Driscoll: Soldiers Lead the Way on Lethality, Innovation
June 6, 2025, at Fort Drum, New York.
Wed, 06/18/2025 - 15:00
Soldiers on the ground are best suited to ensure that the Army is transforming into the most efficient, lethal force possible, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said during a recent episode of the From the Green Notebook podcast.
“Instead of saying, ‘Hey, I need to change to move the ship,’ or ‘Gen. [Randy] George needs to move the ship,’ ” Driscoll said, referring to the Army chief of staff, “we need to … just provide air cover down so that the soldiers can move the ship.”
Fighting in Ukraine has shown that warfare has changed, Driscoll said. “In a lot of ways, the average soldier, if we just give them a credit card and say, ‘Innovate to save your life and the life of your buddy if we ever deploy,’ … I think they would be superb at it,” he said. “We just need to get out of their way.”
About 15 years after he served as an armor officer with the 10th Mountain Division, Driscoll is three months into his time as the 26th Army secretary, a position that has challenged him to remain calm in the face of inefficiencies he refers to during the interview as “irrationality … at scale.”
Spending time with soldiers and understanding their experiences limits groupthink, Driscoll said, adding that about 90% of the valuable feedback he’s gained about the Army in the past three months has come from having those conversations and “in those moments.”
Driscoll leads an Army that has just celebrated its 250th birthday and is working through a sweeping transformation that includes transforming in contact, which puts new technologies in soldiers’ hands for testing, and the Army Transformation Initiative, a plan announced in May that eliminates obsolete equipment, streamlines the force and pursues capabilities such as drones and long-range fires.
https://www.ausa.org/news/driscoll-soldiers-lead-way-lethality-innovation
