Army Secretary teases significant shakeup, ‘streamlining’ of Army acquisition offices

AUSA 2025 — Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll today teased a in the way the service buys its weapons and platforms, saying that he wants to adopt more of a private sector-like model that “speeds up the cycle of innovation for us.”

Speaking with reporters at the AUSA conference here in Washington, DC, Driscoll said he wouldn’t get ahead of what he called a “big announcement” expected out of the Pentagon on acquisition reform in coming weeks, but he did signal the Army’s acquisition structure is about to change significantly.

Driscoll said that there will be a “consolidation and streamlining of how we buy things in the Army,” criticizing the current 12 PEOs as being too “siloed.”

“Those groups have been and that leadership has been so poor for so long that we are going to try to mimic what works really well in the private sector,” he said. “So if you were looking at what made SpaceX or Tesla work really well, my impression is that it was combining manufacturers and engineers, putting them all on the floor together. Forcing them to work together, and that speeds up the cycle of innovation for us.”

For the Army, what this looks like is “putting people who create our requirements in with our soldiers, in with our lawyers, in with our training, T2COM [Transformation and Training Command], and having all of them work together,” Driscoll said. The groups will “probably” report directly to the Chief of Staff and Driscoll himself, he explained, adding that they will be “held accountable to very tight deadlines” through a model that puts getting out a minimum viable product quickly at the top of their priorities. 

The plan will also see a tactical shift that “basically means: buy small numbers of things, get it in the hands of soldiers, iterate with the company when we think it works pretty well, field it in a division or two, and then when we think it is ready, scale it across the entire Army,” Driscoll said. 

The upcoming acquisition shakeup is just one flash in the pan of the larger continuous transformation the Army is facilitating, including through the Army Transformation Initiative (ATI). That initiative has involved a rethinking of major programs, appearing to paint a dim future for vehicles like Humvees and Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, Breaking Defense previously reported. In terms of aviation, Army has halted buys of General Atomics’ Gray Eagle drone, is shelving AH-64D Apaches, stopping a Future Tactical Uncrewed Aircraft System competition, possibly ending General Electric’s development of the Improved Turbine Engine Program and potentially reducing the quantity of High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation Systems.

Driscoll, however, said only one program had been out-and-out canceled under ATI: the M10 Booker. For some other programs, Driscoll said, the service just decided to “not buy more.”

“We were changing our demand signal,” he said. “And so what we’ve tried to do in nearly every instance, when we tell a company, ‘Hey, we’re changing our demand signal on you,’ is then meet with them to try to clearly tell them what we think we need in the future, because we want them to be successful. We want them to build the things that we need, and we need that expertise.” 

“Our defense industrial base has been gutted for so long that what we’re trying to do is be very thoughtful partners on a go-forward basis to help empower them to be succeed and continue to grow and hire and do all of the things that we need our organic industrial base to do,” he added.