Hegseth orders sweeping changes to Army structure

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is directing sweeping transformational changes at the Army.

In an April 30 memo to the secretary of the Army, Hegseth ordered a vast set of alterations to the service aimed at building a leaner and more lethal force that prioritizes defending the homeland and deterring China in the Indo-Pacific.

The administration has made homeland defense — to include securing the southern border and building the “Golden Dome” missile defense system — as well as deterring China, top priorities. The latter includes shifting resources to the Pacific at the potential expense of other theaters, according to press reports. 

Some of the changes pushed by Hegseth in his directive — such as consolidated budget lines in unmanned systems, counter-drone systems and electronic warfare, force structure changes and expanded use of other transaction agreements — are already being pursued.

The memo, however, directs much deeper change to include consolidating certain headquarters elements and changes to how the Army contracts, some of which were reported earlier this week by Breaking Defense.

“[T]he Army must prioritize investments in accordance with the Administration’s strategy, ensuring existing resources are prioritized to improve long-range precision fires, air and missile defense including through the Golden Dome for America, cyber, electronic warfare, and counter-space capabilities,” Hegseth wrote. “I am directing the Secretary of the Army to implement a comprehensive transformation strategy, streamline its force structure, eliminate wasteful spending, reform the acquisition process, modernize inefficient defense contracts, and overcome parochial interests to rebuild our Army, restore the warrior ethos, and reestablish deterrence.”

Among some of the biggest changes, the memo directs the secretary of the Army to downsize or close redundant headquarters. That includes merging Army Futures Command — responsible for developing requirements and experimentation for future capabilities — and Training and Doctrine Command, both four-star organizations, and merging four-star headquarters Forces Command with Army North and Army South into a single headquarters focused on homeland defense.

It also calls for restructuring the Army’s sustainment organizations to realign elements within the four-star Army Materiel Command including the integration of Joint Munitions Command and Army Sustainment Command to optimize operational efficiency.

Other force structure changes Hegseth called for include merging headquarters of organizations to generate combat power capable of synchronizing kinetic and non-kinetic effects, spaced-based capabilities and unmanned systems, reducing and restructuring manned attack helicopter formations, and augmenting the force with drone swarms and divesting of “outdated” formations, such as select armor and aviation units across the total Army, though those select units were not named in the directive.

Some initiatives require fielding certain capabilities or meeting other objectives by a set time — mostly either by 2026 or 2027 — such as achieving “electromagnetic and air-littoral dominance by 2027.”

The Army must field unmanned systems and ground- and air-launched effects in every division and extend advanced manufacturing such as 3D printing to operational units by 2026. The service must also improve counter-drone systems and integrate capabilities into platoons by 2026 and companies by 2027, and enable AI-driven command and control at theater, corps and division headquarters by 2027, according to Hegseth.

On the procurement side, the memo directs ending procurement of obsolete systems as well as canceling or scaling back ineffective or redundant programs such as manned aircraft, excess ground and outdated drones, eliminating “wasteful” contracts and “excess” travel funding and expanding multi-year procurement agreements when it’s cost-effective.

“What we’ve learned in the last couple of years in the conflict in Ukraine is that the old way of doing war will no longer suffice,” Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said Thursday morning in an appearance on Fox and Friends alongside Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George.

“Under the leadership for President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth, they basically have empowered the United States 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 be,” Driscoll said. “These are hard decisions. These are legacy systems that have been around for a long time. There’s a lot of momentum. There’s a lot of lobbyists around them. but with the leadership of those gentlemen and our chain of command, we have been empowered to go do what’s right.”

George noted that there isn’t necessarily a problem with innovation as soldiers have been innovating the last few years, particularly under one of his keystone efforts dubbed transforming-in-contact since early 2024. The initiative aims to speed up how the Army buys capabilities and designs its forces by injecting emerging capabilities into units and letting them experiment with them during exercises and deployments.

Three brigades transformed into either mobile or light brigade combat teams over the last year as part of transformating-in-contact 1.0. Now, the service is pushing the initiative to the next level and focusing on armor formations and divisions as a whole, to include enabling units, National Guard units and multi-domain task forces, as well as technologies such as autonomy.

“We don’t have a challenge with the innovation. The innovation’s happening down with our soldiers. We’re changing formations right now,” George said alongside Driscoll. “We had an exercise [where] we had more than 200 drones in a brigade combat team. We’re watching what’s happening. We know we need to change and … we just can’t go fast enough, we got to speed that change.”

George was referencing the last transforming-in-contact brigade, 3^rd Brigade, 10^th Mountain Division’s culminating exercise in January where they used more drones than had ever previously been used.

Regarding the change to formations, the Army’s number two officer last week said the service is planning to approve force design updates on what those mobile and light brigades will look like going forward based on the transforming-in-contact effort. Those changes are expected to be made soon and released in October.

Officials have stressed more experimentation is to come as they don’t necessarily know the right mix of certain capabilities such as drones at echelon. More experimentation is needed to better understand what forces might need in the future.