Hegseth orders sweeping Army overhaul and consolidation aimed at countering China and Golden Dome capabilities
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday ordered a top-down transformation of the Army in a sweeping directive aimed at reorienting the service toward great power competition.
With a sharp focus on countering China, developing space and counter-space capabilities, and accelerating the Pentagon's new Golden Dome strategy, the aggressive modernization effort directs the Army to cut aging legacy systems, restructure headquarters commands and more rapidly field new technologies.
The memo ordered a merging of Army Futures Command, based in Austin, Texas, with Training and Doctrine Command, headquartered in Fort Eustis, Virginia, and merging Forces Command, U.S. Army North and U.S. Army South.
"To build a leaner, more lethal force, the Army must transform at an accelerated pace by divesting outdated, redundant, and inefficient programs, as well as restructuring headquarters and acquisition systems," Hegseth wrote.
"Simultaneously, the Army must prioritize investments in accordance with the Administration's strategy, ensuring existing resources are prioritized to improve long-range precision fires, air and missile defense including through the Golden Dome for America, cyber, electronic warfare, and counter-space capabilities."
Hegseth wants the Army to be able to field long-range missiles capable of striking moving land and sea targets and achieve electromagnetic and air-littoral dominance by 2027 as the potential for conflict looms in the Indo-Pacific theater.
The memo calls for reducing manned attack helicopter formations in favor of inexpensive drone swarms and the reduction of general officer positions to focus command structures on the warfighter.
Hegseth ordered the Army to enable AI-driven command and control at theater, corps and division headquarters by 2027 and expand 3D printing for weapons.
The memo also calls for bulking up the Army's presence in the Indo-Pacific and more joint exercises with allies in the region.
The procurement of obsolete systems will be ended, per the memo, and "redundant or ineffective" programs will be canceled or scaled back, including manned aircraft and excess ground vehicles like the Humvee.
The Army will review and cancel inefficient contracts and work to shift from program-centric funding to capability-based funding, and add right to repair provisions in all contracts, as well as implement performance-based contracting to reduce waste.
The defense secretary also calls for reforms to hiring and firing systems, and reduced spending on climate initiatives, legacy sustainment initiatives and excess travel.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Atlantic
44 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Sometimes a Parade Is Just a Parade
President Donald Trump has gotten his way and will oversee a military parade in Washington, D.C., this summer on the Army's birthday, which also happens to be his own. Plans call for nearly 7,000 troops to march through the streets as 50 helicopters buzz overhead and tanks chew up the pavement. One option has the president presiding from a viewing stand on Constitution Avenue as the Army's parachute team lands to present him with an American flag. The prospect of all this martial pomp, scheduled for June 14, has elicited criticism from many quarters. Some of it is fair—this president does not shy away from celebrating himself or flexing executive power, and the parade could be seen as an example of both—but some of it is misguided. Trump has a genius for showmanship, and showcasing the American military can be, and should be, a patriotic celebration. The president wanted just such a tribute during his first term, after seeing France's impressive Bastille Day celebrations. Then–Secretary of Defense James Mattis reportedly refused, effectively threatening to resign by telling the president to ask his next secretary of defense. Three secretaries of defense later, Trump has gotten enthusiastic agreement from current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Criticism of the display begins with its price tag, estimated as high as $45 million. The projected outlay comes at a time of draconian budget cuts elsewhere: 'Cutting cancer research while wasting money on this? Shameful,' Republicans Against Trump posted on X. 'Peanuts compared to the value of doing it,' Trump replied when asked about the expense. 'We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we're going to celebrate it.' Other prominent critics of the Trump administration have expressed concern that the parade's real purpose is to use the military to intimidate the president's critics. The historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote on her Substack, 'Trump's aspirations to authoritarianism are showing today in the announcement that there will be a military parade on Trump's 79th birthday.' Ron Filipkowski, the editor in chief of the progressive media company MeidasTouch, posted, 'The Fuhrer wants a Nuremberg style parade on his birthday.' Experts on civil-military relations in the United States also expressed consternation. 'Having tanks rolling down streets of the capital doesn't look like something consistent with the tradition of a professional, highly capable military,' the scholar Risa Brooks told The New York Times. 'It looks instead like a military that is politicized and turning inwardly, focusing on domestic-oriented adversaries instead of external ones.' Even the military leadership has been chary. During Trump's first term, then–Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Paul Selva reflected that military parades are 'what dictators do.' But these critics may well be projecting more general concerns about Trump onto a parade. Not everything the Trump administration does is destructive to democracy—and the French example suggests that dictatorships are not the only governments to hold military displays. The U.S. itself has been known to mount victory parades after successful military campaigns. In today's climate, a military parade could offer an opportunity to counter misperceptions about the armed forces. It could bring Americans closer to service members and juice military recruitment—all of which is sorely needed. The American military is shrinking, not due to a policy determination about the size of the force needed, but because the services cannot recruit enough Americans to defend the country. In 2022, 77 percent of American youth did not qualify for military service, for reasons that included physical or mental-health problems, misconduct, inaptitude, being overweight, abuse of drugs or alcohol, or being a dependent. Just 9 percent of Americans ages of 16 to 24 (a prime recruitment window) are even interested in signing up. In 2023, only the Marine Corps and Space Force met their recruiting goals; the Army and Navy recruited less than 70 percent of their goals and fell 41,000 recruits short of sustaining their current force. Recruiting picked up dramatically in 2024 but remains cause for concern. One possible reason for this is that most Americans have little exposure to men and women in uniform. Less than 0.5 percent of Americans are currently serving in the military—and many who do so live, shop, and worship on cordoned military bases. Misperceptions about military service are therefore rife. One is that the U.S. military primarily recruits from minority groups and the poor. In fact, 17 percent of the poorest quintile of Americans serve, as do 12 percent of the richest quintile. The rest of the military is from middle-income families. Those who live near military bases and come from military families are disproportionately represented. The Army's polling indicates that concerns about being injured, killed, or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are major impediments to recruitment. Women worry that they will be sexually harassed or assaulted (the known figures on this in the U.S. military are 6.2 percent of women and 0.7 percent of men). Additionally, a Wall Street Journal –NORC poll found that far fewer American adults considered patriotism important in 2023 (23 percent) than did in 1998 (70 percent)—another possible reason that enthusiasm for joining up has dampened. A celebratory parade could be helpful here, and it does not have to set the country on edge. Americans seem comfortable with thanking military men and women for their service, having them pre-board airplanes, applauding them at sporting events, and admiring military-aircraft flybys. None of those practices is suspected of corroding America's democracy or militarizing its society. Surely the nation can bear up under a military parade once every decade or two, especially if the parade serves to reconnect veterans of recent wars, who often—rightly—grumble that the country tends to disown its wars as matters of concern to only those who serve in them. The risk, of course, is that Trump will use the occasion not to celebrate the troops but to corrode their professionalism by proclaiming them his military and his generals. This is, after all, the president who claimed that Dan Caine, his nominee to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wore a MAGA hat and attested his willingness to kill for Trump, all of which Caine denies. This is also a president known to mix politics with honoring the military, as he did in Michigan, at Arlington National Cemetery, at West Point's commencement, and in a Memorial Day post on Truth Social calling his opponents ' scum.' Even so, the commander in chief has a right to engage with the military that Americans elected him to lead. The responsibility of the military—and of the country—is to look past the president's hollow solipsism and embrace the men and women who defend the United States. Being from a military family or living near a military base has been shown to predispose people toward military service. This suggests that the more exposure people have to the military, the likelier they are to serve in it. A big celebration of the country's armed forces—with static displays on the National Mall afterward, and opportunities for soldiers to mix with civilians—could familiarize civilians with their armed forces and, in doing so, draw talented young Americans to serve.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Down 18%, are we witnessing the slow decline of Alphabet stock?
Like many of the Magnificent 7, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) stock has performed poorly over the last few months. Its once all-powerful moat in internet search is coming under serious threat from multiple angles. So, is this merely a mid-life crisis or something much more problematic? In its Q1 results, posted at the end of April, the business continued to see strong growth momentum. Revenues for the quarter came in at $90bn, 12% higher than a year ago. Representing over 50% of total revenues, Google search was up 10%. Google subscriptions, platforms, and YouTube ads also saw strong growth momentum. The business continues to invest heavily in AI. It recently launched Gemini 2.5, although it's still in preview mode and doesn't offer a paid tier with full access yet. The new AI model is not aimed at your average consumer. This probably explains why the pricing model will be different. It claims the model is capable of 'analyzing large datasets, codebases, and documents using long context'. But like so many of its peers, it has been rather vague on detail, other than saying it had addressed user feedback. Google, like all the other Magnificent 7 stocks, are trying to understand how generative AI is likely to evolve and whether it's a long-term threat to their business models. With 90% of all internet searches being conducted through Chrome, Google looks particularly vulnerable to me. A month ago, investors were totally spooked after an Apple executive disclosed in a court case that Google-search traffic on its devices using Safari fell for the first time ever. The speed of adoption of generative AI among the general consumer is what has completely taken me by surprise. Key to an acceleration in this trend have been AI-generated summaries at the top of search results. Google and Microsoft may be at the forefront of rolling out this new feature, but this technology has the potential to cannibalise existing revenue streams. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the foundation of the internet. The whole marketing industry is based on fine tuning algorithms to ensure a company attracts traffic to their web pages. The rise of so-called 'zero-click' results looks set to upend this key tenet. In a recent survey conducted by consultancy firm Bain, it found that about 80% of consumers now rely on zero-click results in at least 40% of their searches. They estimated that this new phenomenon has reduced organic web traffic by between 15% to 25%. The likes of Perplexity AI and ChatGPT continue to attract consumers. According to Bain's research, approximately 40% to 70% of LLM users use the platforms to conduct research and summarise information, find the latest news and weather, and ask for shopping recommendations. Across the marketing industry, generative engine optimisation or GEO is becoming the new buzz term. This is in recognition of the growing role of bots trawling the web to train LLMs. Marketing revenues from clicks are the lifeblood of Google's business model. As it tries to find way to integrate and grow revenues from its own AI offerings, capital expenditures will continue to grow. With so much future uncertainty, I will continue to observe from the sidelines, but I don't rule out an investment in the future. The post Down 18%, are we witnessing the slow decline of Alphabet stock? appeared first on The Motley Fool UK. More reading 5 Stocks For Trying To Build Wealth After 50 One Top Growth Stock from the Motley Fool Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Andrew Mackie has no position in any of the shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK has recommended Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. Motley Fool UK 2025
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
Nimanode Launches $NMA Token Presale, Pioneering the First No-Code AI Agent Platform on XRP Ledger
LEEDS, United Kingdom, June 07, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nimanode, a pioneering protocol building AI-driven autonomous agents on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), has officially launched the presale of its native utility token, $NMA. As the first no-code AI agent builder on XRPL, Nimanode empowers users to deploy, customize, and manage intelligent blockchain agents without writing a single line of code. With over 45% of the 90 million $NMA tokens allocated to the presale already in motion, Nimanode is attracting early interest from both individual investors and large XRP holders who recognize the platform's potential to transform automation within decentralized ecosystems. $NMA Token Presale Bringing Agentic Automation to the XRP Ledger Nimanode aims to reshape how work is executed on-chain by enabling autonomous agents—AI-driven programs capable of completing blockchain tasks on behalf of users. Core features of the protocol include: 'The $NMA token will serve as the backbone of the Nimanode ecosystem,' said a representative from the Nimanode team. 'From deploying agents to earning through staking and participating in governance, $NMA enables a truly participatory AI economy on-chain.' Utility and Use Cases of $NMA The $NMA token offers multiple functions within the Nimanode platform: Following the presale, $NMA is expected to list on decentralized exchanges at a 25% higher price, offering early participants an incentivized entry. How to Join the $NMA Presale Participants can acquire $NMA using XRP via the official Nimanode presale portal. Here's how to participate: The Nimanode presale is now live and available to the public for a limited time. About Nimanode Nimanode is building the first AI protocol layer on the XRP Ledger, allowing artificial intelligence not only to support blockchain ecosystems—but to live natively within them. The platform's agentic architecture aims to redefine DeFi, work automation, and intelligent interaction across decentralized applications. Media Contact Nimanode Communications Email: [email protected] Website: Twitter/X: Telegram: Documentation: Contact: Nick Lambert [email protected] Disclaimer: This is a paid post and is provided by Nimanode. The statements, views, and opinions expressed in this content are solely those of the content provider and do not necessarily reflect the views of this media platform or its publisher. We do not endorse, verify, or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information do not guarantee any claims, statements, or promises made in this content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, or trading in crypto and mining-related opportunities involves significant risks, including the potential loss of is possible to lose all your capital. These products may not be suitable for everyone, and you should ensure that you understand the risks involved. Seek independent advice if necessary. Speculate only with funds that you can afford to are strongly encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. However, due to the inherently speculative nature of the blockchain sector—including cryptocurrency, NFTs, and mining—complete accuracy cannot always be the media platform nor the publisher shall be held responsible for any fraudulent activities, misrepresentations, or financial losses arising from the content of this press the event of any legal claims or charges against this article, we accept no liability or does not endorse any content on this page. Legal Disclaimer: This media platform provides the content of this article on an 'as-is' basis, without any warranties or representations of any kind, express or implied. We assume no responsibility for any inaccuracies, errors, or omissions. We do not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information presented herein. Any concerns, complaints, or copyright issues related to this article should be directed to the content provider mentioned above. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at
