Mark Esper


Mark Thomas Esper is an American politician and manufacturing executive who served as the 27th United States secretary of defense from 2019 to 2020. A member of the Republican Party, he had previously served as the 23rd U.S. secretary of the Army from November 2017 to July 2019.
A West Point graduate, Esper joined the United States Army and saw combat during the Gulf War as an infantry officer with the 101st Airborne Division. He later served in the 82nd Airborne Division and the Army National Guard. After leaving military service, he held several prominent roles, including chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation; a senior congressional staffer; a deputy assistant secretary of defense; and a senior executive for the Aerospace Industries Association, the Global Intellectual Property Center, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Immediately before joining the Trump administration, Esper served as vice president of government relations at defense contractor Raytheon.
In 2017, he joined the Trump administration as the 23rd secretary of the Army. In 2019, Esper was named acting defense secretary; he was confirmed shortly afterwards as the 27th defense secretary by the United States Senate with a vote of 90–8. He was dismissed from the office by President Donald Trump in a Twitter posting on November 9, 2020 due to disagreements about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.

Early life and education

Esper was born on April 26, 1964, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the son of Pauline "Polly" Reagan and Thomas Joseph Esper. His father was a member of the Maronite Church. His paternal grandfather was an immigrant from Lebanon, and his uncle was war journalist George Esper.
Esper graduated from Laurel Highlands High School outside Uniontown in 1982. He received his Bachelor of Science in engineering from the United States Military Academy in 1986. Esper was a dean's list student at West Point and received the Douglas MacArthur Award for Leadership. He received a master's degree in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School in 1995 and a doctorate in public policy from George Washington University in 2008. His doctoral dissertation was titled The role of Congress in the development of the United States' strategic nuclear forces, 1947–1968, and it was advised by James Lebovic.

Career

Esper served as an infantry officer with the 101st Airborne Division and deployed with the "Screaming Eagles" for the Gulf War. His battalion—the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, the "Rakkasans"—was part of the famous "Hail Mary" deep into southern Iraq that helped lead to the defeat of the Iraqi Army. He later commanded an airborne rifle company in Europe and served as an Army fellow at the Pentagon. Esper served on active duty for more than ten years before moving to the Army National Guard and later the Army Reserve, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. According to his memoir and personal website, Esper is Ranger, Airborne, Air Assault, Jumpmaster, and Pathfinder qualified, and completed Army courses ranging from Jungle Expert in Panama to the Command & General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Esper is a two-time recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. Among his military awards and decorations are the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, Kuwait Liberation Medal, and the Combat Infantryman Badge.
Esper was chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, from 1996 to 1998. From 1998 to 2002, Esper served as a senior professional staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. He was also a senior policy advisor and legislative director for U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel. He was policy director for the House Armed Services Committee from 2001 to 2002. From 2002 to 2004, Esper served in George W. Bush's administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy, where he was responsible for a broad range of nonproliferation, arms control and international security issues. He was director for national security affairs for the U.S. Senate under Majority Leader Bill Frist from 2004 to 2006.Esper was executive vice president at the Aerospace Industries Association in 2006 and 2007. From September 2007 to February 2008, Esper served as national policy director to U.S. Senator Fred Thompson in his 2008 presidential campaign. During that same period, Esper was a Senate-appointed commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. From 2008 to 2010, Esper served as executive vice president of the Global Intellectual Property Center and vice president for Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He was hired as vice president of government relations at defense contractor Raytheon in July 2010. Esper was recognized as a top corporate lobbyist by The Hill in 2015 and 2016. Esper's departure from Raytheon included a deferred compensation package after 2022.

Secretary of the Army

President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Esper as Secretary of the Army on June 19, 2017. He was Trump's third nominee for the position, following the withdrawals of Vincent Viola and Mark E. Green. He was confirmed to this post by an 89–6 vote of the U.S. Senate on November 15, 2017 and sworn in on November 20, 2017.
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in November 2017, Esper said that he would have three priorities as Army secretary: readiness, modernization, and efficiency. He identified taking care of soldiers, their families, and Department of the Army civilians as an enduring priority.

Army vision

In mid-2018, Esper published a new Army vision that outlined the goals he wanted to achieve by 2028, as well as the ways and means to get there. The Vision focused the service on China as the pacing threat in a future high-intensity conflict. The top line goals were growing the force to more than 500,000 active-duty soldiers, building a talent-based "perform or out" personnel system, re-engineering the Army acquisition system by establishing a "Futures Command" to modernize the force, and scouring the service's budget to pay for these improvements.

Recruiting reform

After missing its recruiting goal in 2017, Esper and his leadership team pursued an overhaul of the service's recruiting enterprise, with a stated focus on growing the force and emphasizing quality over quantity. The second part of this approach entailed a series of actions aimed at raising recruit standards, such as limiting waivers for applicants with histories of drug use, bad conduct, or mental health issues, and reducing by half the number of recruits that came from the lowest quality tier. At the same time, the Army hired a new marketing firm to refresh its overall approach with a business-like focus on specific objectives. This was complemented by an Army push into online outreach and a variety of social media, such as an Army eSports and CrossFit team, all of which helped Army recruiting during the COVID pandemic. Esper also brought back the World War II–era "pinks and greens" uniform—the iconic Army attire of the greatest generation—as a rebranding initiative and morale booster for recruiters. In late 2018, the Army developed a "22 City" initiative that put a recruiting focus on major U.S. cities that were traditionally underserved, had little interaction with the U.S. military, and produced a lower-than-expected number of recruits annually. The aim was to expand these markets by dramatically increasing the number of Army recruiters, advertising, and visits by senior Army leaders. All of these initiatives began seeing positive results by mid-2019.

Army readiness

In early 2017, the Army's readiness was at a low point when it came to fighting a near-peer threat like China or Russia. Only a few out of the Army's thirty-one active-duty brigade combat teams were fully ready to deploy. To address these issues, Esper pursued several initiatives to improve individual and unit readiness. In the spring of 2018, several dozen mandatory training, inspection, and reporting requirements were eliminated. The aim was to reduce those tasks directed from higher echelons that prevented junior officers and NCOs from training their soldiers as they saw best. With regard to unit training, Army forces were directed to focus on high-intensity combat operations against near-peer adversaries. To both drive and measure success, exercises at the Army's premier National Training Center were geared exclusively to these types of operations and unit rotations to the NTC were maximized for the first time in years. Other initiatives to improve Army readiness included a new health and physical fitness regime, increases in training dollars, updated policies regarding individual deployability, and personnel changes that kept units together longer. By the summer of 2019, it was reported that the number of non-deployable soldiers was reduced by 65%, with a 250% increase in the number of Army BCTs considered combat ready.

Overhaul of initial entry training

Esper launched a reform initiative in 2018 to improve initial entry training for combat soldiers. His directive extended basic and advanced infantry training by over 50 percent, to twenty-two weeks, making it one of the longest initial training programs in the world and the first major overhaul of the Army's initial training since the 1970s. The additional training time allowed the Army to broaden, lengthen, and deepen weapons training, vehicle-platform familiarization, combatives instruction, field training, land navigation, and night operations, while adding a 40-hour combat-lifesaver certification course and water survival training, among other things.
Initial reports in early 2019 showed a 50 percent reduction in attrition and injuries, with significant improvements across the board, including in physical fitness, land navigation, and marksmanship skills. The additional training time and a significant reduction in the drill-sergeant-to-trainee ratio were major drivers of these results. Given the program's success, Esper and his leadership team decided to expand basic and advanced training for other branches, such as armor and cavalry.