United States Army Futures Command


The United States Army Futures Command was a United States Army command that ran modernization projects. It was headquartered in Austin, Texas.
The AFC began initial operations on 1 July 2018. It was created as a peer of Forces Command, Training and Doctrine Command, and Army Materiel Command. While the other commands focus on readiness to "fight tonight", AFC aimed to improve future readiness for competition with near-peers. The AFC commander functioned as the Army's chief modernization investment officer. It was supported by the United States Army Reserve Innovation Command.
On October 2nd, 2025, Army officials inactivated Army Futures Command and activated U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command. This effectively merged AFC with Training and Doctrine Command. The Army will retain AFC's headquarters to serve as the new headquarters for T2COM.

History

2018

Between 1995 and 2009, the Army spent $32 billion on programs such as the Future Combat System that were later cancelled with no harvestable content. As of 2021, the Army had not fielded a new combat system in decades.
Army Futures Command was established in 2018 by Army Secretary Mark Esper to improve Army acquisition by creating better requirements and reducing the time to develop a system to meet them. Leaders who helped form the command include General Mark Milley, then Army Chief of Staff, and Under Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy. Its first commander was General John Murray, formerly the Army's G-8.
Over his tenure as Army Secretary, Esper led a process known as "night court", working with other top service officials, to free up and shift billions of dollars into modernization programs and based the new command in Austin, Texas, an area known for its innovative, technology-focused workforce. The Army gave the command's chief and the leaders of new groups, dubbed "§ cross-functional teams", the authority to manage requirements and the leeway to direct dollars.
At its founding, Futures Command was focused on six priorities: [|Long-range precision fires], Next Generation Combat Vehicle, Future Vertical Lift platforms, a mobile & expeditionary Army network, [|air and missile defense capabilities], and soldier lethality.
Murray announced plans to stand up an Army Applications Lab to accelerate acquisition and deployment of materiel to the soldiers, including by using artificial intelligence.
Murray also said he would hire a chief technology officer for AFC.
A fundamental strategy was formulated, involving simultaneous integrated operations across domains. This strategy involves pushing adversaries to standoff, by presenting them with multiple simultaneous dilemmas. A goal is that by 2028, the ability to project rapid, responsive power across domains will have become apparent to potential adversaries.
In 2018, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Futures Command would have three areas of focus:
  1. Futures and Concepts: assess gaps. Concepts for realizable future systems will flow into TRADOC doctrine, manuals, and training programs.
  2. Combat Development: stabilized concepts. Balance the current state of technology and the cash-flow requirements of the defense contractors providing the technology, that they become deliverable experiments, demonstrations, and prototypes, in an iterative process of acquisition.
  3. Combat Systems: experiments, demonstrations, and prototypes. Transition to the acquisition, production, and sustainment programs of AMC.
Army Secretary Mark Esper said that the 2018 administrative infrastructure for the Futures and Concepts Center and United States Army Combat Capabilities Development Command remains in place at their existing locations. What has changed or will change is the layers of command needed to make a decision.

2019

AFC declared its full operational capability in July 2019, after an initial one-year period. The FY2020 military budget allocated $30 billion for the top six modernization priorities over the next five years. The $30 billion came from $8 billion in cost avoidance and $22 billion in terminations. More than 30 projects were envisioned to become the materiel basis needed for overmatching any potential competitors in the 'continuum of conflict' over the next ten years in multi-domain operations.
From an initial 12 people at its headquarters in 2018, AFC grew to more than 17,000 people across 25 states and 15 countries in 2019. AFC's research facilities and personnel moved from other commands and parts of the Army such as the United States Army Research Laboratory.

2020

Bruce Jette started xTechsearch to reward private innovators. The COVID-19 pandemic led the Army to run an Ventilator Challenge. TRX Systems won an award for technology that allows navigation in a GPS-denied environment.

2021

On 13 October 2021, Army officials said most of AFC's 31 signature systems, and the four rapid capability projects of the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office would be fielded by fiscal year 2023.

2022

In 2022, Army leaders projected that 24 of the top-35 priority modernization programs would be deployed by fiscal 2023.
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth announced the top six areas for the Army of 2030: 1) improved intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; 2) "Coordination at greater speed"; 3) "Win the Fires fight"; 4) concealment via improved mobility and reduced signature; 5) "talk often and quickly"; and 6) logistics.
By 2022, Futures Command was conducting the third annual iteration of Project Convergence: experiments and joint tests of 300 technologies by the Defense Department and its allies and partners.
In October 2022, Wormuth assigned AFC to work on "Army of 2040" concepts. Two months later, Futures Command hosted a conference with representatives from AMC, TRADOC, FORSCOM, and Headquarters Department of the Army. AFC is leading the development of a new Army Operating Concept for the Army of 2030 to 2040.

2024

The 'All-domain sensing cross-functional team' is standing up to support the plethora of data coming from data sources across the joint and combined services, allies, and partners. This CFT is built from the existing PNT CFT. See Combined JADC2. The contested logistics CFT was stood up in 2023.

2025

In May 2025, the Army announced it would merge Army Futures Command with Training and Doctrine Command to form the U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command.
On 2 October 2025, the Army deactivated Army Futures Command in a ceremony at Austin, Texas. The new Transformation and Training Command, known as T2COM, will be activated simultaneously.

Organization

The commanding general was assisted by three deputy commanders.
  • The Futures and Concepts Center: The first commander was AFC deputy commanding general General Eric J. Wesley, and it was led in 2021 by Lieutenant General Scott McKean. The center operates along four lines of effort: science and technology, experiments, concepts development, and requirements development.
  • Combat Development: Helps AFC commander to assess and integrate the future operational environment, emerging threats, and technologies to develop and deliver concepts, requirements, and future force designs.
  • * The capability development integration directorate of each Center of Excellence, works with its cross-functional team and its research, development and engineering center to develop operational experiments and prototypes to test.
  • * The Battle Labs and the Research Analysis Center prototype and analyze the concepts to test.
  • * The Joint Modernization Command provides live developmental experiments to test those concepts or capabilities, "scalable from company level to corps, amid tough, realistic multi-domain operations".
  • * The Combat Capabilities Development Command, the former RDECOM. Stood up on 3 February 2019.
  • Acquisition and Systems :
  • *Gen. Robert Abrams has tasked III Corps with providing soldier feedback for the Next Generation Combat Vehicles CFT, XVIII Corps for the soldier feedback on the soldier lethality CFT, the Network CFT, as well as the Synthetic Training CFT, and I Corps for the Long Range Precision Fires CFT.
  • *Combat Systems refines, engineers, and produces the developed solutions from Combat Development.
File:Multi-domain operations,investmentPlan2020.png|upright=1.4|thumb|right|Multi-domain operations : Friendly forces operating in multi-domains —Space, Cyber, Air, Land, and Maritime respectively—cooperate across domains, working as an integrated force against adversaries. These operations will disrupt these adversaries, and present them multiple simultaneous dilemmas, to encourage adversaries to return to competition rather than continue a conflict.

Cross-functional teams

When AFC was created in 2018, it was given eight cross-functional teams, or CFTs: one for each of the Army's six modernization priorities, and two others for broader capabilities. These teams are Long-Range Precision Fires, Next-Generation Combat Vehicles, Future Vertical Lift, the Network to include Precision Navigation and Timing, Air-and-Missile Defense, Soldier Lethality and Synthetic Training Environment.
  1. Improved :— Lead: BG John Rafferty ... PEO Ammunition
  2. — Lead: BG Ross Coffman... PEO Ground Combat Systems
  3. platforms— Lead: BG Wally Rugen... PEO Aviation
  4. Mobile and communications network
  5. # — Lead: MG Pete Gallagher... PEO Command Control Communications Tactical
  6. # — Lead: William B. Nelson, SES
  7. — Lead: BG Brian Gibson,... PEO Missiles and Space
  8. Soldier lethality
  9. # — Lead: BG David M. Hodne... PEO Soldier
  10. # Synthetic Training Environment — Lead: MG Maria Gervais... PEO Simulation, Training, & Instrumentation.
In 2023, the Army announced that it would create a ninth team, for Contested Logistics. The 2023 exercises for IndoPacom will test its prepositioned stocks. The CG of Army Materiel Command is taking the lead for contested logistics.
In 2018, McCarthy characterized a CFT as a team of teams, led by a requirements leader, program manager, sustainer and tester. Some CFTs also have representatives of U.S. allies. Each CFT lead is mentored by a 4-star general. Each CFT can have a Capability Development Integration Directorate. For example, the Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker, in coordination with the Aviation Program Executive Officer, contains the Vertical Lift CFT and the Aviation [|CDID]. "We were never above probably a total of eight people", the Aviation CFT's Brigadier General Wally Rugen said in 2018. Four of the eight CFT leads have now shifted from dual-hat jobs to full-time status.
Each CFT must strike a balance amid constraints—the realms of requirements, acquisition, science and technology, test, resourcing, costing, and sustainment—to produce a realizable concept before a competitor achieves it.
The Army Requirements Oversight Council itself serves as a kind of CFT, operating at a higher level as response to Congressional oversight, budgeting, funding, policy, and authorization for action.
AFC and the CFTs are expected to unify control of the Army' s $30 billion modernization budget.File:Multi Domain Operations,space.png|thumb|upright=1.4|Multi-domain operations span multiple domains: cislunar space, land, air, maritime, cyber, and populations. Echelons above brigade engage in a continuum of conflict. —This illustration is from The MDO Concept, TRADOC pamphlet 525-3-1.