“We’re moving towards a talent management system where we will manage people by 25 variables instead of two,” Gen. McConville said. It will be “a system that recognizes and capitalizes on our people’s knowledge, their skills, their behaviors and even their preferences.”

Addressing topics from modernization to millennials, Trump’s pick for Army Chief of Staff sailed through his confirmation hearing — except for six bitter minutes.

FLRAA will go to select Guard units ahead of most of the regular Army, Gen. McConville said. That’s a far cry from past conflicts over helicopters.

No Army vice-chief has won the top job since Eric Shinseki. But Gen. McConville brings some unique credentials.

“The Army has aligned itself with Secretary Mattis’s National Defense Strategy, which we will not walk away from,” Gen. Milley told an Association of the US Army breakfast. “It’s a solid strategy, it’s written in history, it’s written in the blood of generations past, and we subscribe to it.” And allies are key to the strategy.

The Army plans to move at least $25 billion over the next five years from low-priority programs to preparing for major war. That includes developing a wide variety of new weapons, from high-speed aircraft, to partially-robotic armored vehicles, to a long-ranged 6.8 millimeter rifle to replace the venerable M16/M4 family and its controversial 5.56 mm round.

The Army Chief of Staff wants revolutionary new weapons. The Army Secretary wants affordable technology fast. How can they reconcile these opposites?

“Once the US companies come on line,” Gen. Milley said, “the intent is to outfit the entire heavy force — the Bradleys, the tanks, any future combat vehicles — with active protective systems.”

Army Futures Command is just a means to an end: modernizing the Army for high-intensity war against Russia or China. That includes replacing the iconic but aging M1 Abrams main battle tank, as well as other war machines, with an all-new Next Generation Combat Vehicle optimized for urban warfare, Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Army’s modernization initiatives aren’t plunging into the valley of death this week or even, in most cases, this year. It will take time to build prototypes, to test them and to figure out how the force will make the most of new technology. But over the next few years, enough of these projects have to make it across that daunting gap to actually change the Army.