SecDef wields axe to brass, HQs, formations to trend leaner Military

The secretary of protection has ordered the Military secretary to chop applications, cut back the variety of normal officers within the ranks and consolidate places of work, instructions and headquarters, together with a four-star command fashioned within the earlier Trump administration designed to reform its acquisition course of.

Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth desires Military Secretary Dan Driscoll to “implement a complete transformation technique, streamline its power construction, eradicate wasteful spending, reform acquisition, modernize inefficient protection contracts, and overcome parochial pursuits to rebuild our Military, restore the warrior ethos and reestablish deterrence,” he wrote in a memo revealed Wednesday.

“To construct a leaner, extra deadly power, the Military should remodel at an accelerated tempo by divesting outdated, redundant, and inefficient applications, in addition to restructuring headquarters and acquisition techniques,” Hegseth acknowledged.

The Military ought to prioritize long-range precision fires and air and missile protection, together with Golden Dome — Trump’s deliberate structure to defend the homeland from missile threats — in addition to cyber, digital warfare and counter-space capabilities, the memo lists.

Chain-of-command adjustments

A lot of the memo lays out initiatives already nicely underway, however the Military would carry them out underneath an altered chain-of-command construction with fewer normal officers.

The adjustments embody the merging of Forces Command with U.S. Military North and U.S. Military South right into a single headquarters dubbed “the Western Hemisphere Command.”

And the Military is consolidating Military Futures Command, which is in control of growing necessities, into one command with Coaching and Doctrine Command.

Military Futures Command was established in 2018 throughout President Donald Trump’s first administration underneath then-Military Chief of Workers Gen. Mark Milley, whom President Trump has sought to shame since returning to workplace, together with by having Milley’s joint chiefs chairman portrait faraway from the Pentagon hallway the place it initially hung.

Milley proposed the four-star command he dubbed Military Futures Command as a brand new means ahead, breaking freed from the paperwork and silos that had hampered the Military’s earlier main modernization efforts.

Working with different prime service officers, Milley shifted billions of {dollars} into modernization applications together with the highest precedence — long-range precision fires — and based mostly the brand new command in Austin, Texas, an space recognized for its revolutionary, technology-focused workforce.

AFC was fashioned to concentrate on necessities improvement inside the modernization course of. Previous to its formation, the necessities improvement course of lived inside TRADOC, the place it competed for consideration alongside coaching, recruitment {and professional} army schooling. The extra targeted group was constructed to allow the Military to maneuver quicker.

Hegseth’s memo additionally directs the Military secretary to restructure sustainment by “consolidating and realigning” headquarters and models inside Military Materiel Command and integrating Joint Munitions Command and Military Sustainment Command “to optimize effectivity and streamline help capabilities.”

In a letter to the power from Driscoll revealed Thursday, he introduced the Military plans to chop 1,000 workers positions from its headquarters.

Leaner, deadly formations

Hegseth can also be ordering adjustments to formations with plans to “merge headquarters to generate fight energy able to synchronizing kinetic and non-kinetic fires, space-based capabilities and unmanned techniques,” the memo states.

Main adjustments embody decreasing and restructuring manned assault helicopter formations and increase “cheap drone swarms able to overwhelming adversaries,” it reads.

The Military in early 2024 killed this system to construct a Future Assault Reconnaissance Plane after spending billions of {dollars} on it. As a substitute, the service determined to make use of drones for missions beforehand reserved for manned helicopters.

The Military plans to cancel its AH-65D manufacturing, its older mannequin, in favor of a concentrate on the AH-64E model.

The memo says the Military will cut back and restructure its manned assault helicopter formations “and increase with cheap drone swarms able to overwhelming adversaries.”

In his letter, Driscoll acknowledged the Military will restructure aviation formations by decreasing one Aerial Cavalry Squadron per Fight Aviation Brigade within the energetic element.

On the bottom facet, the Military will convert all Infantry Brigade Fight Groups to Cell Brigade Fight Groups “to enhance mobility and lethality in a leaner formation,” Driscoll writes.

The Military additionally plans to eradicate or “reduce” applications like manned plane, “outdated” UAVs and “extra” floor automobiles, reminiscent of Humvees, Hegseth’s memo states. Driscoll’s letter singles out Grey Eagle, its largest UAV, as being on the chopping block.

By 2027, the Military plans to deliver on-line a long-range missile able to putting transferring land and maritime targets. Final yr, the Military fielded the primary increment of the Precision Strike Missile that would doubtlessly attain ranges nicely over 500 kilometers. The service can also be already growing a seeker that can make the PrSM able to putting ships.

Each Division can have UAS and floor and air launched results by the tip of 2026, the memo states.

Each maneuver platoon can have counter-UAS functionality by 2026, and each maneuver firm will get the potential by 2027. The Military, which is in control of the Joint Counter-UAS Workplace, or JCO, has been pushing to broaden C-UAS functionality throughout formations for a number of years.

The memo additionally requires AI-driven command-and-control to be carried out on the Theater, Corps and Division headquarter ranges by 2027.

Operational models will get 3D printing and additive manufacturing capabilities by 2026.

Already underway for a number of years is an effort to modernize the natural industrial base on the subject of ramping up munitions provide, triggered by the struggle in Ukraine the place the U.S. has despatched giant numbers of ammunition to the nation to assist it struggle again the Russian invasion. The memo states the modernization effort might be absolutely operationally succesful by 2028.

A concentrate on ahead presence within the Indo-Pacific, the memo notes, will end in expanded pre-positioned shares, rotational deployments and workouts with allies and companions.

Purchase quicker

In early 2024, the service, together with then-Military Secretary Christine Wormuth and Military Chief of Workers Gen. Randy George, started speaking about versatile funding to purchase issues like drones, counter-drone and digital warfare capabilities with the intention to get probably the most succesful know-how quickly.

The argument was that funding buildings on the time resulted in sluggish acquisition of techniques. By the point the service was prepared to purchase one thing, trade had already outpaced these capabilities with new know-how.

Hegseth’s memo directs the service to consolidate finances traces and shift to capability-based funding throughout portfolios — particularly calling out unmanned plane techniques, counter-UAS and EW.

The Military will even pursue acquiring the rights to restore its techniques the place trade mental property possession at present prevents it. As well as, the service will be sure that right-to-repair provisions exist in all new contracts.

The service will even “broaden” its use of Different Transaction Authority agreements, a mechanism supplied by Congress to quickly construct prototypes. The Military has relied closely on OTAs lately.

In response to Driscoll, the Military’s new “transformation initiative” builds upon the Military chief’s Transformation in Contact initiative he started over a yr in the past. The initiative focuses on transferring applications by means of acquisition quicker, together with including UAS into formations and dashing up the fielding of a modernized Abrams tanks and a Future Lengthy-Vary Assault Plane, amongst different applications like countering drones.

“It is a first step,” Driscoll writes. “We’ve got already directed a second spherical of transformation efforts to be delivered within the coming months.”