not exclusively definitive of success. While this study merely lays a groundwork for a better understanding of success in modernization, it opens areas of inquiry for further research, such as integrating modernization across the services, which can improve the likelihood of success, not only for the US Army, but also for the entirety of the Department of Defense. (Stokes, Ted L., Jr.) . The School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) is one of the parts of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC). Most SAMS students complete the regular CGSC course, then stay for a second academic year. They write either one or two monographs (depending on the requirement at the time) and are awarded a Master of Military Art and Science (MMAS) graduate degree. Most go on to planning jobs in field units. This collection contains all the publicly releasable monographs produced since the program began in 1986. SAMS monographs typically address historical events, current operational issues, or new organizational concepts.