Army Futures Command prepares for 'significant transformation' as warfare sees an evolution
AUSTIN (KXAN) — The group in charge of modernizing the military will soon undergo one of the “most significant transformation(s) the Army has seen in a generation.” Army Futures Command (AFC), based in downtown Austin, will soon merge with the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) after an order by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
The order, issued on April 30, aims to divest “outdated, redundant and inefficient programs.”
A spokesperson with AFC told KXAN the Army Transformation Initiative will “make the Army more lethal.”
“These changes will help the Army transform with urgency to meet the challenges in the priority theater, the Indo-Pacific and breakdown institutional barriers and inertia that undermine our transformation efforts,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson did not have details on what the merger will look like at the time.
“The army headquarters in downtown Austin is here because we wanted to be in a tech hub. We wanted to be with startups. We wanted to be with venture capitalists. We wanted to be with a center of academia,” said General Michael C. McCurry, chief of staff at AFC.
Planning for the future of war
AFC, according to McCurry, is designed to anticipate the future of war and figure out what technology and tools are needed.
“I was a young major in the Middle East during the global war on terror, and, you know, I remember the first day I saw a great big unmanned system,” McCurry said.
Today, unmanned systems are commonplace. They can even be spotted on Austin’s streets in the form of driverless cars.
“My number one goal is just to make sure it’s never going to be a fair fight,” McCurry said. “That our soldiers are armed with things that make it not a fair fight for the guy on the other side.”
Driverless vehicles, like drones, once served as scouts that snapped photos of the enemy. The future could see these tools become the vanguard.
“I grew up in the cavalry, and we always said, ‘make contact with the smallest element.’ Well, now it’s make contact with an unmanned element first,” McCurry said.
The general thinks first about protecting soldiers, whom he calls the “silver bullet” of the U.S. Armed Forces. He has two children and a son-in-law currently serving.
“Other countries around the world fight a group of things, we fight with a formation of capability. And we try to build that around our soldiers,” McCurry said.
McCurry said integrating soldiers and technology is the real future of war.
“Is it something that has to be done a long time where somebody won’t be able to go to sleep? Is it something that’s exceedingly dangerous, like breaching a minefield or penetrating an air defense line? Those things we want to do with machines.”
Announced in July 2018, Army Futures Command’s Austin headquarters was established by President Donald Trump during his first term in office.
