The U.S. Army of 2027 will look very little like the Army of today. Amidst the many guidance orders and memos flowing around Washington, the Army transformation message stands out for its sweeping changes.
The marching orders are clear: reorient American soldiers around the prioritized missions of homeland defense and deterring Beijing from using force to achieve its political goals.
Poland M1 Abrams Tank. Image Credit: General Dynamics.
In order to meet the mandate at an accelerated pace, the Army will:
– shed legacy equipment,
– restructure and consolidate headquarters, and
– streamline headcount across Army components of active, Guard and Reserve, as well as Army civilian staff.
Army acquisition reform will run on a concurrent track with organizational changes in part to help offset the costs of change. Money will be reprioritized to match strategic guidance, including for Golden Dome and missile defenses, long range fires, EW, counter-space capabilities, and AI-driven command and control to name a few.
To support all these financial shifts, and to keep up with the battlefields of today and tomorrow, Army budgeteers will collapse various program line items into new broad budget categories. Examples of capability-based funding includes financial bins for counter-UAS, electronic warfare, and drone swarms.
There are major posture changes ahead, as well. As directed by the Secretary of Defense, the Army will increase forward presence in Asia through more rotational deployments, expand prepositioned stocks in the region, and amp up exercises with partner and allied militaries.
Also included in the guidance is an emphasis on rebuilding the Army’s organic industrial base and wider defense industrial base. The secretary calls for greater use of advanced manufacturing, 3D printing, and additive manufacturing to all operational units by 2026—just 8 months away.
Army depots, arsenals, and installations will all look for redundancies to consolidate operations. Each of these will also seek new leasing opportunities outside of government for companies looking to grow that support soldiers.
What are the tradeoffs of these major shifts?
Manned attack aviation will be reduced while much greater numbers of drones supplement current flying units. Certain armor and aviation units will cease to exist altogether.
Major headquarters would merge under this proposal, thereby reducing headcount and real estate footprint. General officer ranks will also be culled.
Even existing contracts will be revisited under the plan, and all future contracts will be written differently. An example of this is to include a “right to repair” clause in Army maintenance work contracts and expansion of OTA agreements whenever possible for faster delivery of product to soldiers.
It is clear Army leaders are laser focused on speed over perfection when trying to field new capabilities from non-traditional companies.
Additionally, performance based logistics will be the preference when possible. The Army also will expand the number and type of contracts under multi-year authority to provide stability to industry and greater savings for the taxpayer.
This bold effort to set the Army on a narrower path for its people, missions and units is important to refocus the organization. Once the machinery of bureaucracy gets busy with these new directives, areas of future examination should include the size and workload of Army civilians, upending the requirements processes for new capabilities, demanding requirements documents for any system to be under 10 pages, and an emphasis on rapid procurement at scale versus simply more dollars for more research and development projects.
Finally, Army leaders should see change as a constant and continue identifying other necessary and overdue alterations. Talent management improvement comes to mind. Recommendations to update the force include reining in mission creep for the service, cutting workload when billets are reduced instead of squeezing the balloon, reducing the number of expired executive agent responsibilities for the Army, transferring work outside of the Defense Department to other federal agencies or organizations when possible for non-core work, and a broader HR overhaul.
The U.S. Army is in transition from an industrial force to a digitally driven, technologically superior, information-dominant branch. Recent global conflicts have revealed vulnerabilities in U.S. defense production, challenged optimistic assumptions regarding warfare’s intensity and duration, and highlighted bureaucratic shortcomings in rapidly integrating advanced technologies.
Therefore, the Army must adopt a wartime posture—accelerating modernization initiatives and eliminating inefficiencies characteristic of peacetime.
About the Author: Mackenzie Eaglen
Now a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a regular guest lecturer at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security.
