Fiscal year (FY) 2001 began auspiciously for the U.S. Army. A long period of budget and force structure reductions had come to a close, and the Army leaders were implementing ambitious plans for the future. Throughout the year, the Army planned and executed organizational, doctrinal, and technological changes to the way it conducted warfare in the new century. The Army was following an ambitious plan named Transformation, issued in 1999 by Secretary of the Army Louis E. Caldera and Chief of Staff of the Army General Eric K. Shinseki. As part of Transformation, Army leaders envisioned fielding computerized, networked units within the next few years. The units would deploy quickly around the globe and would possess the striking power of current armored and mechanized forces without their massive logistical requirements. However, less than three weeks before the fiscal year ended, terrorist attacks in New York City and on the Pentagon claimed the lives of almost three thousand people. The Army could no longer focus on the distant future; a new conflict had begun. The Army now found itself pressed to continue modernizing while preparing for military operations in Afghanistan in the first months of what would become years of warfare. This historical summary of FY 2001 chronicles the state of the Army as it found itself thrust into a period of prolonged conflict. Before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Army conducted a variety of missions and responsibilities throughout the globe. It sent active and reserve units as part of an international peacekeeping mission to the Balkans and maintained sizable forward forces in the Middle East, western Europe, and South Korea. While helping to keep the peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Army also conducted large-scale military exercises with foreign militaries and provided humanitarian assistance to foreign nations. These and other missions would continue even after the United States struck back at terrorist enclaves in Afghanistan and elsewhere.The leaders of Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA), dealt with several tumultuous issues in FY 2001. To better lead the Army in the conflicts that lay ahead, Secretary Caldera and General Shinseki realigned the headquarters and created new organizations to provide flexible and efficient management of the force. At the same time, service leaders struggled to maintain the force structure of the Army during the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), and their eventual success prevented the Army from going to war with a smaller force. Finally, an investigation into a tragic event from the Korean War proved challenging but eventually helped forge stronger bonds with South Korea. Plans to transform the way the Army organized, trained, and waged war continued. During FY 2001, the Army selected a light swift armored vehicle for production and built a new organization around it to bridge the present Army and the Army of the future. Research and development continued to create Future Combat Systems, a collection of vehicles and sensors connected by an information network. Future Combat Systems would provide the mobility and striking power of the Objective Force envisioned by Army senior leaders. The Army also reorganized and restructured its aviation fleet to improve maintenance and field more versatile units. To change the way the Army thought about itself, Army leaders directed changes in doctrine and, controversially, altered the Army uniform to transform the identity of the force.