Plans to transform the Army are “now more urgent than ever” as the service faces increasingly complex threats and fast-moving advances in technology, senior leaders told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Testifying June 4 before the House Armed Services Committee, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll emphasized that the Army Transformation Initiative was conceived “with the soldier in mind.”

“I’ve met with them in the Middle East, Europe, along our southern border and across the United States,” Driscoll said about soldiers. “We ask a great deal of them, and they consistently deliver.”

Those soldiers are the reason why the Army, industry and the nation’s leaders “must all work together to ensure the Army’s ready to fight and win,” Driscoll said.

Driscoll, who appeared alongside Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, faced several questions from lawmakers seeking more information and details on the Army Transformation Initiative. Outlined in a May 1 letter to the force from Driscoll and George, the initiative seeks to implement sweeping changes that include consolidating headquarters, cutting obsolete programs and equipment and bringing on new, cutting-edge capabilities such as drones and long-range fires.

“The Army Transformation Initiative will make us into an Army that’s lean, agile and relentlessly focused on empowering soldiers,” Driscoll said.

The Army is a professional team that remains focused on its warfighting mission, George said. “But we have work to do,” he said. “We know the world is changing. Commercial technology is rapidly evolving, and this is impacting the character of war. We understand we must transform to stay ahead of our adversaries.”

The Army must keep getting better—and faster, George said. “We must get better by 2026, 2027, not 2030,” he said.

Driscoll and George asked lawmakers to give the Army more agility when it comes to funding. “There are a lot of commercial, off-the-shelf stuff we should be adopting,” George said, particularly when it comes to drones and counter-drone technology. “We need agile funding to be able to buy as the technology changes [and] buy the best available thing that’s on the market,” he said.

As the Army moves forward with the Army Transformation Initiative, it must be able to look in the mirror and admit when it’s made a mistake, Driscoll said. He cited as an example the M10 Booker, which the Army recently canceled because it didn’t meet the service’s needs. “We wanted a light tank, but we ended up with a medium tank,” Driscoll said. “We got this wrong, and the Army has to own this.”

The Army is focused on what soldiers need. “Almost all of the Army Transformation Initiative has been informed by what soldiers have told us,” Driscoll said, citing the service’s transformation in contact initiative, which puts new technology in soldiers’ hands for testing and experimentation.

“What transformation in contact has done for us is it gave us lessons from the actual soldier,” Driscoll said. “What had happened historically was long procurement documents with hundreds and hundreds of requirements, and by the time it was signed, it was outdated, and by the time it was fielded, it was even worse.”

The Army also is focused on being ready for any mission anywhere in the world. “China is the pacing threat, but when Gen. George and I talk about the Army, we want an Army that can be effective anywhere that we send it,” Driscoll said.