The Senate on Tuesday confirmed businessman and Iraq War veteran Dan Driscoll as the new secretary of the Army.

Driscoll’s nomination was approved with a 66-28 vote, with 16 Democrats joining all Republicans in supporting his nomination, to include Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

“Congratulations to Dan Driscoll on his confirmation to be the next Secretary of the Army! Dan will bring relevant combat experience, a decorated military career and a proven track record at the highest levels of law and business. He will keep the Army focused on its mission and help achieve peace through strength,” SASC Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said in a statement.

At 38, Driscoll is likely one of the youngest officials to ever serve as Army secretary and takes over the civilian leader role as the service continues navigating major modernization initiatives, including developing new combat vehicles and a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter replacement, ongoing force structure changes and efforts to better posture for increasing competition in the Indo-Pacific.

Driscoll, who was most recently a senior adviser to his former Yale Law School classmate Vice President JD Vance, is a former Army armor officer, who then went onto have a career in investment banking and has spent time as a chief operating officer at a venture capital firm and chief strategy officer at a health care business.

His confirmation hearing before SASC pointed to likely bipartisan support for his nomination when he was introduced by Sens. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), both members of the committee, with the latter noting that Driscoll was a Yale Law School classmate with his son and Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.

At the hearing, Driscoll told SASC the Army must “improve as a customer” and addressed how he would focus on breaking down barriers for companies that want to work with the service (Defense Daily, Jan. 30). 

“The current model the Army uses to acquire things rewards entities that are enormous. The big five primes are the case study in who can currently survive such a hard relationship with the customer,” Driscoll said. “I think that a hard focus on improving the Army’s ability to project what it needs and empowering the defense base to expand from, call it, five to seven to 25 to 50 [prime contractors] would be powerful first steps.”

Driscoll also said lessons learned from the venture capital world over the last 10-20 years seeking out innovative technology could be applied to the Army’s capability development approach.

“If you look at the private sector and the innovation loop, we do have some case studies on being able to create things with soldiers, having coders with them in the field and actually updating products and getting it back to the manufacturing floor with a much tighter innovation loop. I think we can do that working together and it would make an incredible difference,” Driscoll said.

Driscoll also told lawmakers he plans to focus on aviation safety and the level of risk associated with certain training flights, with his confirmation hearing having occurred a day after the tragic accident involving a civilian aircraft colliding with an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport in Washington (Defense Daily, Jan. 30). 

RESTON, Va. – The Army plans to deliver ‘thousands’ of Infantry Squad Vehicles (ISV) and equipment-carrying ground robots in the coming years as it moves out on its Transforming in Contact (TiC) initiative to rapidly field new capabilities, an official said Tuesday.

“The number [of platforms] will approach thousands that we [will] deliver from this portfolio before Transforming in Contact is done,” Maj. Gen. Robert Barrie, the Army procurement office’s deputy for acquisition and systems management, said during remarks here at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Tactical Wheeled Vehicles Conference.

The Army has utilized GM Defense [GM] ISVs and Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport ground robots (S-MET), currently built by General Dynamics Land Systems [GD], in its TiC events, which has focused on testing new operating concepts and capabilities with select Army units to gather feedback and inform rapid fielding decisions.

In the year ahead, the Army will expand the initiative with TiC 2.0 that is set to include two more divisions, two Armored Brigade Combat Teams, two Stryker Brigade Combat Teams and “additional formations in the Guard and Reserves” (Defense Daily, Oct. 15 2024).

Barrie said the aim is to deliver thousands of ISVs and S-METs by the end of TiC 2.0, and that the Army G-3 is working now to determine which units will receive the platforms.

“If it makes an infantry unit more mobile and able to be more lethal, which it does, that’s what we’re trying to do with TiC and show that we’re able to do that rapidly at scale,” Barrie told Defense Daily following his remarks.

The Army approved GM Defense’s ISV, based on the ZR2 variants of the company’s Chevrolet Colorado midsize truck, for full rate production in April 2023, with the company having already delivered hundreds of the lightweight, air-droppable platforms (Defense Daily, April 5 2023). 

“That is an example of the capability that comes with a wheeled vehicle that you really can’t get from anything else, both in terms of mobility and cost and then the ability to scale the production of it. So I think things like that will continue to be recognized as critical capabilities,” Barrie said in his remarks.

Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commander of the 25th Infantry Division, cited the ISV as a “key capability” for his 2nd Brigade when those soldiers participated in a TiC event during a Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) rotation this past fall (Defense Daily, Oct. 21 2024). 

“The Infantry Squad Vehicle has really provided the formation the ability to move at night over different distances to be able to become really small and then to come back together to mass formations at the appropriate place and time,” Evans told reporters at the time. “That reason that’s important is, based on the lessons that we’re seeing out of Ukraine, it is important to be extremely agile while at the same time being very small which, in turn, makes you less targetable.”

The Army’s 101st Airborne Division also utilized the ISV as “the centerpiece” of a new Mobile Brigade Combat prototype concept tested during a TiC event last spring (Defense Daily, May 9 2024). 

“We had just shy of 200 Infantry Squad Vehicles that allow us, to use a Napoleonic term, to steal a march. We, as an air assault division, land as a cohesive element. So [the ISVs] allow us to land as a cohesive element and move rapidly in order to be able to rapidly seize key terrain so that we can continue to keep the air assault mission moving and on the march,” Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, 101st Airborne Division commander, said at the time.

Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, recently visited the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Germany where the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division (3/10 MTN) was the latest formation to participate in a TiC initiative, and told reporters soldiers “loved” the ISVs (Defense Daily, Feb. 13). 

Evans last fall noted the 25th ID’s 2nd Brigade also utilized S-METs during its TiC event, noting the system could “be challenged” by some of the terrain in the Pacific environment while adding that the GD-built platform was a “very capable piece of equipment.”

“Certainly, there’s a place for it based on our experimentation. But given some of the steep ravines and gulches, it was a bit problematic to employ. [However], if you had it in terrain that was a little bit more maneuverable it performed very well,” Evans said at the time. “[S-MET] reduces soldiers’ load. It affords you the ability to do different things. I think it’s just important that we’re able to test it in different environments.”

The Army in late September announced it had selected American Rheinmetall and HDT Expeditionary Systems for the S-MET Inc. II prototyping effort, with plans to potentially award a production contract in late fiscal year 2027 that may cover more than 2,000 systems (Defense Daily, Sept. 25 2024).

Army officials, including George, have previously noted that achieving TiC priorities will require support to flexibly move funding around capability areas rather than rigid budget line items, with the service specifically focusing the effort on drones, counter-UAS equipment and electronic warfare capabilities.

George has said he’s received “good feedback” from lawmakers on the push for flexible funding, with Barrie noting that while the Army is not currently pursuing that authority for platforms in its tactical wheeled vehicle portfolio it could do so in the future.

“We want to be transparent with Congress. We want to clearly communicate what we’re doing, but also be able to acknowledge that there are going to be some times where we need a little more flexibility in the dollar,” Barrie told Defense Daily. “We have those [initial] focus areas. Let’s demonstrate that if we get that authority, that we’re able to do it responsibly. I’m confident that we will be able to. And then, let’s look at expanding it.”