The U.S. Army must shed its reliance on decades-old technology and acquisitions strategies to become a fighting force as agile and lethal as potential adversaries, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said Oct. 13 during the opening ceremony of the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2025 Annual Meeting and Exposition.

Pointing to Ukraine’s advancements in drone technology and its use of battlefield artificial intelligence to conduct asymmetrical warfare, Driscoll said the Army must have—at a minimum—technology as current as soldiers use in everyday life.

“At home, your fingertips command artificial intelligence ... instantly exchange data worldwide ... and your vehicle self-drives you to work,” Driscoll told thousands of soldiers at the event. “Then, once you arrive at work, you exist in an organization that has been conditioned to expect technological failure. … It’s absolutely unconscionable. … This is the inflection point where we turn it all around.”

The service has long suffered from an acquisitions process that takes years to field new equipment and systems, inflexible funding that prevents it from pivoting when new needs emerge and intractable contracts that don’t let the Army fix its own gear, according to Driscoll.

In the past few months, Driscoll has introduced “continuous transformation,” a shift to reinvesting resources by ditching outdated systems and embracing lean, agile systems that provide lethal results.

It is set to launch FUZE, an initiative that provides funding to startups to purchase and field equipment to soldiers in weeks, instead of years. At the Annual Meeting, the service announced the first competition in the program, xTechDisrupt that, in a Shark Tank-like competition, encourages innovators to pitch their products for $500,000 and then launch their wares within 30 days.

An example of such innovation, according to Driscoll, is the $750 Aerial Battlefield Enabler drone fielded by the 101st Airborne Division—a modular, soldier-created drone that can transition between attack, recon or defense.

The service also wants flexible funding, asking in the fiscal 2026 budget for the ability to move around monies for electronic warfare, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and counter-UAS.

Driscoll said bureaucratic inefficiencies enable adversaries, bog down the Army and put soldiers at risk. “No one can predict the next war, but we cannot wait … to innovate until Americans are dying on the battlefield. We must act now to enable our soldiers,” the secretary said to cheers and applause.

The Army also must change to ensure that soldiers—which it is attracting in record numbers—are supported. In fiscal 2025, the Army hit its recruiting goal of 61,000 in seven months, the quickest pace in 13 years, and has 20,000 enrolled in the Delayed Entry Program for 2026, Driscoll said.

The secretary also said the Army will increase partnerships with the private sector to reduce costs and improve on-post construction, make installations more self-reliant by powering them with nuclear energy and “fixing the basics of food and billeting.”

The service plans to pilot campus-style dining facilities that will feature “multiple vendors, healthy food and [Common Access Card]-swipe convenience,” Driscoll said.

Driscoll’s vision for the Army is a lethal, agile force that can 3D-print replacement parts on the battlefield, has the world’s most sophisticated drone warfare capability, a modern acquisition strategy that can field new technology in months, rather than years, and to model itself on the best practices of private industry—the Silicon Valley approach of “combining venture capital money and mentorship with startup culture.”

“For too long ... we accepted mediocrity. For too long ... we maintained the status quo. Now we stand at an inflection point: make the future ... or react to it,” Driscoll said.

— Patricia Kime for AUSA