Building a smarter, faster, more connected Army through transformation

All right, well, welcome back, everyone. I'm Jen Judson, land warfare reporter for Defense News

I'm joined now by Dr. Alex Miller, the Army Chief of Staff's Chief Technology Officer

who will help us dig a little deeper into where modernization stands

and how the Army can sustain momentum across its many programs. Thank you for being here

Absolutely. So we're at AUSA, and I know you've been making the rounds

I've seen you on the floor, like, multiple times. What technology trends are you seeing out there

What promising technology is starting to come to the forefront here with industry

You've been to these shows before. How are things changing in terms of what you're seeing coming from industry now

No, it's good. Thanks for having me. I know it's Wednesday morning. Like, I feel it, too

It's the third day at AUSA. I know everybody's sort of, like, on low power reserve, so I appreciate you being here this morning early

You guys are the true champions for actually being in the room. Okay

I have been doing AUSA for a while. So I used to come with my dad when he was active duty

So I've seen this transform quite a bit from GWAT. And then I inherited it when I was in the G2

So I came during a time when we had infinite monopoly money because we had OKO

And the game looked different. What I've seen in my time working for the chief has been actually a radical change in how industry is approaching their relationship with the government, which I think is positive

And what I mean by that is when General George became the vice and then the chief, he said we have to fix some of these fundamental problems

It's no longer about just buying stuff. And frankly, a lot of trade shows were just about seeing stuff

So what he wanted to do and then what Secretary Driscoll has come on and frankly poured a lot of gas on the fire has said

we're going to change the way that we work internal to the Army. And we hope to see a reflection of that in the way that industry works with us

So the promising technology, you've probably heard a lot of it. Drones encounter drone, for sure

And change in how people think about long-range fires, particularly about bending the cost curve

So right now, we are still in a mindset that we can use a $3.9 million missile against a $150,000 drone

and that is radically out of sync with reality. and then next generation command and control they they talked about a little bit of a little bit

about that up here but the chief announced it yesterday at the eisenhower launch our goal

is to scale next generation command and control to the entire army in 30 months now here's the

cool thing it's not just one company doing it so i know lockheed just got a contract for the 25th

but we also have team andrel with the fourth infantry division we are going to do what industry

does, we are going to actually make people compete for market share because soldiers will tell us

our users will tell us what works and what doesn't. And then the last thing that I've

actually seen really promising changes is actually in the autonomy space. Okay. So talk to us about when you were first brought on to work with the Army Chief

what were your initial observations about where the Army was headed when it came to modernization

at that point. Absolutely. I love this because we don't really talk about modernization too much

because modernization becomes about stuff. What General George says all the time is transformation

because what it allows us to do is think differently about not only the capabilities that we deliver

but the organizations within the Army. That's where transforming in contact started, the culture within the Army, the people skills within the Army, and then we can overlay the

technology on top of that. So all the things that we want to buy, all the capabilities that we want

to buy and deploy, they have to sit on top of a transformed, I'll overuse the word architecture

but really the architecture of organization. So how do commanders organize their people

the skills within that. So think about, we just did something pretty cool with our cyber folks

and our aviators. So rather than just having our 15 Echos and 15 Charley, so our gray goal

and our shadow pilots and maintainers, we're going to do something called the 15 X-ray

which is if we're serious about a fight anywhere in the world where our drone operators have to be with our front line

they need to ruck up, they need to look and feel like infantrymen, and they need to be able to get those drones to the forward line, which means we should train like that

Same with our cyber operators, our EW operators. So I am really excited because what General George has pushed is transformation of all fronts

which I think unlocks a lot of potential for how we do things

Yeah, so there was a lot of change when the chief came in

Was there anything, there was a lot of things that weren't working for the Army

but what was working well at the time? We had, so I'll talk about two and a half, three years ago, and then I'll talk about now. Yeah

There was not a dearth of tech-savvy culture. There was not a dearth of soldiers wanting to do the right thing

There was not a lack of innovative spirit. There was not a lack of willingness to just get after it in any way

What we had not enabled our units and our formations and our soldiers was the top cover to self-organize in a new way

And frankly, we had not put the processes in place to get rid of stuff that wasn't working

So there's two big things. We started this command and control fix, which was really about the network

But then General Mohan and the Army Materiel Command team also started the R2E program

and that was about getting rid of old things. So there were, I'm sure all of you have seen it

there were units that had vehicles in their motor pools that no one had touched in years

but they were still accountable for holding on to those things, which was chewing up time, which was chewing up resources, which was chewing up money for no reason

And then we were, because of rules that we owned, that General George went, hey, we can change these

we were forcing those soldiers to maintain those vehicles even though they weren't going to use them

So the Army made a lot of decisions, obviously, earlier this year as part of their transformation initiative

in terms of things that were not working. And you scrapped a lot of programs, things like that

So talk about some of the programs that God killed and why, in your view

Why did they need to go away? Okay, I need a detail outside the door

If you're not tracking the Army Transformation Initiative, the Secretary of War signed that out the end of April, end of May

to tell the Army, you will transform. There's a couple areas, and I'll just summarize them briefly

and then I'll answer your question. Modernize long-range fires. Think about how you can do cheaper, more prolific, longer-range

modernize the organic industrial base. If you have not dug into the Army's organic industrial base

your Army makes most of the ammunition for the Joint Force. It makes most of the artillery for the Joint Force

It does all of the repairs of vehicles for the Joint Force. It's 20-some-odd facilities across the country that do the depots

and the maintenance facilities and the forges and the production capacity. It is the nation's assurance that if we went to a full-scale war

we could actually produce the things we need to it is drones and counter drones it is the close combat force so you so everyone loves the door kickers and everybody loves the shooters and we need to make sure that they have the right light body armor that provides them the right amount of protection

the right night vision capabilities, the right weapon systems. And then the last thing is holistic health and fitness

So thinking about it's not just about making sure that soldiers have the right kit

It is about making sure that they are prepared spiritually, mentally, physically. So food services, make sure they have the right PT equipment

So it was all of that as part of the Army Transformation Initiative. Some of the things that have been really, really frustrating is before that we had vehicles

and I'll pick on the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, the JLTV. We have about 20,000 of them

That's probably enough because they are not the vehicle for a lightweight mobile army

in a theater that they might need to be lightweight and mobile in. So we started using the infantry squad vehicle

It's one of my favorite vehicles. It looks like a warthog from Halo. I will not come off of that

But it is inexpensive. It's half the price of a Humvee. It comes off of a commercial production line

So it comes off of the GM Chevy Colorado production line. It has a Hendrix upgun suspension chassis

And soldiers can tailor it however they need to. So when we went down to go see the 101st, their soldiers had strapped all their rucks to the top of it

It worked for them. They had also strapped all their EW kit to the top of it

So now they had mobile EW capability. When we went to the 25th Infantry Division, different climate, more humid, more rugged terrain

they had configured their vehicles slightly differently. What they all told us was this is a much better platform

So we decided to not order any more JLTVs. Same with the Humvee

quintessential Army vehicle came into service in 1985. This is its 40th anniversary. It is the

vehicle that I saw as an Army brat driving around Fort Bragg. It's just the end of that era. So

things like those which we knew were no longer the best value for taxpayer dollars but also not the

best value for soldiers, we were very aggressive in just ripping the band-aid off and going

we have to be done with these. Okay. So I think you and I, the first time we crossed paths with

at a Project Convergence event in March 2024 at the NTC. And you were in the midst of demoing a pilot or proof of concept

for something we now call Next Generation Command and Control. What was that effort like then, and how did that come together so quickly

Just walk us through the evolution of where that concept was at the time and where it is now

This is a big project. It is. I will answer your question, but I've got to tell a little story first

So all of us who have been in or around combat know that at some point the network didn't work the way we needed it to

either at the tactical edge where there was only a little bit of bandwidth or at the strategic side where you just couldn't get access to the data that you needed

And what that led to was commanders going, I need more, I need more, I need more

And then people started going, I need all, I need all of the data

We know that that's not true, but it was a condition that we created where commanders felt like they weren't enabled to make the decisions they needed to and the time they needed to with the information they needed to

That led us down a path before NixGen C2 was even a thought to go, we need to fix the network

So two years ago, General George talked about C2 fix. and what that really was was we were going to identify the things that we must fix right now

and stop everything else. We're not going to add another dollar to a capability we don't think is the future of warfighting

and we are only going to spend money on things like space-based internet

because we know that they will be part of the future. About six months later, we asked a really hard question

What should C2 look like for the Army at all echelons? and then that led us down the path of we need to do this from scratch

It is no longer what you have seen for at least my entire time working in and around the Army

where we would take a requirements document that's several hundred pages and we would try to duct tape things together

We just said, no, we're going to start from scratch. And we did something interesting

We actually pulled a whole bunch of industry together into a room, locked the doors and said, most of these are fundamentally solved technology problems

We like to pretend that they're not because that gives us the impetus to write silly requirements

Can you tell us, if we give you a set of missions, how we should solve this

And from there, we actually wrote a characteristics of need. It's about three and a half pages now

We posted it on SAM.gov so the entire world could see that we were going to do something different for command and control

It needed to work. I cannot stress that enough. It just needed to work

It needed to be able to connect echelons. It needed to be relatively simple. It needed to unburden echelons because I have lots of experience moving 400-pound server racks, both on the intel side and the mission side

And it needed to be something that was configurable to the mission that people were going into

We gave ourselves a pretty radical timeline. We said, hey, we're going to try a demo in about six months

We pulled together a set of teams. At the time, Army Futures Command put out a broad area announcement so everyone could glom on from industry

We down-selected a team. We put them into the field, and we gave them a really difficult challenge

And I don't mean we gave them to special operations. I don't mean we gave them to the 18th Airborne Corps

We gave them to tankers. And we said, if we can make it work for tankers, we can make it work for anyone

And a year later is what you saw, which was the second iteration of that, where we actually scaled that

Okay, okay. So, I mean, the strategy to build next-generation command and control is a really interesting one

and it's moving very quickly, like you've said. can you detail the efforts currently underway to develop prototypes

What do these prototypes look like? There's different layers, I guess. It's like an onion

Yeah. That's a good ogy. And the path for fielding this rapidly

You mentioned there's a prototype of the 4th ID. There's one about to, not sure if it's there, the 25th ID

It's about to go out to the 25th, yeah. So talk about that strategy. Sure

Where you are with that. what we would used to do for programs of record

is you would see a requirements document we would go up with an RFI, we would do an RFP

and a soldier wouldn't get to actually see it for years because it would be in a lab or it would be in industry

we flipped it and what we asked for was a couple things teaming agreements

so not large systems integrators, teams and if you drew it on paper

you wouldn't be able to tell the difference so I'm just going to explain the difference rather than having a black box where I, if Miller Corp was the team lead, I could only go to Miller Corp

That's what the government has a relationship with. I can't see anybody that Miller Corp puts as their second or third tier subs

So our teaming agreements are a little bit different where we expect the team lead to manage their team

but the government is able to go directly to one of those subordinate organizations

and either direct additions, direct subtractions, but also go, hey, I see what you're doing

And we need to tailor that a little bit by giving them direct access to soldiers. We also said that the government is not I don want to own company intellectual property It makes no sense And frankly this is just Alex opinion if a company is willing to sell us their IP that means they don think they can monetize it so it probably not the best

What I do need the government to own is there are integration layers that the government should control and then make sure is very widely known and distributed

so that you, industry, can actually go, I know how to integrate with the government

I know how to integrate with partners. All of this is well documented. So we told everybody we're going to do that

The first team was Team Andrel, and we put them out with 4th Infantry Division

What that looks like is the 4th Infantry Division commander is now doing exercises called IV Sting

and they do those every two months. The first one was in September. The second one will be in November and then January, where he just gets his team into the dirt

and all of the vendors have to show up to make sure that from the division down

we know what the communications architecture looks like. We know what the data architecture looks like

We know what compute platforms have to go and what vehicles and how they have to hook up

and then make sure the cabling's not jacked up, because what we have all seen in experiments

is we'll do something that's an end of one, and as soon as the experiment's done, we'll tear everything down

and it will never work again. And that just can't be the way that it works. So all this stuff stays with that division

25th ID will be the same. It will be Team Lockheed, and they will have to do the same thing

They will have to go out there. They will have to live with 25th ID. They will have to make sure that from the division down

they can actually fight their systems. And there will be a third team that will announce

and they'll go to a third division. So it's rather than having a winner-take-all

and we get locked into something for 10 years or 20 years, we are going to have continuous competition, and soldiers are actually going to vote

Okay, so what is working now so far? What successes have you seen, say, in the first Ivy Sting, for instance

And when something works, how do you kind of keep it in the fold

I mean, you're doing different teams. So if one aspect of Team Andrel's system works really great and another aspect of, say, Team Lockheed Martin for the 25th ID works really great, how do you keep folding that in and creating a system from that

I'm going to tell a story because we get to do it for the first time on September 16th

You'll hear me talk about this a little bit until everybody's like, I'm tired of hearing you talk about it

On September 16th, 2025, 4th Infantry Division, the DeVarty fired cannons off of something that wasn't a-fateds

And I cannot stress how cool that is because my dad got filled at a-fateds going into Desert Storm

And this was the first time that we built a microservice as an Army

and then fielded it on top of, as an application on top of the next-gen command and control architecture

did that in six months, worked through all the security posture, worked through how to actually execute that

worked through 100 years of how cannons used to be fired, actually did digital fires off of something that wasn't a fated

The reason that I get really excited about that is because the way that that kill chain worked

was the Army's Intel data platform, our Intel folks did a target on that

And then they passed it to Maven Smart System, which is what the core headquarters was using and the division headquarters was using

And then they passed that to the next generation command and control architecture so the division and below could do it

And they passed that to a thing called artillery execution suite, which is displacing a fatesids, and they shot

And it worked. And it was API to API to API to API to gun line

And it wasn't, oh, I have to make sure this thing that was developed in a high-end system gets translated to a USMTF message somewhere

and it has to get to the AFADS data protocol, and I have to worry about this K2.4 going somewhere

It was just the same way that all of us would expect our phones to work

where a thing was built in high-tech space and remained in high-tech space until we literally shot a cannon off of it

So what we'll do is as we see those services and those tools exist, it doesn't matter what team you're on, we expect that you have the documentation so that we can move that tool around

Because our next trial is going to be how do we take AXS when we go to 25th ID

How do we make sure that Lockheed's architecture also can accept third-party apps

Okay. Really, really fascinating stuff. I get excited about it. So what's the feedback from the soldiers using it

soldiers are harsh critics. So feedback has been generally positive because they're excited in a couple ways

They're excited because they feel like the Army is listening to them. They feel like the Army is actually trying to solve a fundamental problem

But what I've seen is we have elevated a lot of the conversations because a couple years ago the conversation was generally this thing doesn't work

and that's where the intellectual rigor ended because it just didn't work. and now the feedback that we're seeing, and General Ellis is actually here all day

the 4th Infantry Division Commander, and so is the 25th Infantry Division Commander, J. Bartholomese

So if you see them, talk to them. They're super sociable people, and their soldiers are just giving honest feedback

What I have heard directly from their soldiers is we can elevate the conversation on

hey, this is working, but I need to tailor it to help me because under long distance

where I might have a hill in the way, my line of sight stuff is not going to work. I have multiple backbones of comms

It just needs to be a little bit easier to shift it from one to the other. I don't want to have to do sort of like the AT&T operator thing where I plug it in

That's a great conversation to have. Same thing with some of the amount of data

So now that we have given people access to all data, what we're finding is there's ��

I found a platoon trying to fight the division's cop, right, that there's no need for that

but they could, the technology existed. So now it comes back to how do we make sure that they understand how to tailor their viewshed

and how to tailor their picture so that they're only fighting the thing they need to. Okay

So NGC2 has had a little criticism recently. It's relatively early in all of this, but highlighted as risky, vulnerable

What do you say about that criticism? What specifically was the issue there

and how is the Army managing some of those concerns over vulnerability? I appreciate the question

Okay, so big elephant in the room. So on 4 September, I think, our ECMA, the Enterprise Cloud Management Agency CTO, Gabe, put out a memo

And it was, here are some of the things that you need to do to make sure that the current NGC2 architecture is secure

We saw that memo, which is good because it's holding the PM accountable

It's holding the rest of the team accountable. So there's no negative thing there. we said okay here's all the stuff we have to do it was an internal army documentation if you've

ever looked at emas or if you've ever looked at any cio assessment that was tame compared to some

of the other ones we gave it to the pm team we gave it to the peo team we gave it to the vendor team we went we have to fix this we conducted iv sting a week later to make sure that we knew all the operational threads And then the next week so we in the third week of September we actually did a security stand down

And what we did is we pulled the entire architecture out, because we could, because it's modern and it's not, you know, 30 years of tech debt

We redeployed the entire architecture. In one week, we closed. One of the criticisms was making sure the ICAM, the Identity and Credential Access Management, was squared away

Okay, added that configuration. Making sure that the BCAP, so the access to the Internet, which was approved by the DOD-CIO

making sure that that was documented correctly. Okay, closed that gap. And then some of the vulnerabilities that were documented in there

The way that every system has vulnerabilities, what we had done is we had scanned everything

and then made sure that the platform itself, I'm going to use a visual aid, the platform itself was secure so that anything on top of it

even if it was inherently unsecure, couldn't access the rest of the architecture. So you create an air gap

So we closed all of those. The Anduril team was very responsive because they're the team lead

All of the providers underneath it responded almost immediately. I think as of the end of September, we had a couple of checklist items

but almost everything in that memo ended up being a configuration challenge, configuration delta

and by the end of that third week we had closed all of it. Here's the lesson learned for the Army

We had a TTP challenge, right? So that should have been probably an engagement that was closer

We caught a lot of flack because the memo got out and it didn't have any context to it

which is both frustrating as a bureaucrat and unfortunate for, like, we lost a little bit of time

even though it was only a week. What I will applaud the entire team is, for anybody who's had to deal with ATOs

if that had happened a year ago, that entire process would have taken a year instead of a week

Wow. I want to shift gears and talk a little bit about human-machine integration

We got to see that in 2024 out of Project Convergence, but I'm sure things have come a long way since then

Everything is moving so rapidly. So how has that evolved? What is working

What is not working? What's some of the more challenging aspects to looking at human-machine integration

I'm actually impressed by where the commercial space has gone on autonomy in the last year to 18 months

What I've seen is a lot of the vehicle OEMs have taken investments in autonomy very seriously

So I know that GM and Ford are both investing very heavily in the foundations of autonomy

And what I really mean by that is things like drive-by-wire, things like instrumentation on their vehicles

And therefore, I've seen a lot of companies who only work in the autonomy space be able to vertically integrate their autonomy

And what I mean by that is rather than building a bespoke robot, they're able to take highly instrumented vehicles and then layer their perceptions, all the sensors they want to put on top of it, their automation

So all the decisions that are really hard, like sort of the meat and potatoes of automation, and then their locomotion, how do you tie it back in there

They're able to accelerate their investments because they don't have to try to build something from scratch on the vehicle side

And we went to several vendors on the floor out here that have really good ties to the commercial space, but also some of the winners of our UXS, our Unmanned Systems RPP that went out about a month ago

So went and saw Overland, went and saw I'll see Fortara today, saw some of the other ones

What they are focused on is how do you have a modular robotic system with a base that's very low cost

So things like RCV, you asked about programs that we had to kill under ATI

The challenge there was that the requirement was robot do everything. It's not a real need because then you end up with this thing that is too heavy to be light

It is not armored enough to be heavy. It can't carry the right weapon to go into a heavy formation

It doesn't have the right base to carry like a Miklik for breaching

and it's $3 million each, which means that no unit's going to go and try to break it through their training experiments

So if we can think about what are the lower cost things, like what if that robotic platform only cost $50,000 or $100,000

and then all the GWIS stuff we put on top of it was actually where the cost comes from

it gives us a lot more flexibility. And I say all of that to say this

We are reorganizing how autonomy is led within the Army. So you'll see in the next couple weeks as we talk through some of the things like acquisition reform

which I cannot go into details about, what the new acquisition strategy is, or I'm sorry, the autonomy strategy is

how we're organizing rather than around pieces of kits. So right now there's like a human being who owns controller

There's a human being who owns robot. There's a human being who owns these things, and that's not serving us

So we will organize around missions. So there will be a PM who owns, you know, mobile brigade combat team autonomy

So things like recce. There will be a person that owns things like armored brigade combat team

So things like heavy breaching. And therefore, we can go back to the autonomy vendors and say

here is the very discrete mission we want you to apply autonomy to as part of a formation

not just as a single thing, help us do that. So I'm super excited about where autonomy is going

All right, excellent. The Army is also deeply focused on drones and how they should be used in formations

So how are transformation and contact units helping the servicer wrap your brains around what you're going to need

what the purpose of them are going to be in formations, and in addition to that, you're going to need a lot of them

So how are you thinking about scaling? I'll answer the second part first

Scaling and production is a skill set all its own. And I'm learning more about this

I had some good conversations with some of the CEOs on the floor who actually scale capability to the commercial world

I am a firm believer that the companies who have commercial clientele

who have had to actually scale to a global customer base are who are going to help us scale things like drones

And my rationale for that is if you can make 10 of something, that's interesting

To make 10,000 of something is a different game. And you have to design differently, and you have to manufacture differently, and you have to produce differently

And that is a space that, frankly, the hobby market and the law enforcement market haven't been interested in yet that we are going to have to work through

So we've had a lot of good conversations with the Department of War. We've had a lot of good conversations with the Office of Strategic Capital on what that should look like

I will tell you, with our transforming and contact brigades and the divisions, there is no..

lack of appetite for how to apply drones differently. So we started with 2nd Brigade 101st

and a lot of that was just recce. So they were figuring out how to use their drones for

reconnaissance. By the time we got to the 1st Brigade 101st, you know, four rotations later

their medics were using it. Their recce strike companies were using it. For strike

they had long-range UAS folks who, you know, it wasn't shadow. It was things like the Ghost. It

It was things like the C-100. It was all of these different capabilities that they were starting to tie together to go

hey, I can get 40 kilometers past the forward line of troops. I can have a forward observer that's robotic

I can match that with some of my EW folks, and I can actually generate a target that we can strike

So they're finding ways to do it. I do think that one of our challenges is going to be how do we scale it up

And then how do we make sure that we learn the right lessons from what's happening overseas and not over-rotate on the wrong lessons

Because we do not fight the same way that some of those armies fight. We still hold true the principles of fires and maneuver, not just maneuver for fires

Okay. We haven't talked about counter-UAS yet. So walk me through how the Army is trying to develop counter-UAS capability across the force

And one of the interesting efforts out there is the project flytrap with 5th Corps in Europe

So how has the counter-UAS development evolved? I love it. The first thing I will tell you is watch out for Major General Lozano

He's the PEO for Missiles in Space. He'll make an announcement hopefully around 10 today for the winner of the IBCS maneuver competition

So that is the replacement for FADC2. So the counter UAS C2 system that we had for 30 to 40 years again did exactly what it was designed to do for Patriot did exactly what it was supposed to do for things like Avenger and Stinger Not what we need for the counter UAS fight in terms of things like airspace management and multiple asset management So he will announce the winner of that today That was

a great partnership with the Army and DIU. We had several vendors. We made them go to

Flytrap in Germany. We made them go to Yuma and shoot. So there is a lot of rigor behind

that, and he'll announce that winner. We sunk last night on that. Flytrap. So the theory

the case was simple. How about we do a combined exercise with the UK in Europe on how you do maneuver

counter-UAS. So most of our counter-US was point defense. It was how do you protect this

place. The thought process was, hey, companies, platoons, and battalions are going to need protection too. They have the inherent right to

self-defense. And this is a term that I use. UAS are like this generation's IED

only they fly now and they fly very fast. So how do you give the ability to sense

How do you give the ability to decide? How do you give the ability to act? How do you automate as much of that as possible

and how do you distribute that across their force? So we did Flytrap 1, 2, and 3, actually, Major Patalino, my ex-so

he gets a ton of credit because he worked directly with 5th Corps, directly with UCRF, directly with 2nd Cavalry Regiment

to design those exercises. And I say exercises because they were in the field

at Hohenfels with maneuver units, doing maneuver things, trying kit and capability

We gave them everything in the coffers. If we had a piece of tech, whether it was a radar or an acoustic sensor or an RF sensor

or an optical sensor, we said, get into the field. This is where trade shows are very different than field exercises because there was a lot

of stuff that I said, we will get you into the field and companies went, not ready. We would

much rather go to, you know, this show or talk to this person. Um, so we saw what worked and what

didn I I am I astounded by what most of the infantrymen not air defenders um told us about counter us and how they plan to integrate those kits Now what I did find is we don really have a good network architecture for it

That's where I think Nixian Command and Control will play a huge role. The 2nd Calvary Regiment S-6 told me that 80% of her network was chewed up by just telemetry data from RF sensors moving UAS data

I'm very happy that we learned that at Hohenfels rather than in a fight

So now we can go back and refine that and think through, hey, where should we apply things like AI on the vehicle

Where should we apply data minimization on the vehicle rather than trying to move it back to the cloud or just push through on the network

Okay. Well, I know that that's continuing, so that'll be something to watch. You are also deeply engaged in the M1E3 Abrams tank modernization effort

You're trying to move at a record pace here. You embarked on this earlier this year

So how has it been going? What are you specifically looking at accelerating

Colonel Ryan Howell is here as well. So he is the deputy PEO Ground Combat Systems

Amazing partner. Very long story short, when the chief and I went to Detroit 18 months ago

the PEO team at the time said that we would not see the M1E3 until 2032

And we said no. Gave them a challenge. Gave General Dynamics a challenge

Said I want a tank by the end of the year. And we need a platoon by the end of next year

We understand that there's a lot of process things that we the government impose

Those things like critical design review, things like final design review, those are government processes

If it is not a risk to a soldier's life, limb, or eyesight, or hearing

we should be able to move those processes faster. Things like destructive testing where we keep our soldiers safe got it Those are absolutely things we must do But the process of just sort of staring at the problem for three or four years is asinine

and is no longer acceptable. So what Colonel Howell has promised is that we will have the first E3 pre-prototype in

December, so like two months from now. He has told me several times the paint will still be wet

The paint will still be wet. It will be very fresh. but our goal is to have the first platoon of those tanks by the end of next year

And the rationale, the way that we move that faster was we focused on commercialization

So rather than building a bespoke power plant and a bespoke transmission and a bespoke integration cell

we said, hey, there are other companies that do this. Like CAT does very big machines

CAT does the massive dump trucks that do quarrying. They generate enough power to move the Abrams

Same with the SAPA transmission that they're going to put in there. And the other cool thing is right now, if an Abrams has to go into maintenance, it has to come home

Or it has to go to a maintenance depot that's in Germany, maybe Poland

if we have commercial parts in there, we can actually fix it anywhere in the world

as long as those parts are available. So the same mentality that we're taking with the ISV, we're going to take with the E3

And you'll see a lot of that thought process go into some more of our vehicles. And I'll give a shameless plug

The chief is doing a transformation panel today. General George is doing a transformation panel today at 1030

and we'll have a lot of those actors up there talking about this. Okay

Well, I know you need to get to another meeting. So that brings us to the end of today's discussion

A big thank you to Dr. Miller and to Daniel Tenney from Lockheed Martin for sharing their perspectives this morning

And, of course, thank you to Lockheed Martin for supporting this important conversation here at the AUSA annual meeting

And for continued coverage of Army modernization, emerging technologies, and defense industry trends

visit defensenews.com for full reporting. Thank you. Thank you all