Army Commission Announces Chairman, Vice Chair

Retired Army Gen. Carter Ham, who most recently served as commander of U.S. Africa Command, will lead the National Commission on the Future of the U.S. Army, the commission announced last week.

Thomas Lamont, who served as assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs from 2009 to 2013, will be the panel’s vice chair.

The commission, created by the fiscal 2015 defense authorization bill, will assess the structure and size of the Army, determine the proper force mixture of the active and reserve components, and conduct policy analysis to document how policies affect mission requirements, according to a press release. Its findings are due Feb. 1, 2016.

The commission will need to settle the dispute over transferring the National Guard’s AH-64 Apaches helicopters to the active Army as well as tackle the long-troubled relationship between all three components of the Army, John Goheen, spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States, told Breaking Defense.

“They have a lot to see and a lot of decisions to make before they can write the report,” Goheen said. “They’ve a fairly narrow window to meet that 1 February deadline,” he said.

The remaining six members of the commission, appointed by either President Obama or leaders of the Armed Services committees, are:
• Larry Ellis, president and CEO of VetConnexx, a retired general who commanded Army Forces Command from 2001 to 2004;
• Kathleen Hicks, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former director for policy planning at the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy;
• Jack Stultz, a retired lieutenant general who was commanding general of Army Reserve Command from 2006 to 2012.
• J.D. Thurman, a retired general who served as the commander of U.S. Forces Korea and previously served as commander of Army Forces Command;
• Raymond Chandler, served as sergeant major of the Army until January 2015; and
• Robert Hale, former Pentagon comptroller who now is Booz Allen Hamilton’s public policy representative.