Secretary Mark T. Esper Message to the Force on Accomplishments in Implementation of the National Defense Strategy

July 7, 2020

---

Today, Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper released a video address to thank the members of the Department for their hard work and contributions as a team to achieve the goals of the National Defense Strategy over the past year. The Secretary addressed the progress made through three main lines of efforts: lethality and readiness of the force; strengthening allies and build partners; reforming the Department for greater efficiency and accountability. He also addresses his personal priority line of effort: service members and their families.

In addition, the Secretary outlined ten targeted goals to support implementation of these lines of efforts.

“Soon after I came into office, civilian and uniformed leaders across the Department and I met to develop detailed plans to implement these lines of effort.  We created a list of ten targeted goals, each with sub tasks, and we set out to accomplish most of these by the end of 2020. They are as follows:

1. Review, update, and approve all China and Russia plans;
2. Implement the Immediate Response Force, Contingency Response Force, and Dynamic Force Employment enhanced readiness concepts;
3. Reallocate, reassign, and redeploy forces in accordance with the NDS;
4. Achieve a higher level of sustainable readiness;
5. Develop a coordinated plan to strengthen allies and build partners;
6. Reform and manage the 4th Estate and DoD;
7. Focus the Department on China;
8. Modernize the force—invest in game changing technologies;
9. Establish realistic joint war games, exercises, and training plans; and,
10. Develop a modern joint warfighting concept, and ultimately, doctrine.

I am proud to report that we’ve made real progress on these goals, with most on track to be accomplished on time. I will soon be posting an extended list of what we’ve achieved over the past year on the DoD website, but today I want to highlight several standouts, and celebrate what we have accomplished together.”

Secretary Esper’s full video message can be found here. The transcript can be found here.