The Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) Global Force Symposium & Exposition 2025 took a deep dive into what’s next for the service when it met March 25-27 at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The event welcomed about 6,000 attendees, including senior military, industry, and academic leaders, who discussed concepts related to this year’s theme: “Driving Continuous Transformation of Ready Combat Formations.”
AUSA defines continuous transformation as a “framework for ensuring the institutional adaptability required for the Army, as described in the Army Warfighting Concept, to dominate on the land and from the land in an era marked by disruptive and rapid technological change and great power competition.”
In addition to presentations, workshops, and panel discussions around this topic, the event brought in more than 200 exhibitors to showcase their latest products and services.
Industry Initiative
Gen. James E. Rainey, Commanding General, United States Army Futures Command (credit: DVIDS)
Part of continuous transformation is modernization, and Gen. James Rainey, commander of Army Futures Command, said that can’t happen without industry’s help. To that end, he promised that the service would make it easier for companies to understand exactly what’s needed.
“My commitment to you, the Army’s going to be a better customer on this journey,” Rainey said. “We need you on this.”
Some of what the Army needs is tools to support data-centric warfare, which helps commanders make decisions quickly, and ways to work effectively with autonomous systems. “We’re figuring out how to combine our great people with unmanned systems,” added Rainey.
In fact, the service is getting ready to deploy 1,100 unmanned aerial systems (UAS), 250-plus electronic warfare systems, 2,000 mobility platforms, and 1,200 counter-UAS systems.
David Fitzgerald, a senior official performing the duties of the undersecretary of the Army, emphasized the need to transform quickly. “We have to do more to overtake the rate at which our adversaries are transforming,” Fitzgerald said.
To do that, he and Col. Christopher Dempsey, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, emphasized the need for testing and experimentation and pointed to the transformation in contact initiative, which lets warfighters test technology.
“I think the biggest thing, at least from my perspective, transformation in contact provides is the opportunity and freedom to experiment,” Dempsey said. “I’ve been in the Army 25 years, and I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced an environment to experiment and make mistakes and try things.”
Entities that exist to facilitate testing include the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC), U.S. Army Redstone Test Center (RTC) and their subordinates, which are made up of 48% government contractors. They conduct 2,300 tests of new technology, equipment, and more and can start earlier in the acquisition cycle, said RTC Technical Director Kenny Chenoweth.
“By getting involved sooner, we can identify issues earlier, leading to faster fixes and better solutions,” he commented.
Acquisition Overhaul
Gone are the days of programs of record for non-capital equipment, said retired Lt. Gen. Neil Thurgood, a former director of the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, who is now a senior vice president at Anduril. Calling the Army “hoarders of people and equipment,” he urged the service to “throw things away” every few years.
One approach is to use commercially developed technology. Jennifer Swanson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for data, engineer, and software, said that’s what is happening with software. “A lot of the work that we’ve done over the past three years in the Army to change how we approach software is not because we’re developing the software,” she said. “It’s being able to adopt the software [industry] is developing.”
Future Force
2025 AUSA Global Force Symposium Day 2: Panel 4 – Institutional Training and Transformation (credit: DVIDS)
Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, deputy commanding general and acting commander of Army Materiel Command, explained his visions for future battlefields, including the need for telemaintenance to support troops in the field. For instance, he said, imagine that an autonomous watercraft delivers a part for a malfunctioning High Mobility Artillery Rocket System and the crew can speak remotely with the engineer who designed the system about installing it.
“We just have to have the intestinal fortitude and courage to do the right things, to pick winners and losers to accelerate successful initiatives,” Mohan said.
Whatever the next iteration of the Army looks like, the institutional force must be in lockstep with fighting formations to ensure that all lessons learned are properly incorporated, said Maj. Gen. Christopher Beck, commanding general of the Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence.
“At the end of the day, this means that we require everybody to be part of this discussion,” Beck said. “This is deliberate transformation, and ultimately continuous transformation, that drives lethality in our warfighting and [allows] us to deliver combat-ready formations.”
Despite how quickly changes to the Army are already happening, it’s clear that there will be a lot more to watch for at the 2026 AUSA Global Force event!