The Army must change the way it does business as it transforms the force for the future, the service’s top general said.

“The battlefield is changing as fast as the technology in your pocket, and we know we have to change,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George said.

Speaking on May 19 on a Council on Foreign Relations panel with the other service chiefs, George emphasized the importance of not just pursuing the latest capabilities but also the need to change how the Army buys things, how it trains and how it fights.

“We have been watching what’s happening on the battlefield in Ukraine and the Middle East and, really, around the world,” George said. “We’ve been doing something called transforming in contact, where we’re actually getting bottom-up innovation from our troops, but it’s not a lesson learned unless you’ve actually done something to change how you train and operate.”

A big lesson observed is the emergence of drones on the battlefield. With drones flying overhead, troops can no longer hide on the battlefield, he said. That makes a huge shift from what today’s combat leaders were used to in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Another part of the drone threat is how quickly technology is evolving, which is forcing the Army to be more agile and adaptive. “The big thing is you have to change how you buy things,” George said. This means having a more flexible system but also potential reductions in items or programs that are outdated or no longer needed. “It’s a hard thing to do,” George said.

Programs of record that require the Army to buy a piece of equipment and field it over several years may be a thing of the past. “I’m not a fan when anybody talks about a program of record,” George said. “What that means is you buy something and keep it forever.”

The Army needs agile funding, he said. “We need to buy capabilities,” he said. “If you’re talking drones, counter-UAS, electronic warfare, those things are changing so rapidly. You can’t just buy a system.”

Today, “everything we buy has to be modular, open systems architecture,” George said.

He cited as an example the drones used by the first three brigade combat teams tapped for the Army’s transforming in contact initiative, which puts new technology into soldiers’ hands for testing. There was a marked difference in capability in the drones tested by the brigades just a year apart, George said.

“Fundamentally, we’re at a spot right now where we really have to change how we’re doing business,” he said.

There’s a lot of room for improvement, George said, but he is pleased with how soldiers are responding to the Army’s push to transform. “Our soldiers have a really good mindset for innovation,” he said.

As the Army transforms, it is focused on soldiers and what they’ll need in the next fight. “Our customer is the soldier, and that’s what we’re focused on,” George said.