Whether it’s delivering new fires capabilities to soldiers or mobilizing the defense industrial base to produce leap-ahead missiles, the Army can’t move fast enough, a panel of fires experts said during a contemporary military forum at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2025 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C.

“We have to be aggressive in this space,” said Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for Missiles and Space. “We have to be purposeful, [and] there has to be a willingness to accept and underwrite risk in this space.”

During a forum titled “Reimagining Fires,” Lozano said the Army must lead globally as it competes—and tries to outpace—America’s adversaries in the areas of long-range fires and integrated air and missile defense, Lozano said. “It’s our mission to develop, produce and field unmatched, unparalleled warfighting capability, get that capability in the hands of our warfighters so they can defeat any enemy anywhere around the globe, period,” he said.

The good news is the Army is invested in these critical areas, he said. “You can always tell where our priorities are because we put our money where our mouth is,” he said.

The challenge is keeping up with rapidly evolving technology, Lozano and the other panelists said.

“Every fighting force has a challenge coming out of the last fight and predicting how they’re going to fight the next fight,” said Maj. Gen. David Stewart, director of the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office and director of fires in the office of the deputy Army chief of staff for operations, G-3/5/7.

The Army must “challenge the status quo at all times and push the bounds on how we’re going to move forward for the next fight,” Stewart said. He added that speed is paramount—not just in developing and delivering what soldiers need but also on the battlefield.

The pace of the future fight requires the Army to process data quickly and almost simultaneously detect and engage threats and targets, Lozano said. The force also must be able to influence the enemy’s decision loop, he said. “It’s about getting them to react to us and not vice versa,” he said.

Industry is working alongside the Army to accelerate delivery of critical capabilities to soldiers, said Paula Hartley, vice president and general manager, Tactical Missiles, Missiles and Fire Control for Lockheed Martin. “It’s all about speed, so how do we in industry do that,” she said. “I have to deliver to [the Army] what they want, when they want it, it has to work the first time, all the time. There’s nothing more important than bringing our soldiers home safely to their families and friends after successfully completing their mission.”

Lockheed Martin, which makes capabilities such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, Javelin, Multiple Launch Rocket System and Precision Strike Missile, has been asked to accelerate its programs over the past several years, Hartley said.

To support faster production, industry needs a resilient supply chain, Hartley said. “One supplier can bring you to your knees,” she said. “I learned early on, do you know how many pieces you need to build a missile? You need all of them.”

Hartley and her team spend a lot of time on alternate and geographically dispersed sourcing and other efforts to diversify its suppliers, she said.

Over the past several months, the Army has been very purposefully fielding prototypes to soldiers, Lozano said, including counter-drone capabilities to troops deployed in the Middle East, the Integrated Battle Command System to Europe and the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor to Guam.

If you give new technology to soldiers, “they will figure out how to train, they will figure out how to organize, they will figure out how to fight it,” Lozano said. “I believe that’s really foundational to understanding how we transform in a much more aggressive and rapid manner.”

Early next year, the Army plans to test its Precision Strike Missile Increment 2, Lozano said. If the test is successful, the service will “produce 10 missiles immediately after that,” he said.

“We’ve got to get ahead of the enemy, so we’re pushing very hard,” Lozano said.