Roughly 1,000 soldiers and civilian jobs at the headquarters unit for Training Doctrine and Command at Fort Eustis are under scrutiny as the Army looks to relocate the headquarters to Austin, Tx.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered that TRADOC merge with Army Futures Command and Austin, Tx. An Army planning team was created just outside the Pentagon last week to look at how the merged command will operate. They have a deadline of June 15 to create a report, said Brig. Gen. Jennifer Walkawicz, TRADOC Deputy Chief of Staff in a press briefing
“What the chief staff of the Army and the Army secretary have already decided is that the headquarters - so the four star general at a minimum - will be in Austin, Texas. Right now, that’s what we're working through in that planning team,” she said.
With the headquarters for the new command being placed in Austin, the TRADOC headquarters at Fort Eustis will be downsized, but the details have not been worked out, Walkawicz said.
“The planning team will probably come back and say that there are very specific functions that they want to leave here at Eustis, and then there are very specific functions that they want to move down to Austin,” she said.
Walkawicz said the merger with Army Futures Command is part of the most significant Army reorganization in her 30-year career.
TRADOC makes up roughly 10% of the population at Fort Eustis, with roughly 1,500 soldiers and civilians. Some training elements are not part of the restructuring and are expected to remain at Fort Eustis after the merger, she said.
The new command will be called Army Transformation and Training Command.
The current Army Futures Command was created in 2018, taking on the responsibilities for modernizing the force and looking at future threats. Initially, it was formed out of elements of Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Eustis.
At the moment, Army Futures Command headquarters operates from two buildings in downtown Austin, with the main location being in the University of Texas System Building, along with other locations on campuses around the Austin area.
The command has 128 locations around the world, said Lt. Col. Jamie Dobson, spokesperson for the command.
“This will be the most significant transformation the Army has seen in a generation in order to make the Army more lethal. Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command will merge into a single headquarters, led from Austin that aligns force generation, design, and development,” Dobson said.
TRADOC was formed in 1973. The headquarters moved to Fort Eustis in 2011, after the Army base was merged to form Joint Base Langley-Eustis as part of the Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC) process. TRADOC has 37,000 soldiers and civilians worldwide and is responsible for training 750,000 soldiers.
In an April 30 memo, Secretary of Defense Hegseth specifically calls for the merger of TRADOC and Army Futures Command as part of an effort to “Downsize, consolidate, or close redundant headquarters.”
The decision was highlighted in recent statements to Congress by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George.
“Right now we have all these different functions that are trying to do similar things and two commands and we need to combine those together," George said.
He added that the Army liked the location in Austin.
“We like what's down there, you know, as far as the culture, the software factory, you know, the ideas for innovation and change,” he said.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Tim Kaine said Gen. George and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll called him to explain the merger.
“There will be changes at the margins that always happen, but I've been assured no significant change in personnel or mission, and I'm going to monitor what the Army does to make sure they live up to that assurance,” Kaine said.
Gen. Gary Brito is currently the four star general in charge of TRADOC. He is one of only three black four star generals on active duty in the Army. Brito and the four star general in charge of the unit in Austin are both expected to step down and a new four star general will be appointed to run the combined command. This will happen sometime after the new command is stood up in October, Walkawicz said.
Brito was set to retire this year but he is being asked to stay through the fall to help with the consolidation, she said.
