The Army’s Upcoming Transformation, with Secretary Driscoll and Gen. George
Ryan popped across the Potomac to the Pentagon to speak with Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George about the ambitious Army Transformation Initiative. Following a directive from the secretary of defense, the initiative aims to streamline the Army’s force structure, cut wasteful spending, and rapidly modernize its capabilities.
Image: U.S. Army Photo by 1st Lt. Ellington Ward
TRANSCRIPT
Ryan Evans (00:00):
You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I’m the founder of War on the Rocks. In this episode, I spoke with Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll and Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. Randy George, about the new sweeping transformation of the U.S. Army, ordered by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Enjoy the show. So why do we need the Army Transformation Initiative? And what is it really at a high level?
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (00:36):
I think at the highest level, what’s occurred in the Pentagon for the last 30 years has been a very contorted decision-making process that has not optimized first for what’s best for soldiers, making them the most lethal, efficient fighting force that they can be. Instead, what it’s been is a parochial-driven enterprise that has served as a welfare system for a lot of different constituencies, namely certain congressional districts, certain states, and it’s been driven primarily, or in a lot of ways, by lobbyists, rather than soldiers themselves. And so, what ATI is is a complete reset of how we are going to start to make decisions going forward with what’s occurred across the world in the last couple of years. When you look at Ukraine and how the battle is being fought, it is no longer sufficient to have a long procurement process that takes two and a half years to get the first prototype, two more years to get it at scale, and then four years to get it in the hands of soldiers. Those eight years, contrasted with the two weeks right now that drones are being updated in Ukraine, have made it an imperative that either we do this now or we do it in the first six months of a conflict when American soldiers are losing their lives.
Gen. Randy George (01:45):
I just would add, Ryan, the modern battlefield is changing. I think we’ve seen that, and we have learned a lot over the last year and a half with our transformation in contact. So, this is bottom-up innovation that we know we need, and we know, you know, we’ve been watching what’s happening on the modern battlefield. The second thing is, is that the last thing that we should cut is any combat capability, things that we know we’re going to need. And so, we’re looking to cut things that are inefficient, things that we know from our combat training centers and everything that we’re seeing, that we know we’re not going to work on the modern battlefield, that we should cut that first, and we should focus on our formations. So, they’re very, I think our soldiers are very happy to see that we’re doing this.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (02:23):
And, Ryan, fundamentally, what SECDEF signed last week does four things. The first thing is it has us no longer invest and procure obsolete systems, is bucket one. The second thing is it tells us what to do with those dollars that we’re no longer spending on things we don’t need to modernize the force. The third bucket of things is the Army has been a bad customer for itself oftentimes. So, as an example, we’ve given away our right to repair our own equipment some of the time, which basically what that means for soldiers is we will have exquisite pieces of equipment sitting on the sidelines for 8 to 12 months when we know how to 3D print a part that can be $2 to $20. That is a sin, and we’ve done it to ourselves. And then the fourth bucket of things that is occurring is basically a rightsizing of headquarters relative to the number of soldiers wearing helmets and actually out in the formations. And so basically, within our own system, bloat has occurred. And Chief and I, with the support of the secretary of defense and the president, are rightsizing that.
Ryan Evans (03:19):
A lot to unpack there. General George, you mentioned transformation in contact. This is something you’ve been talking something you’ve been talking about for a while. And let me know if I’m off base here. But you can characterize it as both an ethos and specific experimentation that’s been going on in certain formations. You think that’s a fair characterization?
Gen. Randy George (03:32):
I think that’s a fair characterization. We’re also, you know, we’re modeling all of this, so we’re doing a little bit of both.
Ryan Evans (03:37):
And one of the results of the experimentation piece of this is this conversion of infantry brigades into highly mobile formations that emphasize speed and maneuverability. Is that fair?
Gen. Randy George (03:47):
That’s fair. Plus, I would say, low signature on the battlefield and much more lethal. We just had a mobile brigade combat team over in Europe that was, during their training rotation, that was 300% more lethal than previous units that have been through there, by what we’ve done to infuse technology into them.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (04:06):
One of the best places to look is if you look at the difference between the Humvee and the infantry squad vehicle; the Humvee is up-armored. It is large; it is slow. It is intended to be on roads and take as much contact as it can to move soldiers from A to B. The infantry squad vehicle was built on a Chevy Colorado. It was already existing. It’s an open frame that can go quickly. It can get off-road. It can spread out. And when you look at the two, they could not be any more different in their use cases. And when you talk to soldiers, and what General George was just saying, when you look at the outcomes of going leaner and lighter it is leading to incredible results.
Ryan Evans (04:43):
One of the criticisms that’s already surfaced, though, is that you’re sacrificing heavier firepower and protection. So retired Major General Pat Donahoe has said that this concept of the mobile brigade combat team has no protected firepower, no recon, and then just a few light vehicles. He said on Twitter that this isn’t transformation, this is disarmament. Do you think that? I mean, obviously, you disagree, but I’d like to give you a chance to respond to that.
Gen. Randy George (05:02):
I would disagree with him, and I would have him go out and talk to our formations and what they’re doing. I mean, we are infusing them with drones, with loitering munitions, with autonomous systems, robots. We are working on active protection, like the Secretary said, what you’re basically doing with infantry brigade combat team, which is different than where Donahoe’s experience with armor brigade combat teams, which we are also infusing them with technology. But we’re actually up-gunning our infantry brigade combat teams into mobile brigade combat teams. You know, we are going to have armor on the modern battlefield. I think we’re seeing that as well. One of the things we’re very focused on is having a fully digitized and modern Abrams tank that’s out there that is diesel hybrid electric, that has active protection, that is modular, can be updated, you know, is basically enhanced with software. So, I think we’re doing that, and I would love to get him down to 3rd Infantry Division. That’s just where he was at. I know that’s one of his, you know, old homes, and let him see exactly what we’re doing. So, I’d like to have him talk to the troops.
Ryan Evans (06:08):
So, you’re saying that we’re going to rely more on heavy armor formations for that protection?
Gen. Randy George (06:13):
No, I think we’re going to need them. I think the point is we’re going to need them. And this is about transforming and adapting our formations, which is exactly, what we want to do. So, it’s the same thing. You know, there’s going to be a lot of similarities between both formations. We want those formations to be lower signature as well. So, what we’re doing with Next Generation Command and Control to make our command and control nodes, they’re 85 percent smaller, much lower signature, that we need to do that. So, there’s a lot of similarities between both formations, but to say that we’re disarming our mobile brigade combat teams is wrong because we’re actually up-gunning their capabilities.
Ryan Evans (06:49):
A lot of soldiers listen to this show. I’d love both of you to message to them on how this is going to affect their lives and their service over the next few years.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (06:57):
So, I think General George and I think of the Army in kind of two discrete buckets. One is the Army as a business, a large enterprise business. The other is the Army as a warfighting machine. So, I’ll bifurcate my reply to the Army as a business portion. If you think about what that business does, it moves people, small things, medium things, and large things around the world, and then it needs to care for the families and the dependents of those people. And so, we have over 150 different business systems running that, and it is outdated, and it is offensive to any sort of modern build of what an enterprise should be doing. And so, what we are trying to do on the Army’s business side is consolidate down, bring things to the kind of existing, best platform that is in the world for comparable businesses. And what that specifically means is, if you look at how we’re doing recruiting, we’re incredibly proud of the team running Army recruiting; they have shifted their model where they’re now on Salesforce. And one of the things they said last week as they were talking about the shift is the way the Army used to work; the Army would have its requirements, it would have its system for how it existed and process data, and then it would force companies to build against that. Instead, what the Army has now done is it has taken our system and looked at what Salesforce had available as one of the top CRMs in the world, and it changed our order of things to match what was already available. And what that means is we are coming onto a platform that many major businesses are using, so we don’t have to own those updates into the future. And these are the kind of things that, as a soldier, what they should start to see is in their personal life; when things are efficient, and you buy a new MacBook, and it automatically updates with your iPhone contacts, this is what we want to happen in their daily work. Onto the other side of the equation, the Army is a warfighting machine. What they should start to see is we need our people to be able to talk to each other over the horizon. It needs to be synced with our things, and it needs to be synced with our sensors so that command and control can occur at real-time. And so, what that practically means for the soldiers is they should start to be able to text each other. A lot of the tools that they are seeing in their home life should also apply to the Army as a warfighting function.
Gen. Randy George (08:59):
Yeah, I just would add that soldiers know the problems they’re trying to solve. They know what they need in these environments, and I think that’s part of the bottom-up innovation. I think we’re seeing this, what we’re gonna, I say, much more broadly beyond what we’re doing, just with transforming in contact, is our goal here, the Secretary and mine is to take this, you know, widespread, to every one of our formations, so that they see bottom-up innovation, and then these kind of changes could happen. We’ve done a couple other things that I know our soldiers are seeing. We’re getting rid of excess. Nobody wants these vehicles that they don’t need. Then they have to take care of them. Then, they have to maintain them. We’re going to get them out of their formations. We’re doing that. We’re reducing all the things that are out there. We published a new 350-1 to make sure that they’re not focused on, honestly, shit that they don’t need to be doing, and so reducing, you know, some of that burden, I think they’ll see that. And then, you know, what wasn’t talked about in ATI, that other thing we’re focused on is, how do we push authorities and programs down? And this is getting, you know, talking to some of the stuff [the] Secretary was talking about with efficiencies, taking care of soldiers and families, so it’s lethality and it’s cohesive teams. What are we doing to make sure we talk a lot up here about soldier experience? We’re trying to work to get commercial industry into our dining facilities because that’s a better way to do it. I think we can build things on the MILCON (military construction) side much quicker and easier. We overspend right now on military construction, and we’ve spent a lot of time talking to folks about that here. So, there’s a lot of areas. So, it’s lethality and cohesive teams, and I think we owe both of those.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (10:32):
Chief and I were in Abu Dhabi a couple weeks ago. An audience question was, we’ve heard this for so many decades that the Army’s finally going to change; why should we actually believe that the two of you are going to do it? And our answer was, Chief has had an incredible 30, 35-year career in the Army where he’s been able to do amazing things, and he’s ready to risk it. And I’m 39 years old, and I’m at the front end of a career where I just don’t particularly care if I get fired. And so, what I would want soldiers to know is, there’s moments when you’re standing in formation, which Chief and I have done, and something seems so preposterous, and you just can’t understand where that decision-making is coming from, and how it’s making your life so stupid. We are actively going to fight that and actively going to take the fight to the people that are making that happen.
Ryan Evans (11:14):
You aim to cut programs that don’t translate into lethality for the Army. Can you tell me more about what’s being canceled, or what will be canceled, and what the metrics you’re using to evaluate whether a program is meeting lethality standards?
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (11:26):
I can go first, and I’ll just use the [M10] Booker as an example. The Booker procurement process predated my time joining back into the Army, but my understanding was we wanted to build a light tank that could maneuver quickly. You could get it into places much more easily than the tanks that we had. You had this long, drawn out, decades-long process that ended up creating this beast that both didn’t accomplish what our current tanks had nor did it actually land in a spot where it was light and maneuverable. And so what would have happened, I believe, is under the old system, we would have hidden that error. We would have bought some of them. We would have put them in the hands of soldiers. We would have needed parts. We would have needed experts. And it would have been decades in our formation before we came to the obvious conclusion that it was just poorly handled; it was a bad outcome. And we would have fallen for the sunk cost fallacy in the past, which we are not going to do. So, one of the first things Chief and I did is we met with Secretary of Defense Hegseth and Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg, and we said, look, the Booker was just a bad outcome. We shouldn’t have done it as an Army. We’re just not going to continue to make these bad decisions. What do you want us to do with that? And to their complete credit, they said, just own it. Just go public when you don’t get things right, come tell us. We’ll have your back, and don’t buy this just because you’ve sunk all of these fixed costs into them.
Gen. Randy George (12:39):
I mean, I’ll mention a couple of others. Humvees we have more than 100,000 of them. We don’t need them. It’s an old vehicle. We’ve been producing them for, you know, close to 50 years, if not more than 50 years. Secretary mentioned this before: they want the ISVs, the infantry squad vehicles, inside their formation. And so that’s where we’re going to focus our money and our efforts. Joint light tactical vehicle is another one. We have close to 20,000 of those. We have what we need. We’re not going to spend more on that. AH-64D is another one that we are going to cut out of our formation. They’re twice as expensive to maintain, so we don’t have a good operational readiness rate. This is going to allow us to thicken the lines that we have right now with our maintenance test pilots, our instructor pilots, our maintainers, and I know it’s going to increase our operational readiness rate, and we’re not going to spend the money on it. And then we can spend the money on the things that we know we need, which is drones, loitering munitions, long-range fires, integrated air and missile defense, and all of our formations want counter-UAS capability. And that’s what it’s really about: is stop spending money on things we don’t need so that we can spend the money on the things that we know we do need.
Ryan Evans (13:48):
I’d love to learn more on how recent conflicts inform this assessment that we need these kinds of units that are armed more with drones, and how that learning took place, and also what the Defense Planning Guidance this is heading towards; I know these documents from the Secretary’s memo on downward, talk a lot about the Indo-Pacific. How will these units that you are forming now, that you’re transforming the Army into, be better prepared for Indo-Pacific scenarios? And as a sort of tag on to that, how much of this, if any of it, was informed by what the Marine Corps has done with force design?
Gen. Randy George (14:20):
We certainly learn lessons from everybody. You know, to your last point, we are very integrated in what we’re doing across the joint force, and I applaud what the Marines did to change. I mean, they’re, they’re much smaller than us. I mean, we need to, we always talk about we need to be a global army. So, we need to be prepared whenever our nation calls us. We are very focused on the Pacific. 25th Infantry Division had a transforming in contact brigade, one of the first ones that kind of went through that. What we learned, and we wanted to learn, was by operating in different environments, you learn different things — what drones work, humidity plays a role out in the Pacific, distance is different. Now, we’re doing this at the division level. We are making some adjustments right now to what 25th Infantry Division is doing with their division artillery and having long-range multi-domain strike battalions that are out there. We have two multi-domain task forces that are out there operating in the Pacific. So, we know, we have no doubt that the Army is going to be critically important out in the Pacific and to the joint force, and I think everybody realizes that we just want to speed up our transformation to make sure that we are even better when it comes to deterrence.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (15:28):
A couple of weeks ago, I was out in Germany meeting with our Security Assistance Group—Ukraine, which is one of the ways that we ingest the lessons learned from Ukraine and a lot of the basic tenets of how warfare has been fought, at least from when I was in 15 years ago, was things like, the Army owns the night. We would do a lot of our missions at night because we had better night vision goggles and relative to our peers, and that was a significant advantage. What you learn from what’s occurring in Ukraine is you cannot move without being seen. The amount of sensors on the battlefield, the amount of ability from both sides to see what’s going on, and the equivalent of the new trench warfare, where the tanks, you cannot push them as far forward in the formation as used to be able to, because very cheap drones are able to take them out of any usefulness. What that has taught us, and what we are learning from that, and what we are testing in at the Joint Readiness Training Center and all of the places where we’re doing these exercises, is we have got to be a lot leaner. We have got to work on hiding ourselves from the air. And so, I was just down at Fort Jackson last week, and one of the things they’re doing at basic training now is they’re putting drones up; these are for soldiers that have been in for seven weeks, and they’re showing them, “This is what you look like from the air. You have either done a good job providing top cover and camouflage, or you have not.” And at the end of each of their exercises, they go review the drone footage, which was just incredible to see.
Ryan Evans (16:43):
On this, you know, there’s this push in these documents for increased use of autonomy and drones, which I fully support. We’ve also seen Ukraine how important artillery still is. So, along these lines, is the Army walking away from the robotic combat vehicle, and if so, why? And also, why pause the Howitzer competition?
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (16:58):
The concept of the robotic combat vehicle is incredibly important. The problem is cost. And so, what we’ve seen, and this has been seen all over the world, is we keep creating and purchasing these exquisite machines that very cheap drones can take out. And if the number is even remotely right, that Russia has manufactured 1 million drones in the last 12 months, that just makes us have to rethink the cost of what we’re buying. We are the wealthiest nation, perhaps in the history of the world, but even we can’t sustain a couple million dollar piece of equipment that can be taken out with an $800 drone and munition. And so, I think the concept of what we got from the RCV was incredibly valuable, but the actual cost ratio just didn’t work.
Gen. Randy George (17:36):
Yeah. I mean, we’re not walking away from autonomous systems. What we want is, you know, this is cost curve for us. We want a lot of entrants into that market. One of the things that I always often hear that I don’t like is program or record. And you’re talking autonomous systems. We should not, you know, program or record is not something we should use. It’s going to constantly update. You know, we always talk about, to really learn a lesson, you have to change how you train and operate. The Secretary was talking about that. You also have to change how you buy things. And we’re going to buy things a little bit different. And we’re changing how we are organized. Long-range fires, we are, and I think that was in there, we are, you know, of course, we’re investing in that. And again, what we want to do is there are also other entrants into that. I mean, we want, you know, to increase our magazine depth, but we also want to do it at a cost that we know because there’s other people out there that can build missiles for a tenth of the cost. It’s like anything out there: if modern technology can give you something that is a tenth of the cost, a twentieth of the cost, we shouldn’t be locked into buying something that is terribly expensive.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (18:41):
I think now it’s an amazing time to be a small and medium-sized business, whether venture capital-backed or not. We are going to expand the defense industrial base and who we purchase from because one of the strengths of having a wide diversity in your base is that different things will work for different use cases. And right now, we are way too siloed, and it takes way too long. And so, what General George and I are committed to is purchasing as quickly as humanly possible from any American business that can offer something that the Army needs.
Ryan Evans (19:10):
I hope you’re right that we’re able to diversify who the Department buys for, and I agree with you on autonomy and things getting cheaper. The problem is, and I don’t expect either of you to have an answer for this because I just don’t think we have an answer for it yet, but it costs us something like 10 times to produce small drones in this country than in China. So there needs to be some kind of solution to this, and probably multiple solutions, and I don’t know what that is.
Gen. Randy George (19:31):
One of the things that we’ve argued for, we’ve been talking about this for quite a while, is we should be buying capabilities. So, we’ve talked a lot about with drones or autonomous systems, countering autonomous systems and EW, we should have portfolio, and we should basically go out there, and we’ve done this a little bit with our transforming in contact, the drones that we bought for the first rotation were different than the ones we bought for the third and certainly the one we’re doing next month. So, I think, you know part of this is, is making sure that we don’t lock ourselves into, you know, I always talk about 1960 we had 11 funding lines, wow we have 1800. We just need to not lock ourselves into these long-term buys.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (20:10):
And Ryan, I’m incredibly optimistic. American innovation is incredible. General George and I, one of the first things we did two weeks into being in the building is, went to the West Coast. We did a stop at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and went to Seattle for Microsoft, went to Silicon Valley, and met with OpenAI, and Meta, and Google. We went down to LA and did Palantir and Anduril, and some cool 3D printing companies and some autonomous—
Ryan Evans (20:30):
I’m not worried about those companies. I’m worried about the companies that are maybe hitting their Series A or Series B right now, competing with the companies that you just named.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (20:37):
And I would say that if a company is able to get a prototype out that is effective and reasonable in the cost-to-kill ratio for us, we have a lot of tools in our hands to try to get them into the game and that valley of death that everybody talks about, I think a lot of that is related to these program of records that General George is talking about. And in as much as we can do it, we are trying to avoid that, which should help these series A and Series B companies—
Gen. Randy George (20:59):
We have bought drones from small companies and put them in our TIC units. Teal was one that we saw, you know, that was out when we were out in Europe. So, we are doing that. We agree with you. We need to get these small, innovative companies involved in what we’re doing, and that’s what we’re trying to pour some fuel on to make sure we can do that.
Ryan Evans (21:17):
Mr. Secretary, looping back to budgetary issues, there are cuts happening now, not the ones that are called for in this new policy, but to bloated programs that aren’t delivering, to consulting and services contracts. And I support all this, but what’s not clear to me yet is what’s going to happen to the funds that were obligated for these programs. Are they being rolled back into the commands that had those funds? Are they going to be rescinded with Congress? How is the Department going to work with Congress to manage the funds for this current fiscal year for these programs that have already been canceled?
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (21:45):
So, a lot of this, Ryan, will be working hand-in-hand with Congress on how to do it. We’ve received an incredible outpouring from them, inpouring to us, of support from members on both sides. I mean, I think if you look at what the HASC minority, Adam Smith said, or Senator Elizabeth Warren, I mean, that’s from the left. On the right, we’ve had probably 5x the number of positive comments on this. I think there is bipartisan support to do the right thing here in a way that, under President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s leadership, hasn’t existed for a long time. And so, in kind of a vague answer to you, I think we don’t know quite yet for each system and each platform, what is going to happen. But what we are doing is we are reaching out to those companies who make them, we are working with Congress, we are talking to soldiers, and we are trying to figure out the way forward with as many parties as we can possibly bring to the table involved. Because this does seem to be this very unique moment where the demand exists, and the air cover exists to actually do the right thing.
Ryan Evans (22:41):
It’s been held for a long time; a lot of people have said this, I’ve said this, lots of people have said this, that one of the problems in acquisition is the incentive structure, which holds back agility and innovation. There’s just too many reasons to say no and not enough reasons to say yes. How will you change incentives in the Acquisition Corps to get civil servants and officers moving faster to take more risk? And isn’t this a part of transformation in contact, too? So, for example, you might run into someone saying, well, it’s not worth us doing this pilot that might be, let’s say, half a million dollars, or a million dollars, pretty small money, when you’re talking about the Defense Department until the Army changed its entire strategy on X or its entire policy on Y. Is that the right attitude moving forward for the Army?
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (23:19):
I’ll take a first swing and then hand to General George. I think there’s a couple things you referenced, Ryan, that are right. We have 35,000 human beings helping us do our procurement. We don’t know what the right number is, but 35,000 is just way too many people. You cannot have efficient decision-making with just that sheer number of human beings being involved. We are actively working on figuring out what the right number is what the right roles are, and then we’re going to have to make some hard decisions there. General George likes to say, like, what came out last week is just step one. We are going to continue to iterate and continue to cut and continue to recycle and move people to their highest and best use case. The other thing is, for incentive structures, I think you could have made it your entire career so far, maybe 30 years, without doing anything that necessarily takes on risk in a good way for soldiers. General George and I, by doing things like this podcast where hopefully people are listening, want to model out what we think the right behavior is. We are certainly going to get things wrong. We are certainly going to cut stuff we regret. What we have told every congressman and senator we have spoken to is we can show them our math. We want them to check our math. When we’re wrong, we want that feedback, and we’ll try to adjust quickly. But what everyone should know is, or at least what we are aspiring to do, is do the right thing for soldiers, regardless of the political consequences and regardless of the social cost, because it’s the right thing for our safety.
Gen. Randy George (24:35):
Just on the risk. I mean, I agree with you, Ryan, that we built a system that is completely risk-averse. And I’m not sure that we’re necessarily saving money by doing that, you know, with some of the stuff that we’re buying long term. So, I mean, I think we have to take the right risk in the right places. That’s what we’re trying to do with transforming in contact; it’s down with our troops. And again, if you have the user and the developer that are there together, I think that’s, you know, what’s different. We are not in a world anymore where we can wait for seven years for something to come to production. I mean, things are moving, changing that fast. Nobody would be happy with that in any other walk of life that’s out there. One of the things that we’ve talked about is how do we basically look at how we’re buying things? I think you can probably get them into three different categories, which one is adopt. There’s a lot of things that are dual-use; commercial network is something, drones, where it’s happening out in the commercial sector, we’re looking at drones that can, you know, lift 20-foot containers. We could use those kind of drones for logistics and those kinds of things. We don’t need to develop those. And there’s a lot of people spending a lot of research and development on that. We should take advantage of that. There’s other areas where we could be modifying equipment that’s out there. The infantry squad vehicle was the example that the Secretary brought forward earlier, where all we did was, it was based on the Chevy Colorado. We’ve adapted a bit so that it works for us, and it’s a win for both. And then there’s obviously areas that we’re just going to have to develop a little bit more, but we can also work with industry. So, we’re right now in a lot of discussions about how we kind of streamline that as we’re moving forward.
Ryan Evans (26:08):
I’d like to dig into what I think, to me, anyway, was the biggest institutional muscle move laid out in this, and that is effectively folding Training and Doctrine Command into Army Futures Command. At least, that’s how I read the document. And I’m going to give a little exposition for our listeners, and you tell me if I because some of this is inside baseball, and not even a lot of defense insiders understand this and correct me if I have any of this is wrong. But, the whole concept forming Army Futures Command originally was based on the idea that requirements, acquisitions, and research would be unified under one command. And the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisitions, logistics, and technology, civilian leadership didn’t support this approach, and then Secretary Wormuth, under the last secretary of the Army and the Biden administration, came in and terminated that idea by removing the acquisition, logistics, and technology from the Army Futures Command structure. And that sort of limited what Army Futures Command could fully be. And at this point, it couldn’t realize its full vision. And if you think that’s right, I can see why pushing these two institutions together is — it fixes the breakage of the capability development because Training and Doctrine Command and Army Futures Command never agreed on who owned this, but why is it Training and Doctrine Command being folded into Army Futures Command and not the other way around, is my first question on this.
Gen. Randy George (27:18):
I think what we’re trying to do, I mean, we’re looking forward. I think the initial concept, and you kind of talked about a little bit, was, you know, having this all in one roof and driving change, and that’s what we want. There’s a lot of, there’s absolute goodness in both. So, what we do know is that we can reduce, I think, the overhead; what we have done by, you know, adding another command is that we ended up splitting a lot of this and building things. And again, one of our big focuses is making sure that we get the right people in this command. And then we also want everybody to be, as the Secretary mentioned, you know, we want helmets inside formations, and this is going to help us. So equally important beyond what’s happening at the four-star level, where everybody really focused on is what’s happening at the Center of Excellence that we have across all of our warfighting functions. And I think I was just talking earlier about, I think we need to look at this as a complete system of how we build requirements. That’s one thing that we need to change, and we’ve done that, as far as, you know, describing characterization and needs, rather than, you know, a 300-page here’s what we, you know, need to buy. So, I think it runs a gamut. We’ll be talking here soon about how we’re going to make adjustments on the actual acquisition side as well.
Ryan Evans (28:30):
So, the Training and Doctrine Command’s role is mainly in leader development and the basic function of turning a citizen into a soldier; broadly speaking, it’s a huge command does lots of things, but that’s its basic function. And Army Futures Command is really focused on the future and modernization. Do you think centralizing these in one organization risks compromising one or the other? And how are you planning to mitigate that from happening?
Gen. Randy George (28:53):
I actually think it’s going to make us better. And again, our most important asset inside the Army is people. And so, a lot of people love to really focus on transformation in terms of, you know, a new drone or a new system. And this is also about how we’re training our people to operate this. So, we’ve learned a lot again with what we’ve been doing the last year and a half. What skills do we need inside of the formation? Now you’re operating where we have to have people that have to understand airspace management at a very, you know, much lower tactical level, spectrum management because of what’s happening on with EW. So, I think this has to be hand-in-hand as we work through this. One example is we’ve had industry that’s down right now using augmented reality to help us, you know, with how we’re training our maintainers. I think it has to be tied together. This can’t be separate. You know, hey, somebody figuring out how you’re training your people, and somebody else figuring out what you need to buy, that has to be all integrated and together. And I think this will help us do that.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (29:53):
And Ryan, what’s pretty incredible is, when you think of TRADOC, at least for me, one of the — to your point — primary things that comes to mind is you take citizens or civilians, and you make them soldiers through basic training. And watching these soldiers who had been in the Army for six weeks, using drones, using all of these technologies, and making them better, so it was incredible to talk to these drill sergeants who now, what happens is, when I joined the drill sergeant basically wore their hat the entire time, they yelled at you, put you through the lanes, and like that was the entire process of basic training. Now what these drill sergeants are doing is they’re going into these lanes with soldiers. They’re leading them from the front. They’re modeling for them what best behavior is by actually being the platoon sergeant and the platoon leader. And what’s happening is you’re actually being able to suck out lessons because Training and Doctrine Command and basic training are putting so many humans through that they are getting lessons on how to make drones better, that are feeding up into the formation and over to procurement at this kind of startling rate because of the sheer volume of people that go through.
Ryan Evans (30:51):
I do think that’s a really good point that sort of both you made, that mutually reinforcing point. And there have been some amazing successes at Army Futures Command over there under General Rainey, who we’ll hopefully be having on the show pretty soon. General George, strengthening Army professionalism has been one of your signature priorities. I think it’s fair to say perhaps the most prominent achievement under this banner has been the revitalization of the branch journals, the Harding Project, and your personal encouragement of the value of professional writing, which I’m biased because I run a publication, but I think it’s tremendously important, because a lot of the best ideas bubble up from the ranks, and it’s an advantage we have over autocrats who not only don’t allow that, but their systems really can’t allow them to allow that, or else their system might crumble. But there’s something else that I think fits in the professionalism stream. The TRADOC put out this amazing Army Learning Concept that I think remains pretty under-resourced or not executed upon yet, and you touched on a bit of it with what you said about this virtual training aspect. But I think it’s more about more than just virtual training. I think it also encompasses things like what the concept calls intellectual overmatch. So, just to quote from it, “the Army as a learning organization, commits to a culture of continuous responsibility for the development of individuals, teams, and the organization overall, to achieve intellectual overmatch of any adversaries and to create situations allowing individuals and teams to master fundamental knowledge, skills, and attitudes, in conjunction with assessing their behavioral development and task mastery.” Is this still something that the Army stands for? How is the Army going to advance this, especially as the Army becomes a more technical force and our adversaries are becoming more sophisticated complex themselves? Secretary Hegseth, in this memo that reorganized the Army, calls for prioritizing merit and the skills needed for today’s battlefield across the uniform and civilian workforce. This sounds like it fits very closely with your priorities under professionalism.
Gen. Randy George (32:32):
Sure, there’s a lot of things we talk about when we’re talking about strengthening the profession. You know, we also start with discipline and standards and accountability, and that’s, you know, critically important. I’m really proud of what our formation has been doing, first on the Harding Project, to get everybody writing. And you know, our view was that you know, we got the people that are down there, I recognize articles every month…
Ryan Evans (32:56):
Including some War on the Rocks ones, so thank you.
Gen. Randy George (32:58):
People that understand our profession, and we want them to have a voice in what we’re doing. And that’s what transforming in contact, and a lot of these people are writing on it, we bring them up here, we actually want them talking to folks in Congress to tell them what’s happening. What I’m most proud of, though, is just what they’re doing to share between units. And I think that that’s what we really want. We have units that are, “Hey, listen; this is what I screwed up at JRTC; you’re the next unit that’s going through,” and they’re trying to share those things. I mean, that’s what being a professional is; being a professional is helping out your teammate. And I think we’re seeing that. We are trying to transform how we’re teaching and training our people. There’s a lot of technology right now that can cut down on the brick and mortar and moving people around and train people at their home station. That’s happening as well. We’ve been partnering with Arizona State University, that I think has done a really good job with that. I think, again, this is continuous transformation, and our people are the most important aspect of that.
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (33:53):
And, Ryan, I guess there are two parts, at least from my perspective of now, I’m maybe 70 days in when General George and I have looked at, I think, a lot of the current state of our equipment and tools. There are some places we need to improve and improve quickly, and that’s what Army Transformation Initiative is all about. The upside now of being 10 weeks in, and I said this just last week, a lot of turnover happens in the summer, and so a lot of the front office of the secretary of the Army is about to leave, and I was referencing to them that having spent the last kind of 14 years out of the Army, at an Ivy League law school, working in investment banking, working in private equity and venture capital-backed businesses, I’ve been fortunate to be around a lot of talented people, and very sincerely, I have never met a group of people more articulate, more intelligent, more adaptable and just more intellectually agile than I have the American soldier. Nearly every single one that I’ve interacted with in the last 10 weeks has been one of the best people, if not the best person, I have worked with in the last 15 years, and so I am incredibly optimistic about the American soldier’s ability to get this transformation done in the next 12 to 18 months.
Ryan Evans (34:54):
Mr. Secretary, one last question for you: as you prepared to reenter public service and reacquaint yourself with the Army, of course, you’re a veteran, but come back into the institution, what’s maybe the most important book that you read throughout this process?
Sec. Daniel P. Driscoll (35:05):
I actually think it would be a non-Army book. So, I picked back up and I read a book called Scrum. And Scrum is all about kind of Agile software development. And it started, I think, in the late 1990s, early 2000s, but it’s basically a different way to think about having human beings accomplish tasks instead of doing the classic Gantt chart, where you lay out where you’re going to do in the future by these stages, and it’s measured by months or quarters or years, and then you start down the process, and immediately life happens and you can’t accomplish something, you instead do these things, these two-to-four week sprints where basically you set some goals, you have the whole team oriented around them, and you measure success as you’re going and you’re constantly reevaluating. And so, I think coming into something as large as the Army, 1.2 million people, almost $200 billion budget, having that framework for trying to accomplish things and accomplish things quickly, was very helpful to come in and see what General George and the soldier leadership team had put together. I think it allowed us to get going quickly.
Ryan Evans (36:01):
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