Army seeks "65-year change" in weapons trying and buying

Driving the news: In an hourlong sit-down with reporters, Driscoll and other Army leaders detailed their plans to overhaul weapons trying, buying and fielding.

Zoom in: The new approach involves restructuring program executive offices and introducing portfolio acquisition executives to oversee six broad topics. Those include fires, command and control and counter C2, and agile sustainment and ammo.

These PAEs will report to Transformation and Training Command — or T2COM, a combination of Futures and Training and Doctrine commands — as well as the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology.

What they're saying: "This is the type of thing that, from our understanding, is like a 65-year change in how we actually buy things," Driscoll told reporters, adding that complacency has generated "bad habits."

• "This is a directional number: It used to be 90% of things we bought were purpose-built for the military or the Army and 10% were off the shelf."
• "What we are trying to do is flip it to 90% being commercially available and 10% being specific in the worst of cases."

What we're watching: When, where and how the Army continues to court and consult both Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

• "What we're trying to do is not performatively engage with them as a one-off, but learn from them," Driscoll said.
• "They want to get their products in the hand of the soldier, because we use them in different and complicated use cases," he added. "That makes their basic offering better."

Go deeper: How the U.S. Army chief is retooling for future war