Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said the military branch plans to adopt a “Silicon Valley” model to speed up the delivery of new weapons systems and technologies to soldiers as part of an upcoming “organizational acquisition reform,” Breaking Defense reported Monday.
“After seeing the power of combining venture capital money and mentorship with startup culture, I can say unequivocally that the Silicon Valley approach is absolutely ideal for the Army,” Driscoll said in his prepared remarks at the AUSA 2025 conference Monday.
“It will identify promising startups, quickly fund them and get minimally viable products to soldiers in weeks,” he added.
Army’s FUZE Initiative
His remarks came a month after the Army launched the FUZE initiative, a venture capital-style acquisition program that will channel about $750 million per year into early-stage firms developing technologies for defense missions. The initiative is designed to accelerate innovation and shorten the path from concept to field deployment.
According to Driscoll, the program will expand to $765 million next year, reflecting a more than 150 percent increase in Army funding for emerging technologies.
Army’s Upcoming Acquisition Shakeup
At the AUSA 2025 event, the secretary also announced plans to consolidate the Army’s acquisition offices into a single organization to accelerate the delivery of new technologies to warfighters.
“We will break down barriers until we measure acquisitions not in years and billions, but months and thousands,” Driscoll said at the event.
He told reporters that there will be a “consolidation and streamlining of how we buy things in the Army” as part of the upcoming acquisition shakeup.
The secretary said the plan will involve a tactical shift that “basically means: buy small numbers of things, get it in the hands of soldiers, iterate with the company when we think it works pretty well, field it in a division or two, and then when we think it is ready, scale it across the entire Army.”
