Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, left, and Gen. Randy George, the service’s chief of staff, testify Wednesday, June 4, 2025, during a House Armed Services Committee hearing about the Army’s plan to restructure the force. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)

House lawmakers grilled top Army officials on Wednesday about their plans to transform the service branch under a new, cost-cutting program aimed at eliminating outdated equipment and shrinking the staffs of unit and command headquarters.

Republicans and Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee expressed various concerns about the lack of detail put forward by the service under its Army Transformation Initiative announced last month. That plan was announced in part as a response to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth orders for the Pentagon’s military services to cut their budgets by 8% and eliminate dozens of general officer positions.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told lawmakers that the initiative — which he calls ATI — is a work in progress but is being driven more by a need to make the service more lethal in a potential conflict with a near-peer adversary, such as China, than as an across-the-board money saver. The first step of the transformation process, he said, was to move some 1,000 soldiers — including general officers — out of headquarters elements and into combat formations.

“The way that we envision [the transformation] and how we have described it throughout the formations, is this will be an iterative process, and so there will be no one date where everything with our first batch of ATI will be completed,” Driscoll said during a lengthy hearing meant to examine the Army’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal, which has yet to be submitted to Congress. “We will be hopefully doing what the best companies in America do, and learning as we go.”

To date, the Army has announced the initiative seeks to cut some outdated and underperforming vehicles including the decades-old Humvee and the newer Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, as well as cutting the AH-64D Apache attack helicopter in favor of new drones and the state-of-the-art AH-64E model Apache. Driscoll said the plan would also see three National Guard Armored Brigade Combat Teams trade their M1 Abrams tanks for lighter weapons systems. Driscoll also canceled the 2-year-old M10 Booker light tank-like armored vehicle program, under the transformation umbrella.

Lawmakers expressed various reasons for concern about the plan. Some members said they worried the Army would repeat mistakes of past military transformation efforts that ultimately failed at the expense of billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Others said they were concerned the service was being forced to make arbitrary cuts to meet a shrinking budget. Many, including the committee’s chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and its top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, said they were concerned the lack of a proposed budget — the federal government budget request to Congress is now later than any budget proposal in recent U.S. history — would slow needed changes in the Army.

“The broad structure of the ATI sounds encouraging,” Rogers told Driscoll, who testified alongside Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff. “… But we need to see your homework. An overhaul of this significance should be based on thorough assessment of requirements, and it should include a detailed blueprint of the specific changes being proposed and how the Army plans to implement them.”

Rogers said he was worried the policy changes were a result of expected budget cuts.

“I can’t overstate that we are not going to be hostile to dramatic changes if it’s being driven by the need for change and not just to meet some budget number that somebody has handed to you,” he said.

Some of the efforts are already underway, Driscoll said. The service is moving quickly to combine some large commands under single four-star generals. Those include merging Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command under one general as Transformation and Training Command to be headquartered in Austin, Texas. Futures Command and TRADOC are both led by four-star general officers. The Army has two additional four-star commands — Army Materiel Command and Army Forces Command — which are also absorbing other missions under the plan.

But some lawmakers worried the lack of public detail about the changes was driving uncertainty and stress among troops in those commands.

Rep. Robert Wittman, R-Va., said there has been a “high level of anxiety” among his constituents at Fort Eustis, which houses Training and Doctrine Command.

“This does involve people’s lives,” Wittman said. “It involved uniformed service members and the civilian staffs, and they deserve to know what’s going on. … I can tell you that the rumor mill there is running wild. There is chaos there at Fort Eustis because there’s lack of certainty.”

George, the Army’s top general since 2023, said he and other service leaders have been having “tough conversations” all around the Army as part of the initiative. But he said the service was dedicated to ensuring it took care of its soldiers amid the changes.

“I think this is going to make us better,” the general said.

The Army is also asking Congress, under the Army Transformation Initiative, for more flexibility in its funding — primarily as a way to purchase modern, commercially built weapons quickly and avoid the archaic acquisition process that forces the Pentagon to spend years designing and testing weapons before it can adopt the platforms.

Driscoll and George pointed to Ukraine’s use of cheap, off-the-shelf drones against Russian invaders as an example of what the U.S. Army could be doing with those authorities. He also said he believed there were smaller American companies that could build critical Army munitions for much cheaper than what the service now pays massive corporations.

“We are getting ready to do some tests this summer with long-range missiles that are a 10th of the price” of what the Army pays for similar munitions, George said. “When you start talking about magazine depth … we can invest in things like that that are much more cost effective, and I think that’s where we need the flexibility.”

Despite some new details Wednesday, lawmakers said the Army needs to make its transformation plans formal in the coming months.

“The Army Transformation Initiative has generated more questions than answers,” Rep. Derek Tran, D-Calif., concluded.