During Thursday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) questioned the Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, and Chief of Staff General Randy A. George about the modernized defense infrastructure rollout.
00:00Thank you, Senator Reid. Senator Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Secretary, General, welcome.
00:06The Army was already undergoing significant changes prior to the April 30th letter from the Secretary of Defense.
00:15I understand that we've had some success in increasing experimentation and getting soldier feedback early in the acquisition process.
00:25This results in more intuitive capabilities easier for soldiers to use.
00:32How does the Army Transformation Initiative build on the Transformation in Contact efforts so that technology can be delivered into the hands of the soldiers faster?
00:48Senator.
00:49Mr. Secretary.
00:51It is all built off transformation in contact and all built in as many instances as humanly possible off what soldiers have actually told us.
00:59So if you look at what the most successful small, medium, and large businesses in America do, particularly if you looked at the venture capital-backed ones,
01:07what they would have is this concept called minimum viable product, which is this idea that if you have an idea, get a prototype as quickly as possible and get it to your end user.
01:15And what we have tried to do and what the Army has done really well, I think, or I hope, is to get things we are testing into the hands of our soldiers as fast as possible.
01:25General George and I were with an autonomous software company that designs essentially the software for autonomous vehicles about a month and a half, two months ago at this point.
01:34And we saw what they had. We asked if they had ever put in an Army vehicle. They said no. We got them a vehicle five days later. Ten days later, they sent us a video fully automating our Humvee and our ISV.
01:45We got in the hands of soldiers all within three or four weeks, and we're currently learning from that. And so that, to us, is how we will actually quickly innovate and change our Army to face today's threats.
01:55Will you tie in the command and control to that as well? Are you working with any specific private industry to be able to do that?
02:04Senator, we're working with a bunch of companies that are doing that. Again, for all of this, I think what we're learning is we're going to have to pass data very rapidly.
02:15So, I mean, I think the network to us is foundational to everything we do.
02:19You know, if you're going to sense, you have to decide, and whatever you're going to do to act, the network is central to that.
02:26I wanted to just add on on the lessons. I mean, besides just the equipment, for us, the biggest change is actually having developers that are right there with our soldiers to see what works.
02:37We're seeing what the battery life in a cold environment versus the humidity that's, you know, out there right now in the Pacific.
02:45So we're seeing those. We're changing how we're organized. We know you can be seen anywhere on this planet how we're going to reorganize our formations.
02:54We're learning that. And how do we better train our soldiers to operate in EW environments?
03:00How do we better train FPV operators? All of that. And again, we have to constantly.
03:05That's where we're in the continuous transformation mode.
03:08Okay. Thank you. We saw a long-range hypersonic weapons test in June and December of last year, and I was encouraged by the success of those tests.
03:20Do you still anticipate, Mr. Secretary and General, fielding that capability by the end of fiscal year 25?
03:28We do. And one of the things we're also excited about is we're testing a new version of it that is one-tenth of the cost and we think has even better attributes.
03:39And so it would be early to know whether it will work, but we're optimistic.
03:44In your written testimony, you highlight that the Army's mid-range capability system, it's been deployed in the Philippines since April, I think, of last year.
03:55Can you provide us with an update on that program and when you expect additional batteries to be fielded?
04:04Again, Senator, that's another thing.
04:07We're looking at a total of five batteries, and what we're also doing with that is same thing with continuous transformation.
04:13How do we make those systems smaller? How do we tie them in better?
04:17How do we make them so that they're more mobile? That's what we're working on.
04:21As you're testing these different capabilities, these new capabilities, do you have some of these businesses,
04:31you said they were alongside soldiers and being able to see the real-time effects.
04:36So as you're testing these things in real-time and you understand the field battle that you may be facing in the very near future,
04:51are you also soliciting not just comments from industry but also to continue to solicit those comments from soldiers as well?
05:01And have you been able to make changes in any of these capabilities that you're currently testing?
05:09Yeah, we both wanted to push the trigger on that one.
05:14We have done that.
05:15I get one of the things, for example, that soldiers said,
05:18hey, listen, it would be better to have an autonomous system or an optionally manned vehicle
05:23that could move around and could do those things.
05:25Hey, we need the command and control piece of this to be smaller and more mobile.
05:31And so we're making those changes.
05:33And we've had companies that have actually gone out,
05:36and this is about leveraging commercial industry to do this,
05:39that have made those vehicles and then brought them out to our formations,
05:43and we're testing them.
05:44And again, getting them to our soldiers is the most important thing we can do.
05:47Great. Thank you.
05:48The chairman's going to gavel you out, Mr. Secretary.
05:51Thank you very much.
05:53Of course, witnesses can supplement their answers.
