Willis Strategy Group spent this week on the floor at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2026 Annual Meeting in Washington. One theme ran through nearly every main-stage session: the Army is not just buying new technology — it is rebuilding the institution that buys, builds, and fields it. This issue, the first of a two-part AUSA report, covers that reorganization. Part 2 will cover the hardware on the floor. A note of continuity runs underneath all of it, and we return to it in this week’s review: the last time the Army remade itself this fast was on the eve of the Second World War.
This Week’s Lead
“The Speed of Business”: The Army Opens a Marketplace
Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle used his AUSA opening-ceremony address — among his first public remarks since taking the role in September — to make a blunt case: “It’s clear we can’t evolve the Army at the speed of government. We have to evolve it at the speed of business.” The centerpiece is an online marketplace, which officials describe as a global defense ecosystem, where Soldiers can order capabilities directly from manufacturers based on what they need in the field. Telle said orders take minutes and deliveries can arrive in under 60 days — he cited counter-drone systems sent to troops on the southern border — and that the platform already spans dozens of companies, thousands of orderable products, and transactions numbering in the millions (AUSA 2026, opening ceremony).
He paired the marketplace with three other moves worth an owner’s attention. Army FUZE, launched last year, uses a venture-capital-style model to chase solutions to problems Soldiers identify in the field. An open-architecture mandate now applies broadly — “everything we buy from here on out will have open architecture” — so that systems, including thousands of planned low-cost interceptors, connect to the Army’s network instead of sitting, as Telle put it, “behind proprietary ropes.” And he announced a coming “manufacturing rodeo” to test whether defense manufacturers can surge U.S.-made components and systems on demand: “we’re going to learn by doing, not by sitting around and postulating at the Pentagon.”
The New Command
The Army Stands Up an Autonomy Command
Following an autonomy directive from Secretary Telle and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “State of the Force” call for an autonomous-warfare organization, the Army is establishing the Futures and Autonomous Systems Command (FASCOM). Notably, it is not building the command from scratch: Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Vice Chief of Staff and Acting Chief of Staff, is redesignating the existing Army Futures and Concepts Command as FASCOM, folding in five organizations — Combat Capabilities Development Command, Medical Research and Development Command, the 75th Innovation Command, Joint Modernization Command, and the Transformation Decision Analysis Center. FASCOM will be commanded by a Lieutenant General (LTG), which is currently LTG Michael McCurry (Army.mil).
The command’s job is to turn autonomy into fielded formations rather than demonstrations. Each of the Army’s corps is tasked to experiment: an autonomous fires battery and a watercraft company in I Corps, an armored reconnaissance company in III Corps, a breaching company in V Corps, aerial ISR and lift companies in XVIII Airborne Corps, and manned-unmanned rotary-wing pairing in 8th Army. Those formations will receive some of the Army’s first 390A Robotics Technicians — the new warrant-officer specialty we covered in a recent issue — and the effort pairs with a new Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Autonomy, with priority systems targeted for fiscal year 2028.
LaNeve’s framing is the part worth keeping. “This goes beyond drones,” he said; the Army has to “change our approach from bolting on technology to rethinking how we fight.” And, the line we would underline for every leader:
“Technology doesn’t fight; Soldiers do.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also spoke at the annual AUSA conference, where he discussed the need for a new four-star Autonomous Warfare Command (AUTOWARCOM), envisioned with service-like authorities to scale autonomous and robotic capability across the entire joint force — a tier above FASCOM, not a duplicate of it. “You have autonomy. You have robotics. You have [super intelligence]. You have space,” Hegseth said, arguing that the people who acquire platforms “need to be right there, up with the warfighter … who understand how to iterate it.” Congress still has to approve the command, which could take time, but the Pentagon is already clearing the path: it has pulled autonomy’s Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager into an umbrella effort called Project Agincourt, and the Defense Autonomous Working Group — the post-Replicator drone-scaling body placed under Special Operations Command in 2025 — is being absorbed into a new Task Force Autonomous Warfare to “keep iterating” toward AUTOWARCOM (AUSA 2026).
The Doctrine
New Guidance on “How the Army Fights” — and Who Does the Fighting
Structure was only half of LaNeve’s message at AUSA. At the Dwight D. Eisenhower Luncheon, the Vice Chief paired the reorganization with doctrine: days earlier he had released “How the Army Fights,” new operational warfighting guidance that distills how the force conducts multidomain operations, and he said the Army is now updating the Army Campaign Plan, revising Field Manual 3-0 (Operations), and validating Mission Essential Task Lists so the force moves in a “unified direction.” His read of the modern battlefield — proliferating drones and counter-drone systems, persistent sensor networks, longer-range precision fires, and the “omnipresent impact of the cyber and space domains” — is that the geometry has changed, but “that does not mean ground maneuver is dead.” Operational maneuver, he argued, is what “creates dilemmas for the adversary” and holds the Army’s land dominance (AUSA 2026, Eisenhower Luncheon).
The Capital Play
The Army Opens Its Installations to Private Capital
A quieter AUSA thread may matter most to investors. Through its Strategic Capital Initiative, launched earlier this year, the Army is courting private, long-term capital to modernize the physical base — power grids, supply chains, depots, arsenals, and ammunition plants. “We want you to bring your best ideas forward. We want to work with you,” said Lt. Gen. Gavin Lawrence, acting commanding general of Army Materiel Command and senior commander of Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, at an AUSA strategic-capital forum. Deals are already moving: the Carlyle Group is helping build a hyperscale data center at Fort Bliss, Texas, and FedEx Dataworks has signed on. Army leaders described “overwhelming interest” from industry (AUSA 2026, strategic-capital forum).
For Small Business — Act on This
Washington Reopens a WWII Playbook: Capital for Small Defense Manufacturers
Here is the week’s most concrete opportunity for a small manufacturer. The Small Business Administration and the Department of War have stood up the Smaller War Plants Commission (SWPC) — reviving the name of a World War II-era body — and this month signed an agreement to channel capital to small defense suppliers. The premise, in SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler’s words, is that small manufacturers are “70 percent of America’s defense industrial base”; Secretary Hegseth said the effort will “surge strategic capital” to the small firms that build ships, munitions, and microelectronics (SBA).
- Made in America Loan Guarantee. Through the International Trade Loan program, eligible manufacturers can access a 90% federal guarantee — versus 75% under the standard 7(a) — for equipment, facility upgrades, inventory, acquisitions, and domestic expansion.
- A referral pipeline to capital. The Department of War’s Economic Defense Unit flags defense-critical firms and refers them into SBA’s 7(a) and 504 lender networks and can originate War-Department-funded preferred-equity investments in firms expanding industrial capacity.
- Priority sectors. Munitions and components, drones, microelectronics, strategic and critical minerals, shipbuilding, sensors, batteries, castings and forgings, and more.
Where to start
The announcements do not spell out eligibility thresholds, dollar amounts, or an application process, so treat specific terms as unconfirmed. The place to start is sba.gov/swpc, and a conversation with a participating 7(a) or 504 lender. If your company builds anything in those priority sectors, this is a door worth walking through now.
WSG Insights
From the Willis Strategy Group Desk
A recurring feature spotlighting our own analysis of the ideas shaping defense, experimentation, and leadership. This week’s pick is chosen on purpose — because the Army has done all this before, and we have reviewed the book about the man who did it.
George Marshall: Defender of the Republic, reviewed
Everything in this issue — a new command stood up by redesignating an old one, acquisition layers stripped out to move faster, the whole institution reorganized under the pressure of a rising competitor — has a direct precedent. George C. Marshall became Army Chief of Staff on September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland, and inherited a force that ranked below Portugal’s in size. In barely three years he reorganized the War Department from top to bottom, built Army Ground Forces, Army Air Forces, and a services-of-supply command out of a sclerotic staff, and expanded the Army from under 200,000 Soldiers to a force of millions — modernizing its equipment and its doctrine while he did it.
Read against this week’s news, David Roll’s biography is less a history lesson than a checklist. Marshall’s reorganization worked not because the org chart was elegant but because he paired it with ruthless talent management — retiring officers who could not adapt, jumping Eisenhower and Bradley over their seniors — and because he kept the purpose, not the structure, at the center. That is the same test facing FASCOM, the PAE-to-PME change, and the new Western Hemisphere Command: reorganization is easy to announce and hard to make real, and it is made real by leaders, not boxes. It is why Gen. LaNeve’s line this week — “Technology doesn’t fight; Soldiers do” — could have come from Marshall himself. The modernization is necessary; whether it holds will depend on exactly what Marshall understood, and what our full review draws out.
Read it →By Audience
What This Week Means for You
01 For Business Owners & Small Business
- New capital: the SBA–War Department Smaller War Plants Commission (above) is a real financing channel for small manufacturers — start at sba.gov/swpc and talk to a 7(a)/504 lender.
- New doors: the Army’s marketplace and Army FUZE are built to let commercial and nontraditional firms sell in faster. Confirm how to get listed before building around either.
- Build to the mandate: “open architecture” is now a stated requirement, not a nicety. If your product can connect to the Army’s network rather than lock data behind proprietary interfaces, say so plainly in every pitch.
- Still open: SBIR/STTR Release 6 closes October 21; the JIOP virtual Industry Day is November 17 (register by Nov. 6). See Calendar.
02 For Investors
- A new command plus a dedicated acquisition executive for autonomy, with an FY2028 fielding target, is a durable, organized demand signal for unmanned systems and their enabling layers — power, communications, autonomy software.
- The acquisition reform is designed to compress timelines; pair that with the SWPC’s capital channel and the thesis is clear — Washington is trying to move money and contracts to industrial-base firms faster. Watch which sectors it prioritizes.
- Two capital doors opened at once: the Strategic Capital Initiative invites institutional, long-term money into installations and infrastructure (Carlyle, FedEx already in), while the SWPC channel targets small manufacturers. A Redstone Arsenal commander carrying the SCI pitch puts this within the region’s reach.
- A second, joint-level autonomy command (AUTOWARCOM) behind a roughly $55 billion Pentagon request — still pending Congress — would reinforce, not replace, the Army’s FASCOM demand signal. Watch the FY2027 appropriation to see how much survives.
- Homeland defense and counter-drone are being elevated to funded priorities, not niches — relevant to the region’s EW and counter-UAS firms.
03 For Government & Community Leaders
- The through-line this week is institutional speed — new commands, fewer acquisition layers, commercial on-ramps, and a revived small-business industrial-base effort. Helping regional firms navigate these channels is economic development.
- Watch the Center of Excellence angle: the acquisition reform pulls CoEs onto the acquisition bench, and autonomy formations will need the training pipeline. Where the Maneuver Center of Excellence fits in the autonomy reorganization is a question worth pressing on the region’s behalf.
On the Calendar
Dates to Watch
Small-business resources: SBA Smaller War Plants Commission · SBIR/STTR: SBIR.gov · DoD SBIR/STTR (DSIP).
Talk to Willis Strategy Group
Trying to read what the Army’s reorganization means for your company — the marketplace, the SWPC capital channel, or positioning for the autonomy build-out?
Contact WSGThe Defense Dispatch summarizes publicly reported information for general awareness and is not legal, financial, or investment advice. Figures, dates, and organizational details reflect sources available at publication — much of it announced during AUSA week and still settling — and are subject to change; verify against the primary source before acting.