As the Army pushes ahead on its ambitious transformation, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George is certain of one thing—soldiers’ ingenuity.
“One thing I’m not concerned about is our soldiers being able to integrate this kind of tech into their formations, because they’re very technically savvy. They understand it,” he said.
They also understand the message George has been emphasizing since he was sworn in as the Army’s top general on Sept. 21, 2023. The Army faces an increasingly volatile global environment, with rapidly evolving technology and deepening threats, and it must move quickly to adapt, adjust and transform.
“We knew we needed to transform,” George said, “and I’m seeing that everywhere I go, a real culture of transformation, people understanding that the world is very volatile, that technology is rapidly advancing, and we need to do the things that are necessary to make sure that we are advancing, not with it, but ahead of it, and staying ahead of it.”

Focus on Improvement
The efforts line up with George’s four focus areas—warfighting, delivering ready combat formations, continuous transformation and strengthening the profession.
As he travels across the force and talks to soldiers, he sees units focused on building lethality and cohesive teams, George said. He’s seeing tough, realistic training at home station and at the Army’s combat training centers.
There are moves to modernize the organic industrial base, the 23 arsenals, depots and ammunition plants that provide critical support to the Army, and there are efforts to give installation commanders more leeway to tailor programs and services to support the unique needs of soldiers and families.
Work also is underway to improve barracks, and there’s a growing movement to encourage professional writing across the force and a renewed emphasis on standards and discipline.
A key effort that has gained traction in the past year is George’s “transforming in contact” initiative, which puts emerging and new technology in soldiers’ hands so they can experiment, learn and provide feedback that senior Army leaders can use to shape the future force.

Three brigade combat teams—the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault); the 10th Mountain Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team; and the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division—are part of the initiative. The units were given new capabilities, including the Next-Generation Squad Weapon, Infantry Squad Vehicle and next-generation command and control equipment, to use in the dirt and learn how to use in a fight.
In August, George visited the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, during its rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana. “We’re focused on warfighting,” George said. “We understand we need to make adjustments inside our formations to bring on this new tech, and I wanted to do this from the bottom up because in combat, typically, the best ideas come from the bottom up.”
While 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, soldiers trained in the box in Louisiana, soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, were deployed to Europe, while those in the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, were hard at work in the Indo-Pacific.
Experimentation also was taking place within the Army National Guard’s 34th Infantry Division, which was deployed to the Middle East and testing new counterdrone capabilities.

’A Global Army’
“We put these materials in the hands of our soldiers, we let them tell us what works, what doesn’t, how to improve it, how we integrate it into our formations,” George said.
The three brigade combat teams involved in transforming in contact were selected because they are in different locations with different missions around the world. “We’re a global Army,” George said. “We’re going to operate around the world, and we have to understand how those different environments are going to impact how we’re operating, so we’re learning lessons in each of those.”

Shared Understanding
As the brigades train and learn, they share lessons with each other, George said. As the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, completed its Joint Readiness Training Center rotation, brigade and division leaders already were sharing lessons learned with leaders from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, slated for a rotation at the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center in Hawaii in October, he said.
“They’re going to get better with every turn that we do with this,” George said.
This work is critical as the Army looks to learn from the hard-fought lessons of the war in Ukraine and conflicts elsewhere. “We’re watching very closely what’s going on around the world, [and] we talk a lot about making sure that if we’re really going to change, that we actually change how we train and how we operate,” George said.
Soldiers and leaders across the Total Army already are understanding these lessons. “People understand that the [unmanned aircraft systems] are going to be flying, we’re going to have to deal in an environment where you have loitering munitions, that you’re going to have to deal with the electromagnetic spectrum,” he said. “All of those things … are going to challenge us on the modern battlefield.”
Transforming in contact—and the Army’s overall transformation—goes beyond new equipment or technology, George said. “We also know that we’re likely going to have to change how we’re organized, and that’s what we’ve done with these transformation in contact brigades. We’ve given units latitude to tell us what works best,” he said.
As an example, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, stood up a multifunctional reconnaissance company and “infused” it with some of the new technology, “and it worked really well for them,” George said. Leaders in the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, are looking at that blueprint, and “we’ll see what this means for permanent organization changes that we might need to make down the road,” he said.
The Army also must look to change how it buys new capabilities, what it’s buying and in what quantities, George said. A good example is unmanned aircraft systems, he said. “Especially for systems like UAS and counter-UAS, the days where we have these programs of record where we buy something and then we’re going to try to field them for 20 years, we just know that we’re not going to do that,” George said. The systems will advance much more rapidly than the Army can field them.
“So, we’re going to buy in smaller batches, we’re going to make sure it’s modular, open-system architecture,” he said.
As the three transforming in contact brigades continue their work, soldiers in other units across the Army, including the Army National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve, are ready for their turn, George said. “What I generally hear is from everybody who’s not in one of those brigades saying, ‘OK, we’re ready. Give us that stuff. We’re ready to make these changes,’ ” George said.

Important Questions
When talking to the units involved in transforming in contact, George said he always asks two questions: Are you more lethal? Are you more survivable?
“The answer to those questions, when you’re with [the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division], both of those were yes, so we have to continue to transform other formations to make sure that we’re doing the same thing,” he said.
The Army is working on a 2.0 version of transforming in contact, with plans to add more units in the coming year. It also is trying to get other units and the Guard and Reserve involved in transforming the Army in other ways. “We want them to have agency in how we’re moving forward,” George said. “We’re doing this together rather than top-down driven, … and it’s been really, really good.”
During a recent session with command teams at the brigade pre-command course, a brigade sergeant major stood up and said, “We would like to be a transforming in contact brigade, and we’re doing what we can on the margins, but what we’re really focused on in the meantime is being the best damn unit that we can possibly be,” George said.
“I think all units need to continue to do that,” George said, adding that while the Army is not ready to conduct transforming in contact at scale, it’s exploring ways to inspire innovation and ingenuity where possible. As examples, George said, the Army is trying to get small unmanned aircraft systems into as many brigades as possible, and it also is trying to use 3D printing in more locations across the force to produce parts and supplies cheaper and faster.
“We’ve made gains … as far as 3D printing and doing it locally and also having the ability to actually order 3D-printed parts and do that quicker, which is improving our overall readiness on parts, especially when it’s long lead-time parts,” George said.

Attracting Soldiers
Amid the Army’s busy transformation efforts, George maintains a steady watch on recruiting and retention.
He praised U.S. Army Recruiting Command for building the service’s recruiting numbers. “We have already hit our mission [of 55,000 new soldiers] for this year,” George said in late August, weeks ahead of the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year. “That’s come from a lot of great work.”
But recruiting is a long-term focus, and the Army is transforming how it selects and trains recruiters, expanding its advertising efforts and looking for off-the-shelf technology that can help recruiters better target their efforts. “We’re consistently improving how we’re analyzing what works and what doesn’t,” George said. “We’ve just got to make sure that we’re adapting as the demographics adapt, as our country adapts, to make sure that we’re getting the right folks, getting them into our formation, and getting them trained up and … part of our team.”
The Army’s retention numbers remain strong, but “that’s not something we’re going to take our eye off of,” George said. “It’s critically important, all these great folks that we already have in our formation. We talk about that quite frequently.”
Challenging Times
While the Army has made progress and is moving steadily toward its transformation and people goals, many challenges remain, George said. “Thankfully, we’ve got really good people that help us figure all this out,” he said.
“We’ve got a whole bunch of new technology, and now we have to figure out how we train that stuff,” he said. “As an example, how do you train UAS and [electronic warfare] at home station? That’s something that we’re working through.”
Army leaders also are talking about what skills they need inside the Army’s formations. “What do we need? What adjustments do we need to make, maybe, to our functional areas or to warrant officers to make sure that we have tech integrators and the right kind of tech?” he asked.
The Army also could do better at prioritizing, George said. “We’re going to continue to look at how we’re organized, what our formations are, to make sure that we’re updating to be able to respond to the threats that we have,” he said.
George said he believes the Army is moving in the right direction, and he’s proud of soldiers serving today. “What hasn’t changed is when [combatant commanders] get Army units, … they know they can do almost anything,” George said. “They’re going to get smart, motivated, disciplined troops that are out there and are going to accomplish the mission. I’m very pleased about that, proud of that.”