Details on a $48 billion plan the Army is undertaking to shed investments in obsolete and low priority programs and efforts in favor of high priority needs are forthcoming in days, Daniel Driscoll, the service’s secretary, told a Senate panel on June 18.
Asked by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) about details on the Army Transformation Initiative (ATI), Driscoll said, “we’d be happy to com come by any time, but I think very specifically you will have that detail within 10 days.”
The ATI was announced on May 1 and calls for cutting programs such as the AH-64D Apache helicopter, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs), Humvees, the M10 Booker Combat Vehicle, and Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft system, and others, in addition to staff reductions and consolidations at more than a dozen commands.
So far this year, when Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George have testified before congressional panels on the service’s fiscal year 2026 budget request, congressional defense leaders have generally supported the Army’s need to transform but say they need details. Driscoll’s and George’s appearance Wednesday before the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee was no different.
“Congress has a constitutional obligation to provide for the common defense and to steward taxpayer dollars responsibly and we don’t serve either the taxpayer or the common defense with blank checks for vaguely defined priorities,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the subcommittee chairman, said in his opening statement. “We want to see the analysis behind the specific bets the army wants to place on ATI.”
That analysis needs to show the impacts on the industrial base, the other military services, and allies, and how it equips the Army for a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific theater, McConnell said.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) asked about impacts on the tactical wheeled vehicle industrial base from the proposed JLTV and Humvee cuts, noting that her state has more than 40 suppliers for these programs.
Driscoll responded that the Army has more JLTVs and Humvees than it needs, saying they “do not provide the mobility and the empower our soldiers to be lethal in all of the environments we need to be.” The recycling of investments planned under the ATI will benefit traditional defense industrial base suppliers and the Silicon Valley-type technology innovators, he said.
The Army has gaps in a lot of areas and if vendors can invest in and make things the service needs, then small, medium, and large companies “can get rewarded for those investments,” Driscoll said.