2024 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting

Last week I attended the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting in Washington, DC. I chose to delay my coverage until this week because the show was so overwhelming, with lots to see and multiple meetings per day. I also wanted to take some time to absorb what I had experienced.

The Army is moving at a speed I haven’t seen since the invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, the event had the same vibe as during the peak of the war, around 2008, except right now, thanks to an ineffective Congress, there’s no money. Continuing Resolutions don’t engender confidence in programs, let alone properly fund Operations and Maintenance coffers which allow the Army to conduct its day-to-day mission. It’s a significant challenge.

The Army I encountered last week is different than the one that fought the GWOT. It is rapidly updating its capabilities with new systems, despite budget woes. If you’ve heard of Transformation in Contact, you’d have seen it happening last week; at least for industry. The convention center was packed wall-to-wall with drones and new combat vehicles, all powered by Artificial Intelligence. The Army wants all of it, and more.

While I’ll a touch a bit in those emerging capabilities this week, we’ve got some good old fashioned soldier systems coverage as well.