While the proliferation of buzzwords might rightfully give a staff officer a case of the heebie-jeebies, this memo may mark one of the most significant changes the Army has undertaken in many decades. The subheads are taken from Hegseth's memo.

Transforming the Army Now for Future Warfare

This section is breathtaking in its scope. Reacting to the change in military technology that has appeared in the Russo-Ukraine War and the post-October 7 fighting in the Middle East, the memo calls for equipping all maneuver platoons with counter-drone equipment by the end of 2026 and all maneuver companies by the end of 2027. It requires 3D printing and other advanced manufacturing technologies to be pushed down to the unit level. It requires "AI-driven command and control at Theater, Corps, and Division headquarters." I'm not terribly sure what that means, but there is a huge space in operations and logistics that could benefit from AI tools. By 2028, the Army will have sufficient ammunition production capacity "to generate the ammunition stockpiles necessary to sustain national defense during wartime." As we've seen from the Ukraine war, in fighting a peer competitor, the burn rate of artillery ammunition exceeds 150,000 rounds per month. We can currently produce about 40,000 per month, with production expected to hit 100,000 by the end of 2026.

Most significant is that the Army is directed to end its post-World War II focus on Europe and emphasize operation in the Indo-Pacific theater "by expanding pre-positioned stocks, rotational deployments, and exercises with allies and partners to enhance strategic access, basing, and overflight."

A directive to "Field long-range missiles capable of striking moving land and maritime targets by 2027" appears to be underway already.

Cont':

$100 million for "the development of an anti-ship seeker for short-range Army ballistic missiles" (is ATACMS finally getting its seeker!?)
$175m for PrSM production capacity expansion (this will push it to 500/y, and perhaps beyond)https://t.co/b1Qxgxi0CK

7/20

— Colby Badhwar 🇨🇦🇬🇧 (@ColbyBadhwar) April 28, 2025

This procurement turns ATACMS into an anti-ship ballistic missile; this only makes sense for use in the Indo-Pacific theater. ATACMS is being put back into production; the last production run was in 2007.

Cont':

$50m for PrSM Inc 2 (moving target seeker) accelerated RDT&E
$114m for PrSm Inc 1 procurement
$85m for PrSM Inc 4 (1000+km range) accelerated RDT&E

and...

$300m to put ATACMS back into procurement for the US Army!

8/20 pic.twitter.com/VdhmqD6nVx

— Colby Badhwar 🇨🇦🇬🇧 (@ColbyBadhwar) April 28, 2025

Eliminating Wasteful Programs and Outdated Equipment

As the saying goes, amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics. And, in the words of Carl von Clausewitz, which apply just as aptly to bureaucracy as it does to war, "Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult." The memo calls for the Army to stop buying "obsolete systems, and cancel or scale back ineffective or redundant programs, including manned aircraft, excess ground vehicles (e.g., HMMWV), and outdated UAVs." 

This is difficult because procurement is worth billions of dollars. Jobs are at stake, both in private industry and among the generals looking to slide into a sweet, high-six-figure board position after retirement. Congressmen get agitated when production in their district ends. Already, there has been one victim: the M-10 Booker assault gun.

It’s a twist on the classic Pentagon procurement snafu—a program that moves so slowly that it’s outdated by the time it reaches the field.

In this case, the Army knew early on that it wasn’t going to be able to make the thing it had set out to make, but it was bound and determined to make something. So it made something it doesn’t actually need.

Force Structure and Workforce Optimization

First, the good news. The Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command will merge into one command. This eliminates one four-star billet and several other lesser general officer positions. U.S. Army Forces Command, U.S. Army South, and U.S. Army North will also merge. U.S. Army South is a two-star command responsible for military assistance in Mexico, Central, and South America. U.S. Army North is responsible for the defense of the continental United States, including operations on the US-Mexico border, and is commanded by a three-star. U.S. Forces Command is a four-star billet responsible for training, mobilizing, deploying, and sustaining all Army units. The rather diffuse Army Materiel Command (the joke is that the command's initials, AMC, stands for "A Million Civilians" because not a lot of uniformed people are assigned there) was told to consolidate some activities, for instance the Joint Munitions Command, a one-star command overseeing 19 arsenals, depots, and ammunition plants, will be rolled into the Army Sustainment Command, also a one-star command, which is responsible for supplying "our warfighters with everything they need to defend our Nation and our Allies."

So far, so good. There are a couple of things that make me queasy:

• Divest outdated formations, including select armor and aviation units across the Total Army (Active, Reserve, National Guard).
• Reduce and restructure manned attack helicopter formations and augment with inexpensive drone swarms capable of overwhelming adversaries.

To me, this gets perilously close to predicting the future. The underlying assumption is that tanks and attack helicopters are redundant. The other assumption made in this section and the previous one is that the Army's role will be to garrison strongpoints in the First and Second Island Chains in a future war with China. In my view, that is a high-risk organizational change that puts fighting a Desert Storm-equivalent off the table.

Acquisition Reform and Budget Optimization

The big item here is the possible demise of restrictions on the Army's "right to repair." This is important because frequently military equipment uses intellectual property and proprietary tools, diagnostic equipment, and parts that can only be replaced or serviced by the contractor. In the future, the Army must be able to fix what it buys. Unraveling the skein of existing contracts will be much more of a challenge. Also, the real dogfight will happen when this policy is applied to the tech-heavy Air Force, Space Force, and Navy, when billions of dollars hinge on controlling the right to repair and replace parts for ships, missiles, electronics, and aircraft. What is truly remarkable is that Elizabeth Warren is taking credit for this and managing not to mention that Pete Hegseth is pushing it.

Overview

There is a lot of good stuff in here. This combined with some of the granular reforms underway in the Army concerning physical fitness standards, command climate, leader development, and command selection add up to an Army that is shaking away the doldrums of 20 years of the Global War on Terror and obeisance to social experimentation and DEI, and getting down to the core business of winning the wars we fight.

The best news is that the Army seems to be down with the program.

Army Transformation Initiative

President Trump and @SecDef have taken historic action to transform the Army and I am immediately getting to work to ensure these changes are carried out. The Army Transformation Initiative (ATI), will rapidly cut legacy and inefficient programs… pic.twitter.com/DWL8q91M9s

— Secretary of the Army (@SecArmy) May 1, 2025

Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff General Randy George have been out talking up the reforms. Having Gen. George roped into the effort is a major win.

. @SecArmy "The old way of doing war will no longer suffice.

Under the leadership of @POTUS and @SecDef, they have empowered the Army to go make the hard decisions and the hard changes to reallocate our dollars to best position our soldiers.

To be the most lethal that they can… pic.twitter.com/A81cRXDoAm

— DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) May 1, 2025

If there is a dark cloud here it is the sense that the war that we've seen in Ukraine has an outsize influence on equipment choices and that the, in my opinion, ill-thought-out US Marine Corps Force Design 2030 (The US Marine Corps Doesn't Have a Commandant Today Because 'One Man With Courage Is a Majority' – RedState) has triumphed. It is inevitable that the armor and attack helicopter units targeted for dissolution in the memo will be replaced by the so-called Multi-Domain Task Forces. These organizations have dropped firepower and shock effect in favor of electronic/cyberwarfare and long-range fires, including anti-ballistic missile systems, and ground forces are focused on protecting everything. Closing with and destroying the enemy is now a "prevent defense."

Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform by streiff on Scribd