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18 Jun 25. Army Plans to Eliminate Programs Not Contributing to Lethality. The Army Transformation Initiative will reexamine all requirements and eliminate unnecessary ones, prioritize initiatives that contribute to lethality, and empower leaders to take risks and learn from failure, said Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll today during a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee in Washington. In a May 1, 2025, letter to the force, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy A. George, who also testified today, stated the service was implementing the initiative as part of a comprehensive transformation strategy, consistent with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s, April 30, 2025, directive titled Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform.
“The Army Transformation Initiative will make us into an Army that is lean, agile and relentlessly focused on empowering its soldiers. We need to get rid of what we don’t need, acquire what we do and chisel our organization down to a lean, lethal fighting machine,” Driscoll said.
The secretary added that he believes the Army “has become calcified” and suffered from years of inefficiencies, slow-moving processes and wasteful spending. He cited program lobbyists and bureaucrats for overtaking the Army’s ability to prioritize soldiers and warfighting. Driscoll said Ukraine and Israel exemplify how readily available technology can disrupt battlefield dynamics and what happens when change is embraced, noting, “They are demonstrating why our Army needs to transform now and that we can’t waste even a single minute.”
George said commercial technology is rapidly evolving — especially artificial intelligence and autonomous systems — and it is impacting the character of war.
“We understand that we must transform to stay ahead of our adversaries, and we need to get better by 2026 and 2027, not by 2030,” he said.
George told lawmakers that the Army will cancel obsolete and unneeded programs and procure modular, open system architecture designs that can be repeatedly updated. The service also intends to consolidate its headquarters and implement effective, modern business systems.
Driscoll and George both cited recruiting successes, noting the Army met its annual recruiting goal four months ahead of schedule.
“Our recruiters, soldiers and families are inspiring fellow Americans to step up during a time of global uncertainty and complex threats. They are the very best our nation has to offer,” Driscoll said.
George said the Army’s most productive recruiting period is the summer months, and he expects a significant increase in recruits added to the ranks before the end of this fiscal year.
“Our Army is a professional team that remains focused on its warfighting mission, and young Americans want to be a part of it,” the general said. (Source: U.S. DoD)
18 Jun 25. DARPA Calls on Industry to Assist With Improving, Strengthening DOD Cybersecurity. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a Resilient Software Systems Accelerator program to kick-start the widespread adoption of math-based software development practices to make military systems inherently more secure against cyberthreats. During the Resilient Software Systems Colloquium held in Arlington, Virginia, yesterday, leaders from the Defense Department, DARPA and industry spoke about aging IT infrastructure, security standards and software tools and techniques known as “formal methods,” that have been proven to significantly improve the resiliency, security and functionality of military systems used within the defense community. Director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office Kathleen Fisher described formal methods as “mathematically based approaches” that allow the user to prove properties about software to obtain guarantees, adding that DARPA has been involved in developing tools related to formal methods for over a decade. Formal methods refer to techniques used to develop high-assurance, verified software, where mathematical proofs are employed to demonstrate that software on a system will behave as intended. The application of formal methods contributes to the stability and resistance of a software system to hacking. Fisher said DARPA is eager for industry partners to get involved, which is why the agency is launching the Resilient Software Systems Accelerator. The program will provide seed funding to formal methods tool developers who partner with defense companies to apply formal methods tools and measure their level of effort to implement them.
“We are here to call you to action, to seize this opportunity and to … motivate you to listen and to think about where you have systems at home that might benefit from formal methods,” Fisher said. “DARPA is announcing today that we are going to … offer funding to do a red team assessment of a system. You guys do this cyber retrofit and then do another red team to assess the difference, [and then] document what you did in the retrofit in a best practices standard format.”
As part of advancing formal methods within DOD, DARPA is also partnering with each of the military services on a capstone demonstration of formal methods application. Each capstone demonstration includes a red team assessment of its current state of cyber vulnerabilities followed by a formal methods retrofit, Fisher explained. Once the retrofit is completed, a follow-on red team assessment will be conducted to test system reliability. The Air Force is starting the capstone demonstration by retrofitting software on the MQ-9 Reaper aircraft. Fisher said other services are not far behind and will soon participate in their capstone demonstrations. During a recorded address shown at the event, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael said the Defense Department must now explore new ways to enhance cybersecurity.
“Our adversaries are relentless,” Michael said. “So, we need systems that are resilient for today’s threats and ready and adaptable for tomorrow’s conflicts. That’s why we are taking decisive action alongside our partners in acquisition and sustainment and DARPA.”
Over the past decade, he said, DARPA and partners have worked to transform formal methods into more accessible and practical solutions than ever before.
“These advancements enable us to scale secure software systems across all DOD from legacy platforms to cutting-edge and hypersonic technologies — defending our digital landscape,” Michael said. “Yet, we have not fully harnessed this potential across the defense industrial base and DOD, leaving critical vulnerabilities unaddressed.”
The colloquium brought together more than 300 leaders from DOD, industry and academia, and Michael said it fostered the collaboration needed to address the critical software challenges facing the Defense Department.
“Our goal today [is] … to inspire widespread adoption of high-assurance formal methods, whether developed by DARPA or not,” he said. “Through use cases, lessons learned and best practices, we’ve shown how this strengthens cyber resiliency, reduces costs and simplifies processes like securing authority to operate.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
18 Jun 25. DOD Will Pass Audit by 2028, Comptroller Confirms. The Marine Corps has already passed a financial audit, and the Defense Department has until 2028 to do the same, the department’s comptroller said today during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington.
“The first day we came in, was one of the first topics the secretary and I discussed, and he actually just put out a memo with guidance for milestones each fiscal year that the department is going to to achieve the financial audit by 2028 or sooner — as he has challenged us to do,” said Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, who is currently performing the duties of the Defense Department comptroller.
MacDonnell noted that in addition to the Marine Corps, two other DOD components have passed an audit.
“Within the next three years, under the secretary’s guidance, the remainder of the department will achieve the clean audit opinion,” she said.
MacDonnell was joined on Capitol Hill today by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The leaders testified regarding the department’s fiscal year 2026 budget. Earlier this month, the Office of Management and Budget released to Congress President Donald J. Trump’s recommendations on FY26 discretionary funding levels. While a full presidential budget recommendation has not yet been released, the proposal includes an increase in DOD’s budget to approximately $961.6 bn, about $113.3bn higher than the enacted budget for the department in FY25.
“This budget makes historic investments in living conditions, in barracks, in base housing,” Hegseth said. “This budget reforms the process to reduce the cost and stress of moves for families — we’ve already seen changes there — and we improve the quality of care provided by our defense health care system.”
Hegseth told lawmakers that since January, the department had identified nearly $30bn in savings, which, along with the FY2026 budget, will be used to focus the department on his top priorities: restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence. Included in the FY2026 budget is $25bn for the Golden Dome missile defense shield for the United States, $62bn to modernize and sustain America’s nuclear forces and $3.5bn for the F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance aircraft. The budget also places a significant focus on shipbuilding, with $6bn in funding to help revitalize the American shipbuilding industry and $47bn allocated for Navy ship construction.
“The budget significantly increases funds to buy next-generation technology, including autonomous systems, long-range drones, long-range fires and hypersonics,” he said. “We will put these capabilities in the hands of our warfighters, ensuring we remain the most lethal force in the world for generations to come.”
Caine told senators he believes one of the most important parts of the FY2026 budget is the support it provides to warfighters and their families.
“The budget makes meaningful investments in our service members and their families, improving quality of life, for housing, medical care, and the ever-important moving process,” he said. “As our most precious asset, we have to deliver for our people.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
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Founded in 1987, Exensor Technology is a world leading supplier of Networked Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) Systems providing tailored sensor solutions to customers all over the world. From our Headquarters in Lund Sweden, our centre of expertise in Network Communications at Communications Research Lab in Kalmar Sweden and our Production site outside of Basingstoke UK, we design, develop and produce latest state of the art rugged UGS solutions at the highest quality to meet the most stringent demands of our customers. Our systems are in operation and used in a wide number of Military as well as Homeland Security applications worldwide. The modular nature of the system ensures any external sensor can be integrated, providing the user with a fully meshed “silent” network capable of self-healing. Exensor Technology will continue to lead the field in UGS technology, provide our customers with excellent customer service and a bespoke package able to meet every need.
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