Army Combines Commands to Propel Innovation Under New Transformation Plan

Army Futures Command (AFC) is merging with the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) to form a single, streamlined command, part of a broader push for efficiency from the Trump administration. Lt. Gen. Miles Brown, AFC’s deputy commanding general, outlined a new transformation strategy to accelerate innovation and technology adoption under the combined command during the 2025 Oracle Defense Tech Summit in Austin, Texas, last week.

The merger comes as part of Defense Secretary’s Pete Hegseth call to build a “leaner, more lethal force” in a May 2025 Defense Department memo, which sparked sweeping changes across the Army like the newly announced Army Transformation Initiative and “downsiz[ing], consolidat[ing] or clos[ing] redundant headquarters.”

Taking a More Dynamic Approach to Digital Transformation

Brown outlined the command’s new strategic focus, which moves away from “deliberate transformation” in favor of a more dynamic “transformation and contact” approach. He said the Army’s transformation and contact approach is “informed by real world events” such as conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran. The strategy is designed to bring technologies into the fold within 18 months.

Following “transformation and contact” is “delivered transformation,” which takes about three to five years. Finally, the command enters “concept driven transformation,” which goes beyond a seven year timeframe and consists of the Army’s “really big bets.”

Brown said that the command has also tackled how the Army sets requirements and has spent much of its time reshaping how the service sets requirements. The command has found cost savings in sunsetting outdated requirements that were costing the Army billions of dollars.

“I think requirements, for me, it’s a big R word, it’s a property. It’s not something that is an afterthought or an additional duty. It’s like the primary role of Army Futures Command,” Brown said.

Bolstering Partnerships to Quickly Adopt Innovative Tools

Brown told the audience that the merger will increase the command from around 35,000 personnel to 350,000 personnel in short order. He said that as the Army continues to pursue its modernization goals through the new command, the service will need to continue partnering with academia and industry to integrate new technologies.

“You have to have world class government leadership, world class academic leadership plugins and world class industry,” Brown said. “As we look to the future, we’re looking as much as we can for public, private partnerships, for constructions, for teams of teams to really solve problems. The years of us doing 50-year buys with one sole provider are probably not feasible anymore.”

Kim Lynch, executive vice president of government defense and intelligence at Oracle, echoed Brown’s sentiment and highlighted the ways that partnerships are driving innovation.

“We can’t do innovation in silos, so we want to build teams, and we’re seeing an interesting change in the government where they’re looking to the tech companies to be the primes and to be the ones who are leading contracts with team members that bring unique capability,” Lynch told GovCIO Media & Research in an interview at the event.

Advancing Leadership Development

Brown also emphasized that as technology becomes more prevalent on and around the battlefield, strong leadership will still remain paramount in maintaining a tactical edge.

“Leader development is super important. It’s how we build leaders. Our asymmetric advantages are our leaders. Our adversaries, their combat depictions are in oil paintings. Ours are not. We have full motion video. We have an extraordinarily developed and trained set of leaders in force,” Brown said.