On the last day of April, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signed a memo that has the potential to unleash profound change in the Army. After decades of being organized, trained and equipped mainly for operations in Europe and the Middle East, the Army is sharpening its focus on deterring Chinese aggression in the Pacific, along with border security and missile defense.
The changes, which were recommended by the Army leadership, are sweeping. If carried out as envisioned, they will transform the kinds of weapons America uses, how they are bought and how fast they get into the hands of soldiers.
These changes reflect President Trump’s main national security priorities and have their roots in the outset of his previous term. At the time, the nation’s oldest military service was in powerful need of modernization. It needed to reflect a new national defense strategy after more than a decade and a half of preparing units for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I was the under secretary and later the secretary of the Army during Mr. Trump’s first term. Those kinds of missions shaped my own military experience. One month after the Sept. 11 attacks, I deployed with the 75th Ranger Regiment to Afghanistan for what at the time was considered to be operations to kill or capture leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It turned out to be the opening salvo of two decades of conflict.
During that period, Russia and China steadily expanded their territorial ambitions and modernized their militaries. The U.S. Army was largely equipped with the kinds of conventional weapons, such as tanks, combat vehicles and helicopters, first produced in the Reagan administration and upgraded multiple times over the next 40-plus years.
Recognizing the gap between our capabilities and the threats that had emerged, Army leaders during the first Trump administration conducted something we called “Night Court,” a reference to the 1980s NBC sitcom of that name. We reviewed hundreds of Army programs and delivered our verdicts — keep or cancel.
