• The US Army secretary and a top general told BI about the service's plans for what it flies.
• In the coming years, the Army wants to operate far more unmanned aircraft than manned.
• US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants the Army to reduce its crewed attack helicopter force and replace it with drones.

US Army leadership told Business Insider it wants to be flying a lot more uncrewed aircraft than crewed ones in the coming years. We are talking about a tremendous increase in the number of drones.

Its ambitions, which align with goals outlined by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's recent directive, come from a vision for what Army officials and the Trump administration have described as a more lethal force ready for future warfare.

In an interview with Business Insider, US Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll and Gen. James Rainey, the commanding general of Army Futures Command, said that unprecedented changes in warfare are fueling plans to overhaul what the Army flies.

"We believe there's a role for some manned aircraft," Rainey explained, "Big picture-wise, right now, about 90% of the things we're flying have humans in them and 10% don't. And I believe over the next several years, we would like to invert that."

The plans to give every division 1,000 drones within the next two years, he added, speak to the "aggressiveness" with which the Army is going after the new uncrewed objectives.

Earlier this year, Hegseth sent out a memo on strategic transformations within the Army, laying out goals and timelines for the service, including force restructuring and cuts to certain programs and systems that altogether represent one of the largest Army revamps since the end of the Cold War. The push is estimated to cost around $36 billion over the next five years.

In the memo, Hegseth indicated that crewed attack helicopter formations would be reduced, restructured, and augmented with drone swarms capable of overwhelming adversaries.

War-winning Army capabilities and the ones that aren't

Driscoll said this big change, along with others identified in the DoD memo, is already underway and largely focused on examining what systems no longer make sense in the context of the Army's vision for its future and what systems will replace them.

He mentioned the AH-64D Apache attack helicopter as one platform that no longer aligns with plans for the transformation of the force. "The flying costs on that were $10,000 an hour," the secretary said of the older Deltas, pointing out that the figure is about twice the cost of the newer Echo variant of the aircraft.

"Those are the kinds of decisions that I think we had let linger and fester for too long as an Army for all sorts of reasons," Driscoll said. "What we are trying to do is take a hard look at these things," he explained, and decide whether they align with what the warfighter needs.

Last month, Lt. Gen. Joseph Ryan, the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and training, said that the Deltas are no longer "a war-winning capability that we can fight with and win today." Even the more advanced Echos, he said, are "on the cusp of being capabilities where we don't necessarily see them contributing to the fight the way they have done perhaps in the past."

The Army plans to shelve the Delta variant and further examine other crewed aircraft that may no longer be sufficiently effective. It is also reviewing other helicopter models and plans to reduce the number of helos operated.

The future of war is robotic

More broadly, uncrewed aircraft are being seen as alternatives that soldiers can send forward on the battlefield to do missions that crewed aircraft have traditionally done.

There's still a place for crewed aircraft in the Army. Some helicopters, for example, still boast value for landing troops behind or around enemy positions to surprise and surround them. But future operations are expected to be a whole lot more robotic, with an Army aviation portfolio that more heavily relies on unmanned systems integrated with manned ones.

The Army sees itself at a turning point. Senior defense officials appointed by President Donald Trump have called out what they see as excessive spending, outdated systems and weapons, and a need to expedite changes to be prepared to deter or fight a future conflict. It's part of efforts to maximize readiness, increase lethality, and get soldiers what they need most.

Such aims aren't entirely new, though, and execution will be key. During the previous administration, for instance, the Army was already discussing the need for more uncrewed systems and changes to its aircraft fleet, especially with the cancellation of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program.

Last year, Rainey told lawmakers that for scouting and recon missions "the right thing to do is to use unmanned systems and not put humans in harm's way."

A major motivator for many of the ongoing transformation efforts is China, which the Pentagon has referred to as a pacing challenge. Officials and lawmakers in Washington see China's meteoric military growth and modernization and are pursuing capabilities that will allow the US military to deter aggression and, if necessary, overcome that rapidly evolving fighting force in armed combat.

Drones, from pocket-sized aircraft to quadcopters to bigger warfighting assets, are a key part of these efforts, providing a range of combat capabilities en masse for a relatively low cost compared to some other US weapons programs.

The Pentagon has been working to expedite the development and deployment of uncrewed aerial systems across the services, recognizing their value as this technology sprints onto the scene in big ways. Army soldiers have been testing different types of reconnaissance and strike drones are being tested in areas like the Indo-Pacific region, learning how to adapt unmanned systems to the challenges of different missions and environments.

That's a key aspect of an ongoing "transformation in contact" initiative, which focuses on Army units being given free rein to use different capabilities during training and exercises to see how the systems might work best.

The value of drones, particularly the smaller systems, has been especially visible in the war in Ukraine, which Army leaders continue to study. Ukrainian operators fly drones for intelligence-gathering and strike missions, among others.

Due to extensive electronic warfare countermeasures on the battlefield, both sides are heavily relying on fiber-optic drones to maintain a stable connection between the operator and system while also exploring new technology, like AI-enabled drones that can resist jamming. The US is not in a similar situation, but it is looking to innovate as if it were.

• Nearly 30 M1A1 Abrams tanks will roll down Constitution Ave. in DC for the Army's 250th birthday.
• The service is finalizing plans to prevent the heavy 70-ton tanks from damaging the road.
• Engineers will use steel plates and track pads to protect roads during the parade.

The powerful M1A1 Abrams tank, with its heavy armor and 120mm cannon, is a massive hulk of steel, and dozens are set to hit the streets in the nation's capital next month.

Nearly 30 of the tanks are expected to rumble down Constitution Avenue as part of the US Army's 250th anniversary celebration on June 14, set to coincide with President Donald Trump's birthday.

The street, which runs parallel to the National Mall and serves as a major route for city traffic, isn't built to easily accommodate each tank's nearly 70-ton frame. Most cars weigh only about two tons.

So how is the Army going to keep its tanks from chewing up Constitution Avenue? The service's engineers are putting the finishing touches on plans to protect the busy street's pavement from biting tracks.

Officials aren't too concerned with the straight path down Constitution, which will likely see a single file of tanks. It's turning points that will be the most vulnerable to tears from the heavy tracked vehicles.

"We are targeting those areas that we have concerns," said Army Col. Jesse Curry, Executive Officer for the Army's Chief of Engineers, during a media roundtable with reporters on Wednesday. "Particularly the areas where the surface of the pavement would typically, you know, receive an exaggerated level of stress."

To prevent such stress, military engineers are figuring out which turn points will be layered with steel plates at least one inch thick.

Such large plates are commonly seen on city streets where heavy equipment is used, Curry said, adding that equipment staging areas and the parade route were specially chosen to minimize weight-related damage.

Heavy tracked vehicles like the M1A1 often make turns by using differential steering — one side will roll forward while the other reverses, or the tracks will operate at a different speed. That can cause tracks to "pinch," a problem for asphalt.

Inbound parade tanks will also don new "track pads," rubber components that create some separation between the metal tracks and the pavement, Curry told reporters.

Additional measures to prevent damage are still being examined, with help from DC's Department of Transportation, the National Park Service (which oversees maintenance of the National Mall), and the Federal Highway Administration.

The tanks and other vehicles, such as Bradley fighting vehicles and Strykers, will arrive in the DC area via rail and will then depart to parade staging areas via heavy-duty trailers, similar to those used to move houses down highways.

Troops will not be conducting any full-scale rehearsals for the parade, a notable deviation from typical military planning. Normally, complete rehearsals are an important part of any military mission, including small unit ceremonies.

Officials said Wednesday that while the Army has been planning a major 250th birthday event for two years, the idea to include heavy vehicles like tanks and other armored vehicles in a parade only arrived this year. The officials did not specify how the idea originated.

Even moving at a slow parade pace, any military activity using heavy equipment and vehicles is fraught with concerns that require meticulous planning for safety precautions, especially when it comes to the equipment offloads required to stage for such a parade. Large vehicles must rely on ground guides to ensure no one is inadvertently run over.

Officials said Wednesday that Hercules wreckers will be available to recover any tanks that break down. How roads might handle the behemoth 70-ton M88 Hercules recovery vehicle with a downed tank on its trailer bed is unclear.

The US military launched a long-range hypersonic missile Friday morning from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on a test flight that, if successful, could pave the way for the weapon's operational deployment later this year.

The Army's Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon fired out of a canister on a road-mobile trailer shortly after sunrise on Florida's Space Coast, then headed east over the Atlantic Ocean propelled by a solid-fueled rocket booster. Local residents shared images of the launch on social media.

Designed for conventional munitions, the new missile is poised to become the first ground-based hypersonic weapon fielded by the US military. Russia has used hypersonic missiles in combat against Ukraine. China has "the world's leading hypersonic missile arsenal," according to a recent Pentagon report on Chinese military power. After a successful test flight from Cape Canaveral last year, the long-range hypersonic weapon (LRHW)—officially named "Dark Eagle" by the Army earlier this week—will give the United States the ability to strike targets with little or no warning.

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