Army senior leaders answered questions from soldiers on rapid transformation, training, new equipment, quality-of-life upgrades and more during a special online town hall that premiered Jan. 13 on the Army’s YouTube channel.

“As we’ve traveled around and learned from soldiers, what is making modern warfare so scary and so exciting is that you have to innovate so quickly,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said. “Now is the time we have to change … and you, the American soldier, are our greatest innovator.”

Incorporating new technology into formations will require honest feedback from troops, said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. “We’re going to be breaching with robots, doing new things with autonomous systems [and] … you guys will tell us what works and what doesn’t,” George said.

Soldiers also are driving changes to force structure, George said. Over the next 18 months, every infantry brigade combat team will transform into a mobile brigade combat team, and unit leaders have been “experimenting, testing and helping us decide what that looks like,” he said.

Despite the rapid and increasing pace of change, the fundamentals of warfare remain the same, George said. “We have to stay ruthlessly focused on the basics,” he said. “You are going to have to be extremely fit, disciplined. … If you’re not good at the basics, it will have long-term impacts.”

Army leaders are committed to encouraging positive culture in the Army, especially given its impact on recruiting and retention, said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer. “Good culture equals people wanting to join an organization, and, maybe even more importantly, people wanting to stay in the organization and thrive,” he said.

One active-duty staff sergeant asked about changes to professional military education in preparation for technologically advanced multidomain operations. George pointed to an upcoming large-language model he called Project Victor, which will launch next month. “It will be a place where you can go to plug in, find out what skills are rapidly changing and how to keep up,” he said, adding that the Army partnered with Arizona State University for the project.

Answering a question from an 11th Airborne Division soldier about promised barracks improvements, Driscoll said that leaders are taking steps to increase the quality of soldier housing. “Secretary of War [Pete] Hegseth dictated that we go out and look at all of the barracks across the U.S. military, and those results will be coming back in February,” he said. “We plan to act on those, we will be transparent, we will show you what we are able to do, and we hope you will hold us accountable.”

Senior leaders are dedicated to investing in soldiers, Weimer said. “People are the most important platform the U.S. Army has. We’re going to invest in your training, your education and your quality of life,” he said.

Driscoll echoed Weimer’s comments, emphasizing that leaders are making decisions with soldiers’ welfare in mind. “We love you, we pray for you, we think about you all the time,” he said. “We know that the decisions we make today with you are going to lead our Army to another 250 years of defining what our nation can be.”