Emerging tech has new Army leaders warning troops can’t ‘AI’ their way to victory on the battlefield

Amid a rapid rise in technological developments, the U.S. Army’s new leadership is looking to pull back on using artificial intelligence and other tools it feels forced the branch to transform too much all at once.

Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army vice chief serving as acting chief of staff, outlined on Monday how he hopes to narrow the service’s sweeping modernization push after years of experimentation with drones, artificial intelligence and other emerging technology.

“There was a lot, a lot of motion,” LaNeve told a small group of reporters. “It was almost like everything was being transformed at once.”

“You can’t AI yourself to be the best maneuver brigade commander out there,” LaNeve said.

The Army Transformation Initiative pushed new technology rapidly into formations and encouraged experimentation across the board. Army leaders credited that effort with accelerating change but acknowledged Monday that its breadth created enormous activity across the force.

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The branch is now preparing to unveil “How the Army Fights,” a new framework intended to turn years of experimentation into a more focused set of decisions about what technology the service will prioritize, where it belongs in Army formations and how the force will organize and spend for future wars.

“The Army cannot and should not modernize everything at once,” the new blueprint states. “The answer is focused modernization.”

Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer said experimentation through the technology push produced necessary learning, but insisted that the service had reached a point where it needed to “drop the chalk line and actually start making some decisions.”

Those decisions include which technologies warrant investment, where they belong in Army formations and which theaters take priority — with the service acknowledging it cannot afford to transform everything simultaneously.

Army leaders aren’t yet saying what will fall by the wayside.

Asked what was being left “on the cutting room floor” as the service narrows its focus, LaNeve said, “I’m not sure we’re prepared to say what we’re cutting out now.”

But one investment is moving unmistakably to the front of the line.

“If you ask me what my number one modernization priority would be, I would say command and control,” LaNeve said.

The shift is unfolding amid a broader leadership shake-up at the Army.

Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle took over after his predecessor, Dan Driscoll, resigned last month following months of reported friction with War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had earlier ousted Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, a close Driscoll ally who helped lead the service’s transformation push.

Telle, a former Trump White House aide, was tapped days later to lead the Army in an acting capacity and was publicly praised by Hegseth as “strong and whip smart.”

In his first press interview since taking the job, Telle described “How the Army Fights” as a way to impose greater coherence on the service’s modernization efforts as technology rapidly changes the battlefield.

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That battlefield is envisioned as one in which troops operate alongside autonomous systems and under persistent drone surveillance, while AI helps commanders sift through massive amounts of sensor data and identify targets in “seconds and minutes rather than hours.”

The Army also wants autonomous systems taking on some of the most dangerous jobs that are currently performed by soldiers — this includes reconnaissance, resupply and breaching enemy obstacles.

But Army leaders are resisting the idea that advances in drones and AI have diminished the importance of traditional ground forces.

“Autonomous systems enable Soldiers to destroy and disrupt, but they can never replace the human judgment, leadership, and physical presence of Soldiers required to control the land and consolidate gains,” the blueprint states.

The Army is drawing heavily from recent conflicts, including Ukraine, Gaza and the India-Pakistan conflict, while building the new framework around its most demanding potential adversary: China.

HTAF identifies China’s People’s Liberation Army as the “pacing threat” and says the Army must organize, train and equip against it with the same institutional focus Cold War-era leaders brought to the Soviet Union.

The blueprint also assumes a future major war could reach much closer to home. It warns the U.S. homeland can no longer be treated as a sanctuary, with adversaries potentially using cyberattacks, sabotage and drones to disrupt the ports, airfields and other infrastructure needed to deploy American forces.

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For Telle, the challenge is fitting rapidly evolving technology into a coherent Army rather than chasing every new system that emerges.

He compared individual weapons and technologies to ornaments on a Christmas tree.

“How the Army Fights is really the tree to hang those ornaments on,” Telle said.