Transformation will be continuous for the Army far into the foreseeable future, the service’s officer in charge of operations and planning said.

Lt. Gen. Joe Ryan, deputy Army chief of staff for operations, G-3, said that as one of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George’s top four priorities, the focus on continuous transformation “falls pretty squarely in the [G-3]’s lap, so we’ve taken this on with some vigor.”

Speaking Sept. 10 at the Maneuver Warfighter Conference at Fort Benning, Georgia, Ryan said that while people tend to focus on the word “transformation” to describe the massive changes taking place across the force, the word “continuous” is what is going to matter to young leaders as they progress in their careers.

“Having been doing this now for a little bit over 34 years, the pace of transformation has started and is likely to continue, certainly for the rest of my career, and I would argue should continue for the majority, if not the entirety, of yours,” Ryan told the audience, which included infantry and armor officers attending their captains career courses.

“It is about continuously transforming and innovating at the speed required to maintain our advantages over our adversaries,” Ryan said, adding that “we don’t have an advantage, and we need to gain or regain that advantage if we ever had it, and that’s going to be something that is going to fall to you in your operational units as we move forward.”

Pointing to transformation in contact, which puts equipment into soldiers’ hands for testing, evaluation and feedback within a period of 18 to 24 months, Ryan explained that the unprecedented short timeline is allowing changes to take place more rapidly now than at any time in the past.

“In previous Army history, we have not focused on that timeframe. We’ve waited until we’ve gotten further out in time because we had to program for those changes to take place, and that takes time,” he said.

With transformation in contact taking place at every echelon, from the theater and corps levels down to the smallest units in the Regular Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve, the approach is “not just a one-trick pony,” Ryan said, adding that the feedback the Army receives from all those units is critical.

“[We’re] expecting transformation to occur, not just with what we direct, but with what those headquarters and organizations at those levels feed back to us when they do either get the equipment or they get the impetus to change from headquarters,” Ryan said.

Continuous transformation, he said, “is not just about getting new stuff, it’s about reforming our organizations to fight the adversary the way we need to fight him in a different way today.”