Dan Driscoll, the former venture capitalist who is serving as Army secretary, is overseeing a massive effort to get the newest and latest technology into the hands of soldiers, shredding the bureaucracies that have long extended and complicated the process.
The effort is a part of the department’s mission to increase the production and capacity of the defense industrial base, both in response to the autonomous and artificial intelligence revolutions as well as the realities of current U.S. stockpiles of critical munitions and reduced readiness to the heavy tempo of operations under the Trump administration.
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His newest announcement came on Friday, when he shared that moving forward, defense companies can request to use one of five Army ranges to test their systems out, and the Army will give them that access within 30 days. Previously, it could take 12-18 months to get into a range.
Now, defense companies looking to use a U.S. military range for testing can go to testrange.army.mil, and there will be a team of concierges ready to help them get scheduled. Notably, companies do not have a military contract to request time.
“This is a different way of doing this,” Driscoll told reporters. “It used to be you have to fight through the bureaucracy again and again and again and again, just to get to the range to try to build a thing that can help soldiers.”
The five ranges that can now be reserved are: Dugway Proving Ground in Utah; West Cibola Range, a newly opened component of Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona; Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center in Mississippi; Camp Grayling Joint Maneuver Training Center in Michigan; and the Multidomain Training Area range complex, a component of the Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center, in Morocco. Each facility has its own specialties for testing.
“It is, as of this exact moment in time, we will not miss the 30-day goal,” Driscoll said. “So, and this should be again, when you’re kind of processing why does this matter, this is good government. We can just choose to not have to wait 12-18 months for these companies to get to ranges. We can choose to care enough. Under Secretary of War [Pete Hegseth], he has empowered us to break through the regulations that are stopping this. This is not a first-principle problem like gravity that we’re trying to overcome that required some sort of scientific innovation. We just had to get out of our own way, and so the 30-day clock starts today.”
Covenant Industries became the first company to utilize the new program an tested a new cruise missile at the missile test range in Morocco. Abby Denburg, an executive with Covenant, said it “demonstrated not only the performance of the Anthem missile but also a repeatable pathway now available to every company.”
Driscoll said the Army aims to “break down every single barrier that we have put up over the last 20 or 30 years.”
“The more people that we get onto ranges trying to innovate, the faster the innovation cycle will go, and the quicker we will be able to purchase things and get it in the heads of soldiers to increase their lethality and keep them safer,” he added. “We have stood in the way for far too long.”
Under Driscoll, the Army also launched a new venture-capital-style acquisition program last year called FUZE. The office aims to invest $750 million per year in emerging and nontraditional technology in an effort to speed the process of fielding the new systems.
“FUZE is a $750 million venture capital-esque model where we can get dollars to companies quickly,” Driscoll said. “Companies that go spend time with soldiers in the mud, actually innovating for things they need and helping them improve the things they have. Then the next thing is this test range. So when they have something they think that works, we need to get them access to the ways to test.”
During a trip to Germany, where Driscoll met with Ukrainian troops, he saw how seamlessly their systems integrated and operated collectively. He left impressed and with a new mission on his mind.
Less than a month after the announcement of the Army’s “Right to Integrate” Hackathon Sprint, soldiers downrange are already benefiting from more integrated systems.
The initiative, also known as Project Jailbreak, which Driscoll is overseeing alongside several defense contractors, is designed to fully integrate systems and weapons manufactured by different defense companies that had been siloed and unable to share data, preventing them from communicating seamlessly. Historically, systems would often not be able to integrate with those made by different companies.
To address that, in May, the Army announced the “Right to Integrate” hackathon, an Army-industry-partnered sprint to integrate critical military technology systems manufactured by different companies. Previously, many systems were not compatible with those produced by other companies, and this effort seeks to rectify that. More than 50 companies have participated in Project Jailbreak, including Anduril, Boeing, General Dynamics, L3Harris, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, Perennial Autonomy, and RTX.
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The jailbreak efforts remain ongoing.
The Army has also stood up an Amazon-style drone marketplace from only American military-approved companies, in which military units from the United States or allied countries can order specific parts to fit their exact needs. Twenty countries have signed on to participate in the drone marketplace, and Driscoll predicted another 20 “more in the pipeline” by “the end of the summer.”
