After spending the bulk of the year straddling two beats — the US Army and broader Pentagon — I bid adieu to full-time service coverage, but not before digging into a host of contracting and acquisition changes flowing between the two.
With Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth taking the Pentagon’s helm this year, defense and industry sources were expecting changes related to not just instructional culture, but also how the services buy and field equipment. And Hegseth provided newly minted Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George with the cover to move out with some changes in the works for some time.
[This article is one of many in a series in which Breaking Defense reporters look back on the most significant (and entertaining) news stories of 2025 and look forward to what 2026 may hold.]
Here are my five top Army and Pentagon stories from the past 12 months, ranging from a top-level acquisition revamp of the service to cutting red tape for soldiers to use small drones on the battlefield.
1. ‘What the f— is going on?’ Confusion, uncertainty in industry as Army contracts seemingly halted
Just days after President Donald Trump was sworn in to his second term in office, reports of confusion and panic started trickling in about concerns of an Army pause awarding new contracts, with one industry source asking Breaking Defense, “What the f— is going on?”
“It’s a bit of a pause and review, excluding things directly tied to readiness, modernization and people,” the Army source said, noting it “touches all aspects of the requirements and contracting process.” However, the source did not detail what sorts of programs would fall into the readiness category.
While the Pentagon later refuted a broad halt to contracts, it noted that it is possible some “activities may be paused.”
And thus kicked started a year chock-filled with acquisition news from the building.
2. Falling stars? Army weighing massive cut to generals, PEO offices and AFC power
While the Army’s top general has been working on a larger service revamp for some time with Driscoll at the civilian helm, the two began plotting course for a massive acquisition overhaul.
By late April, Breaking Defense first published that a tentative plan was circulating throughout industry cutting the number of four-star general officers, reducing the number of Program Executive Offices (PEOs) managing weapons programs, and merging Army Futures Command (AFC) with Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).
While some details about those plans emerged days and weeks later, it ultimately took another six months for the service to publicly detail the acquisition shakeup with the new Army Transformation and Training Command and the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, or ASA(ALT), at the top of the structure.
Under those two offices now lives six overarching Portfolio Acquisition Executives, or PAEs: Fires in Redstone Arsenal, Ala.; Command and Control (C2) and Counter C2 in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.; Maneuver Ground in Fort Benning, Ga.; Maneuver Air in Fort Rucker, Ala; Agile Sustainment and Ammunition in Picatinny, N.J.; and Layered Protection Plus Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
3. Hegseth orders ‘comprehensive transformation’ of US Army, merging offices and cutting weapons
Although it took time for the Army to unfurl its acquisition structure overhaul, at the start of May Hegseth signed an order for the “transformation” of the Army, including divesting certain formations, canceling procurement on legacy systems and merging several internal organizations.
The Army wasted no time in announcing that it would stop producing Humvees and Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, while General Dynamics Land Systems would be told to stop producing its brand-new light tank, the M10 Booker.
“The Booker is a classic example of sunk cost fallacy, and the Army doing something wrong,” Driscoll said at the time. “We wanted to develop a small tank that was agile and could be dropped into places our regular tanks can’t. We got a heavy tank.”
Also on the chopping block, is the “obsolete” Gray Eagle drone, produced by General Atomics, and an order to halt work on its embattled Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV).
Instead, Hegseth told the service to focus on a few areas and programs, including:
- A future Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) variant with a seeker to hit moving targets on land and at sea, ready by 2027;
- Achieve electromagnetic and air-littoral dominance by 2027;
- Fielding new launched effects in every division by the end of 2026 for soldiers to use from the ground or air;
- Improve counter-UAS mobility and affordability, while also integrating those capabilities into maneuver platoons by 2026 and maneuver companies by 2027; and
- Extending advanced manufacturing, including 3D printing, to operational units by 2026.
4. EXCLUSIVE: Army taps Anduril-Meta team, plus new entrant Rivet, for IVAS recompete
This year also saw headwinds on a new Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) hardware redo after years of questions about the fate of the troubled program.
The initial device — based off of Microsoft’s commercially available HoloLens 2 heads-up display — was plagued with soldier complaints ranging from cyber sickness symptoms like nausea and visual discomfort to software glitches.
Then after years of fits, starts and redesigns, the Army moved ahead with a plan to recompete the hardware earlier this year and officially asked industry to submit viable options for the SBMC competition.
By April, Anduril officially assumed oversight of the original multi-billion-dollar IVAS production deal which is expected to home in on the data architecture.
But the competition continued onward and in September, Breaking Defense first reported that startup firm Rivet had been selected to go head-to-head with Anduril.
5. Pentagon’s drone policy changes expected to help soldiers fly through red tape
For the past couple of years, Breaking Defense has tracked a central challenge of getting soldiers to use small drones — the red tape associated with losing them.
Every time a soldier loses or breaks a drone — regardless of its size or price tag — they are saddled with reporting paperwork, a mandatory investigation and possibly a loss of pay. That red tape has left soldiers hesitant to fly smaller drones and the service officials looking to reclassify ones tipping the scales below 55 pounds as expendable.
This year, service officials said they planned to clarify those Financial Liability Investigation of Property Loss (FLIPL) policies, ink a new All Army Activities memo and work with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to make changes.
Then in July, Hegseth issued the new “Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance,” directing every squad to be armed with small, one-way attack drones by the end of fiscal 2026, while also enabling troops to modify small drones as necessary in the field as part of a push to break through policy and acquisition barriers.
Those changes, one Army official explained, are expected to make soldiers less hesitant to use small UAVs.
“Army-wide fielding of advanced UAS technologies was hindered by slow bureaucratic processes, overly restrictive policies, risk averse acquisition oversight, and sluggish budget debates that stifled innovation,” Col. Nick Ryan, director of the Army Capability Manager for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, told Breaking Defense. “This new Secretary of Defense guidance cuts through that to expedite lethal UAS directly to our Soldiers.”