On the last day of April, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signed a memo that has the potential to unleash profound change in the Army. After decades of being organized, trained and equipped mainly for operations in Europe and the Middle East, the Army is sharpening its focus on deterring Chinese aggression in the Pacific, along with border security and missile defense.
The changes, which were recommended by the Army leadership, are sweeping. If carried out as envisioned, they will transform the kinds of weapons America uses, how they are bought and how fast they get into the hands of soldiers.
These changes reflect President Trump’s main national security priorities and have their roots in the outset of his previous term. At the time, the nation’s oldest military service was in powerful need of modernization. It needed to reflect a new national defense strategy after more than a decade and a half of preparing units for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I was the under secretary and later the secretary of the Army during Mr. Trump’s first term. Those kinds of missions shaped my own military experience. One month after the Sept. 11 attacks, I deployed with the 75th Ranger Regiment to Afghanistan for what at the time was considered to be operations to kill or capture leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It turned out to be the opening salvo of two decades of conflict.
During that period, Russia and China steadily expanded their territorial ambitions and modernized their militaries. The U.S. Army was largely equipped with the kinds of conventional weapons, such as tanks, combat vehicles and helicopters, first produced in the Reagan administration and upgraded multiple times over the next 40-plus years.
Recognizing the gap between our capabilities and the threats that had emerged, Army leaders during the first Trump administration conducted something we called “Night Court,” a reference to the 1980s NBC sitcom of that name. We reviewed hundreds of Army programs and delivered our verdicts — keep or cancel.
We ended up redirecting more than $30 billion of our budget. We canceled upgrades of Cold War matériel — Bradley fighting vehicles, Chinook cargo helicopters — to invest in equipment better suited for what the Pentagon calls “high-intensity conflict,” such as hypersonic missiles, electronic warfare systems that thwart enemy communications and targeting, land-based Tomahawk cruise missiles to sink enemy ships along the island chains of the Pacific.
To develop and acquire this new equipment more quickly, we established what we called the Army Futures Command headed by a four-star general in 2018 to serve as the Army’s hub of innovation and to identify investments in new technologies. Instead of being within a big Army base, which are typically in remote parts of the country, the new command is headquartered on the campus of the University of Texas, Austin, where military planners could work alongside start-up companies and top-tier software engineers.
Then the Biden administration arrived with different policies and budget priorities. The effort to change the focus of weapons investment was left to wither on the vine. Some systems were canceled outright. Promising initiatives to integrate cyberweapons, unmanned systems and other technologies happened piecemeal. The acquisitions bureaucracy dragged its feet on instituting the kind of practices that private companies use to act fast in buying software.
No longer. The recent plan will pour more resources into the kinds of weaponry more relevant to combat in the Asia-Pacific theater: air-and-missile defense, longer-range munitions and A.I.-enabled command and control networks to defend American forces.
Now, the Army Futures Command will merge its mission of tech innovation into a larger entity that also will provide training, creating an organization that will for the first time in any military service combine the two areas.
To get weapons acquisitions back on a fast track, the Army will standardize the use of those more rapid contracting techniques that resemble practices by businesses in the commercial sector, where most tech innovation takes place. These approaches are not subject to federal acquisition regulations and their many cumbersome requirements. Many of these flexible contracting tools were approved by Congress years ago but were used infrequently because of bureaucratic resistance.
For too long, the officials responsible for buying weapons were more focused on avoiding failure and keeping the purchase orders to defense contractors predictable. Army leaders now have a mandate to get soldiers what they need sooner rather than later. These officials now may have to take more calculated risks — speeding up promising projects in development into full-scale production, or partnering with commercial companies in novel ways.
After more than a half century of Pentagon centralization, America’s commanders now will have the power to make decisions and drive change. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, working with the branch’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, took the initiative by pushing these strategic reforms now, rather than being forced into compromise under the pressure of budget cuts.
The momentum must be sustained, which requires action outside the Pentagon. Congress should, for instance, give the military more flexibility by allowing funding all at once for a group of related weapons systems — such as autonomous drones and air defense — rather than simply specific weapons systems. This allows the military to have access to quickly evolving technologies, and to buy the best mix of equipment, regardless who sells it.
History is replete with examples of militaries that clung to a cherished identity and habit at the expense of preparedness for the fight to come, whether it was the French who succumbed to the English and their longbows at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 or the U.S. military’s Task Force Smith, which was crushed by the better-equipped and -prepared North Korean troops in 1950. The changes called for by Army leadership would ensure that soldiers have what they need to respond when the nation’s interests are threatened.
Ryan McCarthy was the 24th secretary of the Army, from 2019 to 2021.
Source images by Abhishek Singh and picture alliance/Getty Images
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post New Threats Require a New Army appeared first on New York Times.
